The Hutchinson Letters and The Cockpit

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Subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments and conditions apply This episode is brought to you by TikTok Believe it or not History isn't just in textbooks, it comes to life every day on TikTok Millions of people are exploring the history of music, fashion, food and art. and discovering new facts about the things they love One scroll could take you from the roots of jazz to the flavourors of ancient kitchens. And the next might reveal a quirky fact about how modern traditions came to be. Discover the past in new ways on TikTok Curiosity never gets old. And this episode is brought to you by Snapdragon Take the leash off your laptop with the processor that gives you long battery life Work on the go, Jump between back to back calls, stay locked in from brewing morning coffee to burning the midnight oil maximum performance. even when unplugged Finally The freedom to move across the room or across the world is here Snapdragon. That's how Go to snapdragon. com slash laptops. dragon branded products the products ofQual Com Technologies Inc and or its subsidiaries Lloyan's Wel was put on board a guinea ship bound to America as a present to a friend in that country. He was tame and armless as a kitten and therefore not confined, but suffered to walk about the ship at pleasure A stately full grown English mastiff, belonging to the captain despoising the weakness of the you loan Frequently took its food by farce and often turned out of his lodging box when he had a mind to repose there in himself The young lion neverevertheless grew daily in soize and strength And the voyage' been long He became a last more equal match for the mastiff. continontuing his insults received a stunning blow from the lion's pw. that fetched his skin over his ears Heard him from any future contest with such growing strength regretting He had not rather secuure its friendship. provoked It's enmity. So that was a chilling parable. And it was first published in the genereneral advertiser On the second of january, seventeen seventy two months before the event that Americans call the Boston Massacre And that's the moment when British troops who were being attacked by a hostile mob fired on the crowd and killed no fewer than five And this so called massacre was a crucial episode in the process that would see the thirteen rebel colonies of North America Scede from the mother country, Britain They want to war that lasted eight years And with the aid of the French they established themselves as the United States of America as an independent and sovereign republic. and This summer marks the two hundred fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. and Tom, we're marking it by exploring the lives of four of the founding fathers, as they would have called themselves. So in our first episode, we talked about George Washington The most celebrated of the founding Fathers, unquestionably the one with the worst teeth. But he did not sign the Declaration of Independence Now today We are with the first of the two signatories that we're talking about in this series. And this is the man who wrote that parable about the master from the Loyan Cub And that is a man Benjamin Franklin, correct. And I think the meaning of that parable is very clear. The mastiff, the kind of pedigree dog Britain and the lion cub is America. Franklin is basically warning the British push us Americans around, assuming that we are always going to be as puny as we currently are because we are going to grow up And the time may come when we will end up in a position to push you around chilling and as it has proven prophetic. Message for the British And Franklin was sixty four when he wrote terrible But he would live another two decades after writing it, and he would spend those twenty years doing everything that he could to make that prophecy come true So he would end up a huge influence on the course of the war It is Franklin who more than anyone else serves to bring the French in on the side of the Americans with kind of massive consequences But he's also a huge, huge influence on the character of this infant American repepublic and He is the only man who signs all four of the kind of the foundational documents of the infant United States. So as we've just heard, he signs the Declaration of Independence But he also signs the treaty with France that brings the French in on the side of the Americans, the news of which is greeted by George Washington with such excitement and enthusiasm that he drops his dignity and deigns the player game of cricket. He also signs the peace treaty with Britain that ends the war and he signs the Constitution for kind of massive, massive documents in the history of the United States. So in a future episode, we'll be talking about Hamilton whether he'd serves his place on the ten dollar bill Franklin is on the hundred dollar bill And do you think he deserves that place? I think he completely doest. I'm going to lay my couss on the table. I think Franklin is an incredibly impmpressive man But he's also, I think, a very ealing man. Most revolutionaries I tend not to find very appealing because they're very They incline towards the dogmatic, I think, but Franklin is A very, very jovial presence. He's a pleasure to have on this series, I think And he is he's kind of expressive of I think, the most kind of appealing aspect of American exceptionalism So he, you know, everyone can see him. He's balding, he's got his shoulder length hair, slightly kind of jowly face. He has this kind of expression of of mingled amiability and resolve. And I think it's no