Benjamin Franklin on Keeping a Republic
At the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, "well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" he gave a trenchant reply that resonates today: "A republic, if you can keep it." While it may seem ironic that his addressee was a woman who could not vote, this choice is actually apt. Always an instinctive champion of common folks and underdogs against the proud and privileged, Franklin would have been one of the first advocates of women's suffrage, even as he was one of the first American abolitionists. And from the first, he saw keeping the new republic as a task for the whole of society.
Unlike James Madison, Franklin's interest lay not mainly in constitutional structures, but in the habits, virtues, and social fabric of a nation. As he put it in a 1787 letter, "only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Franklin shared this view with classical republicanism, as did Thomas Jefferson, who connected virtue with the independent spirit of yeoman farmers and the open frontier.
This view of freedom's dependence on virtue may appear quaint today. But might it still hold true? For all the troubles our country faces, might the deepest one — and the most neglected — be a moral crisis?
We often blame the primary system, or gerrymandering, or social media, or money in politics for our political woes. But extreme partisanship, populism, and creeping authoritarianism don't just happen to a people; they grow out of, and in turn deepen, a nation's moral collapse. To be sure, we disagree profoundly about economic policies, social policies, immigration, climate change, and America's role in the world. Yet Franklin might suggest that our republic's safety depends not so much on policy agreement as on our people's virtuous character.
VIRTUE'S PITFALLS
This isn't necessarily an encouraging thought. We seem to be running out of virtue just as we ran out of open frontier. Is the one loss any more reparable than the other? We also have mixed feelings about virtue: It appears to us more than a little stuffy, preachy, and boring, if not altogether the preserve of humorless hypocrites. A child I know defended his reckless play by observing that everything fun is at least a little dangerous. Aristotle called humor "cultured insolence." Can human thriving really be found in killing fun?
We even have a bad conscience about virtue, tied up as it is for many with scorn, shame, judgment, and repression. Weren't the extremists of the French Revolution most exercised about virtue right before they rolled out the guillotine? To insist on virtue appears undemocratic, almost un-American. Virtue means excellence, and not everyone can excel. Virtue even functions as a source of division when partisans contest its meaning. For the right, virtue can mean restricting government aid to the poor to incentivize self-reliance, while on the left, it can mean precisely redoubling efforts to help the marginalized and the oppressed. A politics of virtue disturbs us for these reasons and more.
Franklin was an advocate of virtue who understood all this. It is thus worth revisiting his democratic, spirited, realistic, eminently hopeful, and even playful account of virtue today. Franklin had a keen nose for hypocrisy, and little patience for the so-called virtue of preachers who tell their parishioners what to think instead of helping them become good. Virtue, as Franklin saw it, is not a matter of assuming a stance or taking a side; it consists rather in habits of honesty, simple fairness, respect for one's fellows, and deference to the law, without which the champions of any cause are likely to do harm.
Franklin saw virtue, at bottom, as good sense. It is good for those around us, good for society, but above all, good for our own happiness. He reached this conclusion as a young man after a series of escapades that he had excused at the time with a foray into determinism. He decided at length that virtue matters and is achievable, but it is also an art that takes effort to learn.
In his Autobiography, Franklin gave a subtle catalogue of the virtues he sought to acquire and a charming account of his efforts to school himself in them, with speckled success. He supplemented the Autobiography with little essays and dialogues peppered with puckish advice and graced with a panoply of invented characters. These included his first teenage essays under the guise of Silence Dogood, the garrulous widow; Poor Richard, the ne'er-do-well "author" of his farmer's almanac and a fount of impeccable advice that he occasionally followed himself; newspaper columns exhorting such humble good habits as sidewalk-shoveling and defending the surprising utility of backbiting; advice from one "Margaret Aftercast" not to be too proud in courtship; and his own difficult dialogue with Lady Gout.
