23. Death and Taxes
Overseas travel was more dangerous than usual during the Seven Years’ War between England and France, so when George Whitefield came home from his fifth American voyage in 1755, he stayed for a while.
It was a different story for Ben Franklin, who went from wagon wrangling and stockade building to a different kind of public service. He got himself appointed as a representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly, sent to London to petition the colony’s proprietors and the British government to give the assembly more power. So Ben crossed the dangerous ocean with his son, William, in mid-1757.
They got a four-room apartment on Craven Street, renting from Margaret Stevenson. With this as his home base, Ben would spend the next six years interacting with the London intelligentsia, exploring his own family heritage, touring other parts of the British Isles and Europe, flirting with Margaret and her daughter, and of course carrying on his official state business.
It was quite different from his first London trip some thirty years earlier. Ben was already rich and now somewhat famous for his scientific experiments. He had a ready entrée with leading scholars, who were eager to meet him. He was in heaven. An early letter he sent home to his wife (who hated ocean travel) revealed his joy, acknowledged his duty, and protested a bit too much about being away from home. “The agreeable conversation I meet with among men of learning, and the notice taken of me by persons of distinction, are the principal things that soothe me for the present under this painful absence from my family and friends; yet those would not detain me here another week, if I had not other inducements, duty to my country and hopes of being able to do it service.”1
Missed Connections
We have no record of letters between George and Ben during this time that they both were based in London, though this doesn’t mean they didn’t see each other. Why send a letter if you’re having lunch together next Thursday? Yet both traveled much during this period. George found an exciting new mission field in Scotland, and he took extensive preaching tours there nearly every year. Ben got into the habit of taking summer vacations with his son, William. They journeyed through the area north of London, studying the roots of the Franklin clan. They also visited Scotland, where Ben met a number of well-known scholars. They even ventured to Holland and Belgium.
Comparing the schedules of Ben and George, we find few times when they were both in London—maybe September 1757, the winter and spring of 1758, and a longer period in 1760 through 1761. Ben and William rushed back from Holland to attend the coronation of King George III on September 22, 1761. George was probably in London at that time, but he was recovering from a serious illness, and he made no mention of the coronation in his letters.
The most intriguing confluence of their schedules comes in 1759, when they were both in Edinburgh, Scotland. Even then, they just missed each other. George left Scotland in August; Ben arrived in September. It’s also interesting that, during this time, Ben was making the acquaintance of philosopher David Hume—someone George already knew, thanks to Lady Huntingdon’s high-society connections. After hearing a talk by Whitefield, Hume said, “This address was accompanied with such animated, yet natural, action, that it surpassed anything I ever saw or heard in any other preacher.”2 He was just as complimentary about Franklin. After Ben announced his intention in 1762 to return to America, Hume wrote back, “I am very sorry, that you intend soon to leave our Hemisphere. America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo etc.: But you are the first philosopher, and indeed the first Great Man of Letters for whom we are beholden to her.”3
It would be truly delightful if we could find David Hume, Ben Franklin, and George Whitefield in a room together, perhaps sipping tea in a Scottish castle, discussing the nature of reality. Hume’s empirical philosophy, Franklin’s moral pragmatism, and Whitefield’s experiential spirituality actually shared common roots in the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke. Sadly, that party never happened.
In fact, as we look at the letters of both Ben and George, we begin to think they never connected during the period between 1757 and 1763, even if they were just a few miles apart. Ben wrote regularly to his wife back in Philadelphia and his sister in Boston, both of whom knew George Whitefield. Yet, while he passed along greetings from various others, he didn’t mention George as far as we know. Neither did George mention Ben in his letters of the period. This might signal another distancing in their relationship.
As he implied in that letter to Deborah, it was very important to Ben to be accepted by London’s elite—not only for his own sense of pride, but for the good of Pennsylvania. Back in Philadelphia, he was a very big fish in a small pond. Britain, however, was a huge pond, and Ben could easily be written off as an American hick. And while George was famous in England, he too could be written off by the elite as a populist oddity. Lady Huntingdon provided some inroads to the well-born set, but many would consider Whitefield merely a fad.
In 1760, a play was produced in London lampooning Whitefield in shocking, bawdy ways. This led to a public war of words in pamphlets and newspapers between his supporters and detractors. George himself seemed unfazed, writing to a friend, “Satan is angry. I am now mimicked and burlesqued upon the public stage. All hail such contempt! God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Jesus Christ.”4
George knew there’s no such thing as bad publicity, especially when your personal reputation is irrelevant, but that wasn’t the case for Ben Franklin. His mission was all about reputation. It was crucial that the officials he lobbied would see him as respectable, important, someone to be reckoned with. He had no newspaper here with which he could manage public opinion. Perhaps an association with Whitefield would prove counter-productive to the image Franklin needed to convey. So maybe Ben was avoiding his old preacher friend.
