During his Philadelphia years Benjamin
Franklin was actively involved in a number of town and colony governing
offices. At the time, Quakers made up a majority of most governing boards,
which made for some interesting politics when questions of public defense
arose.
Several
pages of the Autobiography are
devoted to discussing this. Franklin recalls when the Fire Company conducted a
lottery to raise funds that might be used to create a defensive battery at the
harbor. Twenty two of the governing board of 30 were Quakers, but Franklin soon
learned that most, particularly the younger ones, were willing to tacitly
support defensive measures if it could be done without openly going against
their church leadership.
When the
time came to vote on the distribution of the lottery funds, the eight non-Quakers
showed up, as did one Quaker leader, who adamantly insisted his people would
not support the battery. At the time the meeting was scheduled to begin, those
nine were the only ones in attendance; then Franklin was called to a nearby
tavern by a waiter who worked there. Eight of the Quaker board members were
waiting and said they would come to the meeting and vote for the battery, but
only if their votes were absolutely needed.
Approved In Absentia
Knowing he
had a majority, Franklin returned to the meeting and told the lone Quaker
representative that the others would wait an hour to allow the 21 missing
Quakers to show up. To the surprise of the lone Quaker present, none of them
did, and the motion to approve the battery was carried 8-1.
In the
Pennsylvania Assembly, where Franklin also served, similar difficulties arose
when defense appropriations were necessary. “They were unwilling to offend
government on the one hand by a direct refusal, and their Friends, the Body of
Quakers, on the other, by a compliance contrary to their principles,” Franklin
writes. “Hence a variety of evasions to avoid complying and modes of disguising
the compliance when it became unavoidable.”
A common
technique for appropriating defense expenditures was to pass a resolution
allowing money “for the King’s use.” That was fine as long as the funds
requested were for the Crown, but it didn’t always work. At one point, for
instance, the Assembly was asked to approve an appropriation requested by
another colony’s governor for gunpowder to defend a garrison.
The Meaning of ‘Other Grain’
After much
wrangling, Pennsylvania voted an appropriation of three thousand pounds to be
used for “the purchasing of bread, flour, wheat or other grain.” Urged to
reject the appropriation on the grounds that it wasn’t what he had asked for,
the Governor replied, “I shall take the money, for I understand very well their
meaning; other grain is gunpowder.”
Ever the
practical politician, Franklin realized that this approach could have been used
in the fire company situation. As he later told a friend, he could have had a
resolution approved that the money be used to buy a fire engine and had himself
and his friend appointed as the committee to make the purchase. They then could
have bought a cannon for the battery because what, after all, is a cannon if
not a fire-engine of sorts?
The moral
here is that controversies between government and religion can be worked out by
reasonable people of good will as long each side is sensitive to the other’s
concern and not too starchy about asserting its own. If they could figure that
out 250 years ago, you’d think they could do it now; but progress is not always
a straight line.
(This blog was originally posted Feb. 21, 2012)