In these and other writings, Franklin developed an account of virtue well suited for a democratic republic. Two leitmotifs of this account are his stress on self-reliance, in all its lower and higher meanings, which paradoxically includes interdependence or collective self-reliance; and the importance of a wise sobriety about human affairs and human nature, which paradoxically includes keeping a sense of humor about them.
SELF-RELIANCE
Franklin began both his own project of self-improvement and his moral education for young farmers in Poor Richard's Almanac with the same simple habits of thrift, industry, and moderation in food and drink. He admonished himself to "Eat not to dullness; Drink not to elevation." He warned his readers to "beware of little Expences, a small Leak will sink a great Ship," and that "what maintains one Vice will bring up two Children." Above all, he extolled hard work, proclaiming that "Diligence is the Mother of Good-Luck," and that "Industry need not wish." His penny-pinching, nose-to-the-grindstone advice reached a crescendo in his little pamphlet "Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One." There, he implored readers to "Remember that Time is Money," that "Credit is Money," and that "Money can beget Money, and its offspring can beget more," just like a good breeding sow.
All this drove Max Weber crazy. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the great sociologist charged Franklin with treating money as an end in itself, and its acquisition as an all-consuming, irrational duty. But Weber missed Franklin's broader moral and political project. Franklin knew we would all rather be rich than poor, and he was happy to help get us there, but he aimed at a greater goal.
As he explained his priorities in the Autobiography, Franklin filled the spaces of his almanac with
Proverbial Sentences, chiefly such as inculcated Industry and Frugality, as the Means of procuring Wealth and thereby securing Virtue, it being more difficult for a Man in Want to act always honestly, as (to use here one of those Proverbs) it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
Prosperity is valuable not for its own sake, but as the foundation for a satisfying and dignified life, and ultimately for the people's freedom. For government, he argued, can only rest securely on the people when individual citizens stand firmly on their own feet.
The value of work is partly negative: We're naturally so disorderly that idleness is bad for us. As Franklin put it in the almanac, "Idleness is the Dead Sea, that swallows all Virtues: Be active in Business, that Temptation may miss her Aim." But the value of work is also positive: Franklin observed its happy effect on people's spirits, on their confidence and self-respect. In the Autobiography, he recalled being dispatched to the frontier with a small force to build forts, a project frequently impeded by rain:
This gave me occasion to observe, that, when men are employ'd, they are best content'd; for on the days they worked they were good-natur'd and cheerful, and, with the consciousness of having done a good day's work, they spent the evening jollily; but on our idle days they were mutinous and quarrelsome, finding fault with their pork, the bread, etc., and in continual ill-humour.
We can recognize just such a "mutinous and quarrelsome" mood among the astonishing numbers of American men out of the workforce today.
Even intermittent work boosts the spirits, as focusing on what we need to do and what we've already accomplished draws attention away from sources of discontent outside our power. When industry becomes habitual, concentrating on one's own capacities and accomplishments becomes habitual, too, resulting in a solid self-respect. For unskilled laborers, this may be as far as the benefits of hard work go. But for an independent farmer, artisan, or merchant, they are more substantial. "He who has a Trade, has an Office of Profit and honour," Franklin wrote, "because he doesn't hold it during any other Man's Pleasure, and it affords him honest Subsistence with Independence."
Skilled workers, especially when they work for themselves, find that diligent, prudent management of small things materially improves their circumstances. Little by little, they come to believe in a way no book could persuade them that they really are in control of their own lives. They see, as Poor Richard put it, that their own "Little Strokes" really can "Fell great Oaks."
We once wondered whether these virtues of independent farmers, artisans, and small shopkeepers could survive industrialization and the growth of massive companies. Now we look back with nostalgia to the General Motors factory workers of the 1950s and fret that the country's social health cannot survive our transition from a national, heavily industrial economy to a global, knowledge-based one. At least one of us wonders whether tariffs might solve our problems.