less authentic for being very, very carefully curated. He is the absolute image of this kind of American patriot sage. And people not just in America, but across Europe, as we will see, absolutely love him for it. So he is in the eighteenth century, by miles the most famous American And it's a key part of the kind of the diplomatic weight that he brings to the war effort. You say American. Would Franklin have called himself an American, that's the interesting question, for much of his life? Yes And by the end he would have called himself exclusively American, I think But you are right to put your finger on this Of all the founding fathers, he is the one who is also the most British Hence the voice. I mean, everyone in the American colonies, their accents, I think, are more British than American at this point. But Franklin He spends a third of his life in Britain He was living in London when he wrote that parable. That parable was published in a London newspaper And for the previous six decades, he had reckoned himself a completely proud, a completely loyal Englishman. So in the Seven yearsars War, the war in which Washington served as a colonial commander and then got very resentful because he didn't get given the promotion that he thought was his due. Franklin had served Washington essentially as his kind of unofficial wagon master. But Franklin wasn't in a stot with the British about it. Franklin thought Britain was great and goes to Britain as a result parable when he wrote it in seventeen seventy, he wasn't writing it as. someone who thought that America should declare independence, he was writing as a warning as someone who admired Britain and indeed was hugely loyal to George III, whose coronation he had attended. and Franklin described George III as the best of kings the most amiable of kings So There is a kind of fascinating question there. What is it that turns him? What is it that makes him into a founding father And I think the story of, let's call it, Franklin's journey from loyalist to radical American patriot It's also the story of how loyal British colonies come first to resent British rule and then to decide that the best course is to throw it off and declare independence. So he's a kind of very, very representative figure I think. Well, not least because his life spans almost the entire eighteenthentury, doesnn't it B born in seventeen oh six, dies in seventeen eighty eight But I guess the interesting thing about him is that he is looking further back, isn't he? So he's an eighteenth century figure, but one who is so firmly rooted in the intellectual culture of the seventeenth century So he's there's a sort of element of a flashback Puritan New England Philadelphia is a Quaker, you know, William Penn and all of that sort of stuff. And Franklin, I guess is a to a lot of Americans at the point of his fame He's a nostalgic relic. Isn't that one of the interesting things about him? as well as being very forward looking and scientific and all of that stuff. So he belongs to a much older generation than the other three founding fathers we're talking about in this series. So at the Constitutional Convention in seventeen eighty seven, He's eighty one and he is the oldest delegate there by fifteen years. So he's twice the age of the average member this convention So you're absolutely right. He provides his colleagues with a kind of living link the very earliest days of America. And I think that is also part of the fascination that in Franklin, You see a guy who is a herald of the American Republic but he is also a reminder of the kind of the English origins of this republic. So let's begin with beginning with Franklin's parents and his father Jesah had emigrated to Boston in sixteen eighty three He arrives there and he becomes a tallow chandler, which basically means that you render animal fat candles and soap. and it's very pleasant, it's very foul smelling, it's very boring work, but it's very, very lucrative. So it's the kind of classic thing that an immigrant would do to kind of set himself up on his own feet And Josiah had emigrated definitely because he felt that the business opportunities were better in America. But he'd also done it for that classic seventeenth century reason. He is a Puritan and he wants to practice his religion, as he put it with freedom. He feels that in the wake of the restoration of Charles II and the restoration of Stuart Rule England doesn't provide him with the opportunities for religious freedom that he knows that Boston and Massachusetts will do. And this is even truer of Franklin's mother who's called Abaya. Ver it's a very Puritan name And she was the child of Puritans who had emigrated in the sixteen thirties. So that's the decade before You know, before the English Civil War in the reign of Charles I first. So those links, you know, Franklin's grandparents really are taking you back to the kind of the beginnings of Puritan America. So he's surely growing up with stories, you know storyies about Charles I first and the Puritans and I don't know, they're talking about ship money or something all the time in the Franklin household, which again is a reminder of how the The origins of the American War of Independence lie in the politics of seventeenth century England Yeah, he's growing up in a very, very devoutly puritan household. Everyone is reading the Bible. so he observed later that in New England everybody reads the Bible and is acquainted with scripture phrases. The young Benjamin is a very bookish boy, as we'll see, and he comes to know the Bible backwards. So it's completely it's there in his head He is one of eleven siblings and he's the youngest boy And he