Or maybe they were just busy.
The factors that had brought them together in Philadelphia weren’t there anymore. They had no publishing business to discuss. George didn’t need a place to stay. In order to get together, they would have to make a point to do so. It seems that there were more good reasons not to. For now.
As the war drew to a close, both men made their way back to America—Ben in late 1762 and George in the summer of 1763. Whitefield had the feeling it was his last visit to the colonies. He was wrong about this, as it turned out, but this trip had the feel of a farewell tour. His letters show him even more eternity-minded than usual. He had gained weight. He had lost energy. He could preach only about three or four times a week. And still he embarked on the same kind of continent-crossing voyage he had taken before: Virginia, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and then south again to Georgia. Everywhere crowds attended, with the thought that this might be their final chance to hear him. Gone was the bitter opposition. As one Boston friend told him, “Your enemies are very few, and even they seem to be almost at peace with you.”5 Newspapers reported each stop along the way, with regular reference to his failing health. This added to his heroism. He was already an American treasure, and each weary step across this land confirmed it.
Franklin was traveling too, on a postal inspection tour from Virginia to New Hampshire. Once again, the old friends missed connections. Whitefield was in Philadelphia in November 1763, when Franklin returned home from New England, but they didn’t get together. Ben was sorry about that. He had received a package for George and was planning to hand-deliver it when the preacher got back from a quick trip to Princeton, but then he learned that Whitefield was already moving on to New York. Ben wrote that it “mortifies me not a little, that I should so long omit waiting on you here, as to be at length finally deprived of the pleasure of seeing you.”6
Franklin wrote again the following June. This letter seems to be a reasoned response to Whitefield’s evangelistic efforts. In the early lines, he mentioned something George had sent him, and that he was enclosing something in return. But George had probably added a message in his previous post, one last impassioned plea to the brilliant man who hadn’t yet seen the value of rebirth. It inspired Ben to respond in kind. This was Franklin’s credo. “Your frequently repeated wishes and prayers for my eternal as well as temporal happiness are very obliging. I can only thank you for them, and offer you mine in return. I have myself no doubts that I shall enjoy as much of both as is proper for me.”7
Let’s pause here to note that he’s talking about “both” eternal and temporal happiness. Prayers are offered for well-being now and heavenly bliss in the future. While George was, no doubt, worried about Ben’s eternal destiny, Ben had no such fears. Whatever was “proper,” he would receive.
Ben went on: “That Being who gave me existence, and through almost threescore years has been continually showering his favours upon me, whose very chastisements have been blessings to me, can I doubt that he loves me? And if he loves me, can I doubt that he will go on to take care of me not only here but hereafter? This to some may seem presumption; to me it appears the best grounded hope; hope of the future; built on experience of the past.”8
There is much that a Christian might like about Ben’s statement of faith—a humble belief in the grace of a caring God and a future hope built on gratitude for the past. Just a week later, Ben wrote to his friend William Strahan, a London bookseller, along the same lines. “God has been very good to you, from whence I think you may be assured that he loves you, and that he will take at least as good care of your future happiness as he has done of your present.”9
This was theism, not really deism. Ben’s God was not a disinterested clockmaker, but a very interested bestower of blessing. Yet George would notice something missing: Jesus. His New Testament gospel was built on the sacrificial death of Christ, the justification of believers at the cross, and the resurrection of believers to new life. As beautiful as Ben’s sentiments were, they still didn’t amount to a Christian conversion, as far as George was concerned.
Ben closed his letter to George with joy in improved health, greetings from Deborah, and a plea to visit Philadelphia again. We have every reason to think that they did get together a few months later, as George spent about a month in Philadelphia before another southward swing.
Stamp Rejector
Both men were back in England in 1765. Oddly, both these celebrities seemed more “at home” away from home. George had hoped that his American voyage would be good for his health. Life had grown so stressful in England that he considered it soothing to go stomping through the colonial wilderness. Yet it wasn’t the cure-all he had hoped for.
On the other hand, Ben had difficulty back home in Pennsylvania. Life in Philadelphia had gone on just fine without him. He briefly became speaker of the assembly but then was ousted from the assembly in a failed reelection bid. He found, to his surprise, that he had enemies. As he prepared to go back to London, he wrote a grim letter to his daughter, Sally, warning her that this “enmity will extend in some degree to you, so that your slightest indiscretions will be magnified into crimes, in order . . . to wound and afflict me.” He urged her to “Go constantly to church, whoever preaches.”10
He thought it would be a quick trip to London this time. At least that’s what he told his wife. He had just a few loose ends to tie up. Ben was still trying to get Pennsylvania out of the grip of its proprietors—Thomas Penn and his board. He wanted to hang on to the job of American postmaster. And then there was the Stamp Act.