Franklin, however, saw the value of mastering a trade not mainly in the way it allows someone to run his own business, but in the way it allows him to run his own life. The skilled person can take his abilities anywhere, as Franklin himself carried his knowledge of the printer's trade with him to a Philadelphia shop and then to a large firm in London. More valuable even than a particular skill, however, is the facility at learning skills that comes from acquiring the first one, and still more, the self-respect gained along the way.
THE ART OF VIRTUE
Franklin offered not just exhortations, but subtle thoughts on the nature of virtue and what it takes to attain it. At the heart of Franklinian virtue is the hybrid moral-intellectual virtue that the Greeks called sôphrosunê, a spirit of moderation rooted in sober good judgment. Franklin's appreciation for this virtue likely came in part from a Greek source, Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates, which he read as a young man and whose hero he tried hard to imitate.
In a dialogue titled "A Man of Sense," Franklin explored the connection between enlightenment and virtue, pressing the question of whether a man who isn't honest can be called a man of sense. The character "Socrates" convinces his interlocutor "Crito" to agree that good sense starts with knowing what we must do to be happy, and why practicing virtue is essential for happiness.
The ethos Franklin sought to promote is thus one of enlightened self-interest. This ethos would prove so influential that Alexis de Tocqueville, returning from a tour of the United States in the 1830s, portrayed it as a defining feature of the American spirit. This doesn't mean that in Franklin's eyes, virtue is merely self-interested. He argues in another essay that human beings "are naturally benevolent as well as selfish," and he often encourages his readers to find and nurture their own benevolent impulses. Still less does it mean any of the lessons enlightenment teaches are easy to master or maintain. Virtue, he says,
is as properly an Art, as Painting, Navigation, or Architecture. If a Man would become a Painter, navigator, or Architect, it is not enough that he is advised to be one, that he is convinc'd by the Arguments of his Adviser that it would be for his Advantage to be one, and that he resolves to be one, but he must also be taught the Principles of the Art, be shewn all the Methods of Working, and how to acquire the Habits of using properly all the Instruments; and thus regularly and gradually he arrives by Practice at some Perfection in the Art.
Franklin's art of virtue begins with recognizing that we are creatures of often foolish habits. Endowed with an impressive power of reason, we seldom exercise it to ferret out unwelcome truths. Much more often this faculty plays the sophist, finding a reason for what we already have a mind to do. But once we know this, we can shrewdly deploy reason's limited power to compensate for its worst weaknesses, training a floodlight of attention on one vice at a time so as to let no lapse creep by unnoticed. Franklin recommended turning the power of habit against itself by establishing new habits to counter old ones, and getting each one well rooted before attending to the next.
Habit matters so much because life is cumulative: The use or waste of small moments, indulgence in or resistance to small extravagances, the seizing or ignoring of small opportunities to shape one's fate — they all add up to a futile or a well-lived life. Cultivating the right habits ensures that in the grip of passion, we'll still do what our reason has judged best in moments of calm and clarity.
SOBRIETY AND ANGER
Essential to Franklin's sobriety — and often the key to his humor — is his recognition of human beings' mixed motives. We're all partly selfish, partly generous. High-minded honor and public spiritedness move us, but so do laziness, vanity, and short-sighted appetites. The Puritans around Franklin wanted people to practice the purest virtue for only the purest motives. Franklin was glad if his almanac and newspaper readers could become a little better and a little more sensible for any reason, lofty or vain, whether fired by noble emulation or nipped by backbiting.
Franklin's sobriety was especially suspicious of anger. He warned that "A Man in a Passion rides a mad Horse," and that "Anger is never without a Reason, but seldom with a good One." Anger usually reflects a belief that people ought to set aside their own self-interest for ours. Franklin suggested this is misguided. As he and his hero Socrates agreed, anger always means losing sight of how scoundrels harm themselves most of all. Franklin lived this out: No one in the colonies was more indefatigable in defending American liberties against British oppression, but he also proved the most reluctant to give up hope for an amicable resolution that could benefit everyone.