grows up in a very tiny cramped house in Boston on Milk Street And today you can go and see the site and there's a kind of very ornate, impressive building with you know classical bast and lettering and all kinds of things This was not at all the vibe of the house that he grew up in because it burnt down, I think kind of eighteen, ten or something like that. But back then It was dirty, it was dingy, There was tallow everywhere, there was soap everywhere, there were candles everywhere. One of Benjamin's elder brothers had drowned in a tub of Sds when he was sixteen months old before Benjamin had even been born So it's a kind, you know it's pretty dangerous. It's a kind of industrial environment because it's industrial There is industry And there is hard work And there is a commitment to improving yourself and bettering yourself and getting richer And this also with the Puritanism is a massive part of Franklin's inheritance. Well, he loves this, doesn't he? The self made man, the American The American story, I mean, Ronald Reagan at this point in heaven is why wiping away tears of Dreacal. Yeah. and this is a crucial part of how Franklin comes to influence what will become the United States because the values that Franklin has absorbed from his parents, self discipline, hard work, prudence self reliance. As you said, these enable Franklin to become the prototype of that great American archetype, the self made man. Franklin is the first, the kind of defining example of this. So in seventeen fifty eight, he gave his personal recipe for getting rich very famous phrase, The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words industry and frugality again that word industry. I mean, the frigality You know, it's kind of Warren Buffett he'd be into that. I mean, there' probably most of the billionaires today in America wouldn't But it's an important part, I think, of how billionaires and millionaires have liked to think of themselves as being kind of Benjamin Franklin esque. Yeah. And he loves I mean, one of the things about Benjamin Franklin Perhaps find a tiny bit annoying is he loves a folksy maxim. Well, you know why you'd find it annoying. Well because I mean, I'll give you one of his folksy maxims. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise And we have a kind of ongoing debate, don't we, whether we should start at eight thirty or nine thirty. And you're very much a nine thirty man. and I'm very much an eight thirty man. so I've learnted the lessons of folksy wisdom. But on the other hand, you go to bed at like eight thirty a night, A't you or something ridiculous? There are no gains without pains. Have you somewh to do tomorrow? Do it today. I can absolutely see why you like this blook. You think this blook is absolutely brilliant. So again, he wrote these in seventeen fifty eight and by this point I mean, he had kind of lived the life that he was preaching become the most successful printer in the whole of America, all thirteen colonies, and he's become the dominant figure in its newspaper industry. So again, he is the prototype of kind of the American media mogul and a bit like Logan Roy in succession. He's done all this with very little formal education No kind of startup funds. you know his parents are not particularly wealthy. And in fact, Franklin's beginnings had been very kind of brutal because he'd been apprenticed as a printer to his older brother, Jack Boston. And he'd essentially found this as being akin to indentured servitude. His brother was a kind of very tough employer and Young Benjamin hated it so much that he ran away to Philadelphia. And he arrived in Philadelphia with only a Dutch dollar Who knows what that is? It doesn't sound good And he then spent it on three puffy rolls. And this is a very famous scene in his autobiography. S some sort of Dunkin Doughnut snarry I, I guess so. And it's famous I think, this scene because of the contrast It's kind of almost a Kenszian between the kind of the raggedy starving boy who's fled his master in Boston come to Philadelphia, he's starving And the man that he has become by his early forties, one of the wealthiest businessmen in all the thirteen colonies And Franklin writes up this story in his autobiography, which is I guess Sammy probably the first great classic of American literature. It's It's certainly an absolutely groundbreaking autobiography. There' been very few autobiographies before this. I hadn't proper realized this until I read up about it. had The autobography of Sain. Augustine is a kind of famous one. Rousseau will write his autobography as well in the eighteenth century, but Franklin's autobography precedes Rousseau's and it's much, much less serious than Augustine's or Rousseau'. So John Updyke, who was a big fan described it as an elastically insuscient work full of cheerful contradictions and humorous twists, a fond look back upon an earlier self giving an intensely ambitious young man the benefit of the older man's relaxation. And anyone who has read American Eent alone American autobography will kind of recognize that characteristic. So it's definitely something Mark Twade, I think. I like your comparison in the notes Ronald Reagan. I mean, Ronald Reagan didn't write his own autobiography. but if he had done Maybe it would' have been like Benjamin as good asenamin Franklin's. But in his speeches, the tone is that of Franklin's autobiography kind of folksy, self mocking but full of kind of conviction that he takes very seriously. And is that is the tone of Franklin's autobiography. and you can you know, its influence is pretty much everywhere, I think. Both had very religious mothers It's the humor more than