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Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol IV. No. XX. January, 1852

EARLY AND PRIVATE LIFE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

BY JACOB ABBOTT

It is generally true in respect to great statesmen that they owe their celebrity almost entirely to their public and official career. They promote the welfare of mankind by directing legislation, founding institutions, negotiating treaties of peace or of commerce between rival states, and guiding, in various other ways, the course of public and national affairs, while their individual and personal influence attracts very little regard. With Benjamin Franklin, however, the reverse of this is true. He did indeed, while he lived, take a very active part, with other leading men of his time, in the performance of great public functions; but his claim to the extraordinary degree of respect and veneration which is so freely awarded to his name and memory by the American people, rests not chiefly upon this, but upon the extended influence which he has exerted, and which he still continues to exert upon the national mind, through the power of his private and personal character. The prevalence of habits of industry and economy, of foresight and thrift, of cautious calculation in the formation of plans, and energy and perseverance in the execution of them, and of the disposition to invest what is earned in substantial and enduring possessions, rather than to expend it in brief pleasures or for purposes of idle show – the prevalence of these traits, so far as they exist as elements of the national character in this country – is due in an incalculable degree to the doings and sayings and history of this great exemplar.

Thus it is to his life and to his counsels that is to be attributed, in a very high degree, the formation of that great public sentiment prevailing so extensively among us, which makes it more honorable to be industrious than to be idle, and to be economical and prudent rather than extravagant and vain; which places substantial and unpretending prosperity above empty pretension, and real comfort and abundance before genteel and expensive display.

A very considerable portion of the effect which Franklin has produced upon the national character is due to the picturesque and almost romantic interest which attaches itself to the incidents of his personal history. In his autobiography he has given us a very full and a very graphic narrative of these incidents, and as the anniversary of his birth-day occurs during the present month, we can not occupy the attention of our readers at this time, in a more appropriate manner than by a brief review of the principal events of his life – so far as such a review can be comprised within the limits of a single article.

The ancestors of Franklin lived for many generations on a small estate in Northamptonshire, one of the central counties in England. The head of the family during all this time followed the business of a smith, the eldest son from generation to generation, being brought up to that employment.