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Franklin as Demographer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Alfred Owen Aldridge
Affiliation:
University of Maryland

Extract

Many students of Franklin discuss his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc., as a precursor of Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population? overlooking the more significant fact that Franklin's essay is part of an extensive movement to analyze population trends, a movement dating at least from John Graunt's Natural and Political Observations … upon the Bills of Mortality (1662). Just as every writer on physics from Newton to Einstein has something to say aboutmotion, Franklin and Malthus as writers on population naturally discuss some common concepts. The similarities are not remarkable. As John Adams observes, “That the first want of man is his dinner, and the second his girl, were truths well known to every democrat and aristocrat, long before the great philosopher Malthus arose, to think he enlightened the world by the discovery.” The real significance of Franklin's essay lies in its influence in drawing attention to the potential economic and military strength of the Colonies and hence in contributing indirectly to the restrictive measures of the British colonial policy, the very policies that it was written to forfend.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1949

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References

1 Franklin's Observations was written in 1751, not published until 1755, and reprinted in 1760 and 1769. It appears in Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Smyth, Albert Henry (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1905-7), III, 6373Google Scholar.

2 The Worlds of John Adams, ed. Adams, Charles Francis (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1850-1856), VI, 516Google Scholar.

3 Hull, Charles Henry, ed., The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty Together with the Observations upon the Bills of Mortality More Probably by Captain John Graunt (Cambridge: The University Press, 1899), II, 463Google Scholar.

4 Carey, Lewis J. in Franklin's Economic Views (New York: Doubleday, Doran U Co., 1928Google Scholar) shows Franklin's acquaintance with the early demographers, Edmund Halley, Sir William Petty, John Graunt, and Dr. Thomas Short (pp. 46-47), but stresses the doubtful view that Franklin anticipated Malthus' doctrine of moral restraint (p. 58).

5 Thomas Short, New Observations. … on. … Bills of Mortality (London, 1750), p. 121. In pointing out similarities between Short and Franklin I do not mean to suggest that Franklin's basic ideas came from Short, although particular details may have. Franklin expressed similar views on population in a letter dated March 20, 1750/51.–Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Smyth, III, 43-44.

His interest in population problems began as early as 1731. In three numbers of the Pennsylvania Gazette of that year (Nos. 143-145, August 5, 12, and 19), he printed extracts from The Political State of Great Britain, XL (1731), 203-10, 221-30, giving moral, physical, and political observations on the London bills of mortality, based on Halley's conclusions concerning Breslau. He also appended a table of the burials in Boston from 1700 to 1731, making the observation: “By comparing the Number of Inhabitants in Boston with the above Account, it appears, that not above a 40th Part of the People of that Place die yearly, at a medium.” He intended to contrast Boston with Breslau, in which a twenty-ninth part of the inhabitants died every year.

6 Short, New Observations, p. 247.

7 Ibid., pp. 130-31.

8 , Stiles, Discourse (Boston, 1761) pp. 108–12Google Scholar.

9 United States Elevated (New Haven, 1783), p. 14. An interesting account of ambitious prophecies of American population is given by A. M. Schlesinger, “Casting the National Horoscope,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, LV (1947), 53-94. A prediction, not elsewhere mentioned, came from the French editor of Franklin's works, Dr. Barbeu Dubourg. He asserted that eventually England will be to her colonies what Tyre became in regard to Carthage and that posterity will see without a miracle “toute la Grande-Bretagne, ce Chief-lieu, cette Mere-patrie, à peine équivalent à l'une de ses provinces d'outremer, & Londres, cette superbe Métropole, éclipseée par votre humble Philadclphic.”—Oeuvres de M. Franklin (Paris, 1773), II, 129-33. The influence of Franklin's Observations on Mathew Carey, who published a number of pieces on population in his American Museum, is discussed by J. J. Spengler in “Malthusianism in Late Eighteenth Century Amerca,” American Economic Review, XXV (1935). 691-707.

10 Wallace, Robert, A Dissertation on the Numbers of Man (Edinburgh, 1809), p. 116Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 162.