anything else. Temperament. He's sunny and he is funny you know, Reagan was enjoyed a joke and I think that what Franklin gave to his heirs in America was the feeling that you could make a joke and it wouldn't make people think the less of you and in fact quite the opposite. And I think that's an important lesson for for an infant country to learn. Aned for history podcasts. Indeed, yes. So Franklin was able to write his autobiography and to kind of write it in this very, very influential style because he had honed that style over several decades because as well as being America's leading publisher. He is also America's leading journalist in this period So throughout his twenties and thirties, he was writing non stop and he could turn his hand to absolutely any topic, you know, brilliant kind of quality for a journalist to have and write about these various topics in such an engaging and distinctive manner that his style became completely recognizable again across the Thirteen colonies Again by the time he is forty If you read something that Franklin has written and you don't know that he'd written it, you would recognize it immediately. And that again is a kind of incredibly useful skill for someone who's going to become a propagandist for a revolution. People are familiar with his tone with his kind of and his attitude. and basically it consists of sugar K kind of moralizing tone with wit, with satire parable And that again, I think is a kind of very characteristic quality of American public life moralizing but folksy. Yeah, very, very, very raging. Yeah. parables, little anecdotes and stories And what Franklin combines. so the moralism is a serious part of it, isn't it? So if we just talk about the folksess and the sugar, we miss something about Franklin, which is there there is an absolutely serious moral core that I guess arerives ultimately from the Puritans. Yeah. So this is the link back to the kind of the seventeenth century Um childhood Puritanism, the emphasis that he had inherited from his parents on industry and frugality and diligence in one's calling and all of that, It is kind of religiously inspired. It is puritan. It was famously highlighted in early twentieth century by kind of the great classic on this topic by a German writer called Max Weber, who wrote a book The Protestant Ethhic and the Spirit of Capitalism And Weber was fascinated by the question of how it was that Franklin was able to assume that the morality that he was preaching about the need for diligence, for frugality and so on. How is he able to assume that this was actually moral? And Weber's answer is he asers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible which his strict Puritan father drummed into him again and again in his youth Seeest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings. And that is a quote from the Prague book of Proverbs So it's a very, very A Christian lesson a Puritan lesson. But at the same time, what makes Franklin's moralizing about this so appealing to non Puritan Americans in the eighteenth century and in the eighteenth century, lots of Americans are starting to move on from the Puritanism even in Massachusetts, is that There isn't actually of any real overt Christianity in it at all And there is a brilliant book on this on the kind of occludedly Christian character of Franklin's folksiness and moralism and teachings by a guy called Thomas Kidd, Benjamin Franklin, the religious life of a Fing Father. and Kid's argument essentially is that Franklin does remain tethered to the teachings that he's adopted as a child in this Puritan household But he had wearied of the kind of the puritan emphasis on doctrine and orrthodoxy and devotion to the specifics of biblical teaching He's not really into that. What he is he's a much kind of broad brush guy. He wants emphasis on love, on charity, on service to all of mankind So Thomas Kidd writes, Franklin was an experimenter at heart and he tinkkered with a novel form of Christianity, one where virtually all beliefs become nonessential And this is hugely popular because it enables Americans to retain their kind of Christian convictions without having to worry about the details of doctrine, or indeed even having to bother with going to church particularly. And doesn't Thomas Kid have an excellent sign that the heir toenam the true heir to Benjamin Franklin in this regard is actually Oprah Winfrey. Yes. Because Oprah Winfrey is all about kindness. Yeah, kindness. Prince Harry would level this. Yes. Well I mean, I think that it's a form of Christianity that is it's the default mode of millions of millions of people in America and the West more generally And Franklin is as Kid says they a kind of tinkkerer slightly come by R, but of course at the time perceived. probably not as a slightly vague, wooy and touchy feely, but actually as a sign of skecepticism and free thinking and very much of the mood of the Elightenment, I guess. Yeah, so this is the other kind of aspect of Franklin for which he becomes famous is that even as he is dispensing this kind of post Puritan folksy morality. He is also able to present himself because he's not talking in overtly Christian terms as a kind of an emblematic figure of the Enlightenment which in over the course of his life in Europe and increasingly in America is kind of sweeping the top intellectuals of the age So in seventeen fifty seven Franklin crosses the Atlantic for what is going to turn out to be a five year stay in Britain. Even before he leaves, he has already been taken very, very seriously by European thinkers to a degree that no American had been taken seriously before in Europe So in seventeen fifty