Anger and bitter partisanship come from expecting more purity or more good sense than is realistic, and not knowing how to take the measure of human beings. This spirit tears down the heroes we all need as soon as it observes they aren't demigods. Franklin's wisdom sees through the layers of pretense that humans wrap around themselves, desperately trying to be more than they are. It sees and encourages the good; it curbs the bitterness and vindictiveness.
In his Autobiography, Franklin related how he first sailed to England on the strength of Pennsylvania governor William Keith's promises to help him become Philadelphia's chief printer, and how Keith's duplicity left him penniless and stranded in London. Instead of reviling Keith, he merely asked:
But what shall we think of a governor's playing such pitiful Tricks, and imposing so grossly on a poor ignorant Boy! It was a habit he had acquired. He wish'd to please everybody; and having little to give, he gave Expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious sensible Man, a pretty good Writer, and a good Governor for the People.
When a rival printer abused his power as postmaster to keep Franklin from sending his newspaper through the mail, Franklin said, "I thought so meanly of him for it, that, when I afterward came into his Situation, I took care never to imitate it." Today's aggrieved partisans could take a lesson from this serene attitude.
INDIVIDUALISM AND INTERDEPENDENCE
Franklin loved to tout his own rise in the world from humble beginnings to wealth and greatness, suggesting that with his recipe and enough elbow grease, we can all do the same:
I have always thought that one Man of tolerable Abilities may work great Changes, and accomplish great Affairs among Mankind, if he first forms a good Plan, and, cutting off all Amusements or other Employments that would divert his Attention, makes the Execution of that same Plan his sole Study and Business.
But as Max Weber attacked Franklin for his alleged materialism, Mark Twain skewered him for generating impossible expectations. In a little essay on Franklin's Autobiography (prefaced with the motto, "[N]ever put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow just as well"), Twain wrote:
The subject of this memoir was of a vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys forever — boys who might otherwise have been happy.
Yes, Twain might have granted, Franklin sometimes inspires us — and not just our pushy fathers — but this self-made man is seductive in an unrealistic way. Franklin succeeded so brilliantly not because of his great maxims or methods, but because he happened to be born with unusual energy, a rare wit, an inventive mind, unfailing good cheer, a natural public-spiritedness, and exceptional charm.
Surely there's something to this. Maybe there's even a problem with most attempts at self-definition — chasing "dreams" that are mainly quests for stimulation, conceiving of and trying to shape identities in ways that feed self-absorption. As our more successful young people today prioritize lucrative careers, pour energy into curating their images on social media, and seek cheap digital substitutes for the courtship that used to entangle them in love affairs and families, they are not becoming happier. Might the self-made man or woman remain largely a myth, and not a useful one at that?
Franklin himself recognized the limits of his method. In his "Dialogue Between Franklin and the Gout," dated midnight, October 22, 1780, he endured a tongue lashing from his gout for his indulgences at table, his insufficient exercise, and above all for the flimsy excuses with which this purportedly reasonable man kept defeating his own good resolutions. Brought face to face with his own sophisms, Franklin replied: "Your reasonings grow very tiresome." Lady Gout asked him how often he had broken his resolution to take morning walks, "alleging, at one time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist, or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing but your insuperable love of ease." He conceded that this "may have happened occasionally, probably ten times in a year." She answered: "Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross amount is one hundred and ninety-nine times." He pleaded guilty, contritely quoting his own Poor Richard: "Our debts and our sins are always greater than we think." Lady Gout replied: "So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in your conduct." It is part of Franklin's sobriety that he expected this self-deception and could laugh at it, yet he knew not to give up trying to do better.
But Franklin was in fact no rugged individualist, and never tried to be; he saw that he could only build true self-reliance with networks of other people. Many of Franklin's virtues are social virtues, including two that he especially prized: honesty and civility. He believed that a liar would sooner or later be found out and gain a bad reputation that would harm him. He learned through hard experience in the London print shop "the folly of being on ill terms with those one is to live with continually." He assiduously sought to win the trust of neighbors, customers, and fellow countrymen.