The war with France was expensive. British debt had nearly doubled. So in March 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, imposing a tax in American colonies on court documents, printed matter, and even playing cards. It all had to bear the stamp of the British government, and that would cost extra. Americans were, of course, incensed.
Ben Franklin played the politics of this situation badly at first. He was just too reasonable. He understood that governments needed to tax citizens to raise money for public projects—like wars. And while he opposed the Stamp Act, he encouraged people to try to live with it. He even set up a friend of his as tax collector for Pennsylvania, assuming that Americans would resist for a short while and then get used to the idea.
He was very wrong about this, and his enemies back home made the most of it. It was easy to see Franklin building his own fortune and reputation at the expense of the American people. Mobs formed throughout the colonies, protesting the new tax. One mob destroyed the home of the Massachusetts governor. In Philadelphia, a similar mob threatened the Franklin home, but Deborah stood her ground, with shotguns at the ready. The British stamp was “the mark of the beast.” Preachers—Old Lights and New Lights—railed against it. Throughout America, patriots like Patrick Henry and John Adams raised their voices against the mother country. Delegates from nine colonies gathered in New York to issue a declaration of protest. This was a dry run for the Revolution.
Throughout his life, Ben Franklin had seen the American colonies as a glorious extension of a great empire. He loved England, and while he often bristled at the way the British treated the colonists, he generally believed that a win-win solution could be found. He had long urged the British to include colonial representatives in Parliament, but no one paid much attention. The concept of taxation without representation was fundamentally immoral, he felt, and that’s precisely what this Stamp Act was doing. Americans would tolerate tariffs on external trade, Ben suggested, but this tax on the internal business of the colonies was just wrong.
Soon Ben began lobbying for the repeal of the Stamp Act. There were some like-minded Whigs in the British government who helped him get a hearing. And so Ben found himself testifying before Parliament on February 13, 1766, as the resident expert on America. By some reports he was accompanied by George Whitefield, who observed the proceedings. Ben’s parliamentary allies did much of the questioning, but there were occasional challenges from others. What did Americans want, and what would they accept? Franklin spoke forcefully, direly, and prophetically. While he did not question the right of Parliament to tax the colonies (a concession that would get Ben in trouble back home), this levy on internal business was wrong and dangerous.
Deeply divided, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act eight days after Ben’s testimony, but only after passing the Declaratory Act, which affirmed its right to tax the colonies whenever it wanted. After the king approved the repeal, George wrote in his diary, “March 6, 1766, Stamp Act repealed—Gloria Deo.”11
In America, the reaction was mixed. When news of the repeal arrived, there was dancing in the streets. Their protests had smashed the deplorable Stamp Act! But then some began reading the fine print: Parliament had retained its taxing authority. How could Franklin let that happen?
Joseph Galloway, a mutual friend, suggested that George help Ben by writing a letter of support, and he gladly did so, distributing it through his broad letter-writing network in the colonies. “Dr. Franklin has gained immortal honour by his behaviour at the bar of the House. His answer was always found equal to the questioner. He stood unappalled, gave pleasure to his friends, and did honour to his country.”12
And so, nearly two decades after Franklin had used the Pennsylvania Gazette to shore up Whitefield’s reputation against unfounded attacks, George used his own worldwide web to return the favor. This seems to have been a step forward in their relationship. If Ben had been dodging George during his earlier stay in England, he wasn’t doing so anymore.
Like Family
Two weeks after Ben’s testimony, he wrote a rather innocuous note to his wife that includes this, in passing: “Mr. Whitfield [sic] called today and tells me a surprising piece of news.”13 The news was trivial—about someone they knew who was now in England. The point is that George was dropping by Franklin’s place. Over the next few years there were several more letters between them, some referring to conversations they’d had. They were friends again.
William Franklin wrote from his post as governor of New Jersey to tell Ben how effective Whitefield’s support was after the Stamp Act testimony. In a letter to sister Jane, Ben mentioned a story he’d heard from George. (Seeing boys in the distance throwing rocks at a tree, George said he didn’t know what kind of tree it was, but he assumed it had fruit. So, with all the slander thrown at Ben, it had to mean he was fruitful.)14 “Your daughter I find is beginning the world,” George wrote after learning of Sally’s marriage. “I wish you joy from the bottom of my heart.”15 There was a new closeness here. It’s like George was part of the family.
Meanwhile Whitefield had a new project: seeking a charter for a new college at Bethesda. He had alienated so many of the officials whose approval he needed, it was slow going. Franklin, who had started a college already, seems to have served as a valuable advisor in this matter. “When will it suit you to have another interview? The college affair lies dormant,” wrote George, before complaining again about his health. “For above a week I have been dethroned by a violent cold and hoarseness.”