12 Short, New Observations, p. 247.

13 Wallace, On the Numbers of Man, p. 162. Franklin's other works show that he consistently denounced the importation of British luxuries but frequently approved domestic luxury. In his annotations to Dean Tucker's A Letter from a Merchant in London (1766) he ironically exposed British generosity, which made the colonists poor by selling them useless commodities and then urged their ability to pay, higher taxes from their compliance with British fashions and modes of life.— Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1861), n, 508.Google Scholar In a letter to Benjamin Vaughan, July 26, 1784, he asserted that luxury is not the evil it is generally represented as being. “Is not the hope of one day being able to purchase and enjoy luxuries a great spur to labour and industry? May not luxury therefore produce more than it consumes, if without such a spur people would be, as they are naturally enough inclined to be, lazy and indolent?”— Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Smyth, , Ix, 2448Google Scholar.

14 I, 144.

15 Malthus, Thomas Robert, An Essay on the Principle of Population (London, 1803), p. 11Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., p. 495.

17 Carey, Franklin's Economic Views, p. 58.

18 Short, New Observations, p. 247.

19 Malthus, Essay, pp. 9-10.

20 Ibid., p. 495.

21 Malthus, Thomas Robert, First Essay on Population, 1798 (London: Macmillan & Co., 1926), p. 105Google Scholar.

22 Godwin, William, Of Population: An Enquiry Concerning the Power of Increase in the Numbers of Mankind (London, 1820), pp. 118–28Google Scholar.

23 Lotka, Alfred J., “The Size of American Families in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, XXII (1927), 163Google Scholar.

24 Pearl, Raymond, The Natural History of Population (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935). P. 244Google Scholar.

25 Letters and Papers of Benjamin Franklin and Richard Jackson, 1753-1785, ed. Dorcn, Carl Van (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1947), p. 61.Google Scholar Jackson's explanation, failing to consider the complexity of the question of luxury, is quite inadequate.

26 For an interesting study of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century background of the concept that people are the riches of a nation, see Louis A. Landa, “A Modest Proposal and Populousncss,” Modern Philology, XL (1942), 161-70.

27 Wallace, On the Numbers of Man, p. 84. Franklin's French editor, Dubourg, was delighted to see that in other passages Franklin agreed with the French economists that the interests of the manufacturers and the interests of the nation as a whole are often entirely opposed.— Oeuvres de Franklin, II, 129-33.

28 Short, Comparative History, pp. 25-36.

29 A later work by , Wallace, Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature and Providence (1761Google Scholar), emphasizes economic aspects. For a treatment of the interrelations of Wallace, , Smith, Adam, Godwin, , and Malthus, , see Priestley, F. E. L., ed., Enquiry concerning Political Justice (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1946), III, 7377Google Scholar.

30 Wallace, On the Numbers of Man, p. 96.

31 Ibid., pp. 97-98.

32 Ibid., p. 92.

33 “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays, eds. Green, T. H. and Grose, T. H. (London, 1875), I, 388–97.Google Scholar

34 Wigglesworth, Calculation (Boston, 1775), p. 13Google Scholar.

35 Other authors as early as 1730 had predicted the American Revolution. SeeLccky, W. E. H., A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1893), IV. 23Google Scholar.

36 Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Smyth, , IV, 3282Google Scholar.

37 Goldsmith says almost the same thing in Lady's Magazine, HI (October 1761), 150-52. See New Essays by Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Crane, R. S. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1927). P. 95.Google Scholar

38 I have only the statement of Short that these essays appeared in the Public Ledger and the General Evening Post. After investigating the newspaper holdings of the largest libraries in this country, I have failed to locate 1767 issues of either of these periodicals.

39 Letter II.

40 Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Smyth, , IV, 56Google Scholar. Despite this modification, Franklin did not give up his original notion that in a century or more Englishmen in North America would outnumber those in Europe.—Ibid., IV, 54.

41 Population growth was used later by Burke as an argument for making concessions to the colonists. In 1775 he justified his estimate of two million as the American population by pointing out that “such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends.”–“Speech on Conciliation with America,” Worly (London: J. C. Nimmo, 1899), II, 110Google Scholar.

42 Franklin's essay is quoted several times by G. I. Burch and Elmer Pendell in Population Roads to Peace or War, published originally by the Population Reference Bureau and reprinted by Pelican Books under the title Human Breeding and Survival (New York: Penguin Books, 1947Google Scholar). It is recommended to those who are interested in the relation of Franklin's thought to current concepts concerning population problems.