Urban life on the small, face-to-face scale of 18th-century Philadelphia might have been optimal for learning these lessons. Self-interest doesn't so obviously support honesty and civility in a modern world largely rendered anonymous and atomized by digital technologies. Nevertheless, as we revisit Franklin today, it is striking to see how much he himself created the networks of connection he needed to thrive. His Junto, or self-improvement club for young apprentices and tradesmen, was the first in a long string of projects he spearheaded with friends — projects for education, insurance, fire protection, health care, and colonial defense. These endeavors deepened friendships and strengthened the web of civil society.
Tocqueville would later remark on Americans' propensity for forming voluntary associations to solve problems and improve themselves. The patience, realism, love of order, and habits of self-reliance and cooperation that Americans learned in these small associations benefited political life. No one did more to foster these associational habits than Benjamin Franklin.
REBUILDING CIVIC VIRTUE
Today, government executes many of the social tasks Franklin once tackled. Opportunities for service and association have by no means dried up, but the habits are waning. Since Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone appeared in 2000, commentators have worried over Americans' declining involvement in voluntary association, viewing it as an erosion of "social capital." More recently, psychologist Jonathan Haidt has linked the struggles of young Americans to the loss of an even simpler form of voluntary, grassroots organization: the spontaneous playgroups of children running around their neighborhoods, pursuing adventures, organizing games, getting into scrapes and quarrels and resolving them with each other's help, neither directly under parents' eyes nor wholly out of their earshot. This, Haidt argues, is the seedbed of the self-reliance that our college students lack.
Franklin would identify these social deficits in a way sociologists and psychologists usually don't, namely as a moral decline. The capacity for collective self-reliance isn't just a skill to Franklin, but a virtue on which freedom depends, and that we individualistic Americans increasingly lack. Our dearth of shared spaces, structures, and norms makes it ever harder to recover the virtues that built them, but the future of American freedom may depend on reversing this slide.
What would this look like? If schools today practiced Franklin's sobriety, they might make students better observers of human affairs, less prone to outrage or cynicism, and more ready to find what is promising and build on it. If Congress today took on the virtues Franklin prized, members would argue vigorously, poke fun at one another, and drink beer together. If a Franklin in the presidency or the judiciary observed his predecessors or rivals abusing their powers, he would take care never to imitate them.
Franklin believed that a free republic must be a republic of working men and women with a rough but substantial degree of equality. He boasted of the "happy Mediocrity" of fortune that kept Americans independent and hardworking and therefore virtuous. He proposed inserting into the Pennsylvania constitution not only an affirmation of the right to acquire property, but a statement of this right's natural limits:
That an enormous Proportion of Property vested in a few Individuals is dangerous to the Rights, and destructive of the Common Happiness, of Mankind; and therefore every free State hath a Right by its Laws to discourage the Possession of such Property.
For Franklin, equality matters not only because great concentrations of wealth breed corruption, but because extreme inequality undermines the trust, fellow feeling, and dignity that working citizens need. His economic advice for us might well include a much higher minimum wage and steeper taxes on the wealthy.
His moral advice would likely be more pointed. If we measure ourselves against the simple, earthy standard of self-reliance Franklin set out in his almanac for farmers, apprentices, and journeymen, we would fall far short. Today, only 23% of American 17- to 24-year-olds meet the U.S. Army's basic standards for physical health, fitness, weight, and mental health, and are able to produce a clean drug test and a clear criminal record. If 90% of young Americans were Army ready, we would have a healthier polity.
To preserve our democracy, we need vigilant action against corruption and subversion. But more importantly, Franklin would say, we need to patiently rebuild our moral fabric. For this, better schools are indispensable — schools that spare no effort to build the humble foundations of fit bodies and basic competencies that citizens need, and to cultivate the democratic virtues, inspired by a moral sobriety so wise and so gentle that it never forgets to laugh.