Everything, even a medical report, provided opportunity for George to share his faith. Ben was probably used to it by now. “Through rich grace I can sing ‘O Death where is thy sting’—but only through Jesus of Nazareth.” After the death of his wife from a fever a few months earlier, George was vividly aware of his own impending death, and the temporary quality of all earthly life. Sally might be beginning the world, but “you and I shall soon go out of it—Ere long we shall see it burnt—Angels shall summon us to attend on the funeral of Time—And (Oh transporting thought!) we shall see Eternity rising out of its ashes. That you and I may be in the happy number of those who in the midst of the tremendous final blaze shall cry Amen—Hallelujah—is [my] hearty prayer.”16
George had won his way into Ben’s heart. This is how he could get away with preaching him the Book of Revelation. He was like family. As Ben said in his next letter, he held George in “greatest esteem and sincerest affection.”17
George felt he had another American voyage in him. He longed to see his orphanage one more time. “Bethesda lies upon my heart night and day,” he wrote a friend.18 A few months later: “I am every day, every hour, almost every moment, thinking of and preparing for America.”19
He still struggled with illness from time to time, but he kept preparing for this trip. John Wesley, who had reconciled with George a few years earlier and now met with him regularly, was concerned about his old friend. “His soul appeared to be vigorous still, but his body was sinking apace; and unless God interposes with His mighty hand, he must soon finish his labours.”20
George’s health rallied enough for him to continue preparations. He launched into a final circuit of preaching appearances in England, a long goodbye to his homeland.
Sometime during that year, he received a letter from Benjamin Franklin, who was concerned for a different reason. Violence was brewing in America, especially New England. The British government had used its taxing authority to levy tariffs on all sorts of goods, and the colonists weren’t happy about it. Extra troops had been deployed to keep order.
“I am under continued apprehensions that we may have bad news from America,” Ben wrote. “The sending soldiers to Boston always appeared to me a dangerous step; they could do no good, they might occasion mischief. When I consider the warm resentment of a people who think themselves injured and oppressed, and the common insolence of the soldiery, who are taught to consider that people as in rebellion, I cannot but fear the consequences of bringing them together. It seems like setting up a smith’s forge in a magazine of gunpowder.”21
These thoughts were prophetic. Early the next year, a Boston mob would incite some British soldiers to shoot, killing five and wounding six in what became known as the Boston Massacre.
In this final letter to George, Ben seemed to continue a political/religious conversation of theirs. “I see with you that our affairs are not well managed by our rulers here below; I wish I could believe with you, that they are well attended to by those above; I rather suspect, from certain circumstances, that though the general government of the universe is well administered, our particular little affairs are perhaps below notice, and left to take the chance of human prudence or imprudence, as either may happen to be uppermost. It is, however, an uncomfortable thought, and I leave it.”22
He was leaning back into classic deism, with its disinterested clockmaker God. Why should our Creator care about little old us? This struck a nerve with Whitefield. In the margins of the original letter are comments scrawled by George: “Uncomfortable indeed, and blessed be God, unscriptural.”23
Perhaps he intended to send Ben a reply based on that idea. As far as we know, he never did. Sailing for Charleston late in 1769, George visited the Bethesda Orphan House for the last time. After four months, he sailed for Philadelphia and then worked his way up to New York, upstate New York, and Boston. He preached nearly every day in New England towns, dragging himself from place to place, losing energy along the way. He complained of asthma, and fatigue might have brought on additional maladies. His last sermon, in Exeter, lasted two hours. He died at the manse in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on a Sunday morning, September 30, 1770.
There was an outpouring of grief for this amazing minister. Charles Wesley, a prolific hymn writer, composed a eulogy for his old friend. Phillis Wheatley, a seventeen-year-old slave in Boston, published a lengthy poem mourning his passing: “Thou didst, in strains of eloquence refin’d,/Inflame the soul, and captivate the mind.”24 Newspapers throughout the English-speaking world lauded him. The Pennsylvania Gazette, now independent of Franklin, said of Whitefield:
[He] astonished the world as a prodigy of eloquence and devotion! . . . With what divine pathos did he not plead with, and persuade, by the most engaging incitements, the impenitent sinner to the practice of piety and virtue? Filled with the spirit of grace, he spoke from the heart; and with a fervency of zeal, perhaps unequaled since the days of the Apostles, ornamented the celestial animations of the preacher, with the graceful and most enticing charms of rhetoric and oratory.25
Ben Franklin wrote a simpler remembrance to a friend in the Georgia legislature: “I knew him intimately upwards of 30 years: His integrity, disinterestedness, and indefatigable zeal in prosecuting every good work, I have never seen equaled, I shall never see exceeded.”26