The regime of liberty depends upon protecting certain areas from public discussion and therefore from popular action. “Neither a Fortress nor a Maidenhead will hold out long after they begin to parley,” says the eponymous narrator of “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” collected in this handsome new Library of America collection of Franklin’s writings. Benjamin Franklin saw that love and war pose the challenges to the good ordering of human life as he conceived it. Work and religion rechannel these passions, but the very success of hard work brings idleness, which brings back love and fear: In America sexual liberation and the fear of war, equal components of ‘Sixties radicalism, brought first disorder, then inertia. Love and fear soften the middling virtues. The softening of the middling virtues, the ones that ‘made America great,’ as orators used to say, weakens the political regime, in turning threatening the civil, intellectual, and religious liberties protected by the regime. Serious work and serious religion, both associated with middling economic and social conditions reinforced by a sameness of opinions (called ‘cohesiveness’ by friends, ‘conformity’ by critics)-these traits still persist in what we now call ‘Middle America,’ despite some noticeable softening in the last twenty-five years. Industry and constant Employment are great Preservatives of the Morals and Virtue of a Nation.” In addition, he observed, “serious religion under its various Denominations, is not only tolerated but respected and practiced,” so that “persons may live to a great Age in that Country without having their Piety shock’d by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel.” While pioneering the Sisyphean task of explaining Americans to the French, Benjamin Franklin wrote that, given “the most general Mediocrity of Fortune that prevails in America, obliging its People to follow some Business for Subsistence, those Vices that arise usually from Idleness are in a great Measure prevented. This essay combines two reviews, the first published originally in the Washington Times, the second published originally in the New York City Tribune, August 12, 1987. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.
New York: Library of America, 1987.Įsmond Wright: Franklin of Philadelphia. Leo Lemay, ed.: Benjamin Franklin: Writings.
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