nine, he goes to Scotland and he stays in Edinburgh You know, the Athens of the North, this is the golden age of the Scottish Elightenment. And he meets with David Hume, who is the greatest philosopher of his age, really. And Hume and Franklin get on tremendously well. They have a kind of great dinner party. They both enjoy life, they're both bonvifurs. and after it, Hume writes to Franklin and he says, America has sent us many good things gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigal. But you are the first philosopher and indeed the first great man of letters for whom we are beholden to her. Yeah, and I think that's true, isn't it? Franklin is the first genuinely International class intellectual that the North American colonists have produced. And this is not just because he's saying, you know, waste not one th whatever he is writing in these entertaining parables But it's also because he does something else that we' are massive admirers of for the rest of his history pushing back the frontiers of science. He is. But more specifically He has conducted The single most resonant scientific experiment of the whole of the eighteenth century. So Richie Robinson, author of a brilliant recent book on the Elightenment describes this experiment as the great symbolic moment for the Enlightenment and for its project of freeing humanity from needless terrors. And this experiment had occurred in june seventeen fifty two in Philadelphia Clin who is helped by his only surviving son, a young man called William gone out into a thunderstorm with a kite. and he had flown this kite in the kind of the gusting of the winds. And this kite he had attached a kind of sharp wire to its end. And this in turn, as when it went up into the sky into the winds had succeeded in drawing electric sparks from a cloud And Franklin drew the conclusion from this, thereby the sameness of electrical matter with that of lightning was completely demonstrated So this is simultaneously well, depending on how you perceive it. it is a very forward thinking experiment It is courageous It's also a criminally reckless. If a seventeen year old boy on a British cououncil state did this, there'd be a two page story in that Daily Express about the debasement of intellect among the nation's youth or something, wouldn't it? Yeah, or the top egghead electrocute sun or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you say it's dangerous. So a year after Franklin did this experiment, a Russian tried to replicate it. got electrocuted and killed. I mean, I shouldn't laugh, but it is exceedingly dangerous. But it has massive consequences. So first of all, it proves that all this stuff about Zeus sending lightning as the express of the wrath of the gods or whatever that this is nonsense. It is a physical phenomenon. Finally, that long running question has been solved. But people, this is a revelation to me. The people in the seventeenth century walking around saying is you really throwing thunderbolts? Surely not. Well, let's say that for as long as humans have been on the planet, there have been those who have feared that it is an expression of the anger of the gods or whatever I mean, not all of them have your sophisticated relationship to knowledge of physical sciences. I mean that has to be you have to accept that. No they're fair ye. But it also has very practical consequences. This isn't just about, you know knowledge for knowledge's sake. So Franklin gets the people of Philadelphia to put lightning rods on the high buildings of the city. Okay, I've got a question. Yeah, too what end becausecause the lightning rods will attract the lightning and run it down and for some reason the electricity will be dispersed and it won't set the churches on fire or whatever Is that right? Is that really how it works? That is basically how it works. If we have top lightning rod analysts listening to this, perhaps they can expand. I knew you were going to ask me that question. I think I've kind of gi them the rough gist of it. Basically lightning rods work this is all you need to keep in mind. They do something and that's brilliant and everyone loves it.. But also the thing that's very impressive about Franklin is that even though he's invented these lightning rods, he doesn't put a patent on it because hes he wants everybody to be able to use it. to do something No one knows what it is, but they'll do something with these lightning rods. It will stop lightning strikes on buildings starting fires, which in a period where most buildings are made of wood, he is benefiting humanity. So Tom, you rave about the lightning rods. But I would say that plays a very much a secondary role Given that this is a man who's invented the handheld flipper Is that how more? Well, you say man, he did it when he was a child, when he was a boy I mean, I think that wow. incredibly impressive. So So talk me through the flippers I would say normally you wear flipper on your foot. I mean, I don't wear flippers as a matter of course. He begins with flippers on his hands, it speeds him up, and then he tries them on the feet as well. So basically he invents a flipper. He also invents weather forecasting, which I think is genuinely very impressive. And he'd done this by analyysing the movement of East Coast storms. and it was something about fronts or whatever. again, don't quite know the details, but he invents weather forecasting put that in the ledger. And famously he invents bifocal glasses, which he does quite late in seventeen eighty four So if you ever see Franklin in a kind of play or a film or something, he will always be wearing his bifocal He also just for good measure, he identifies maps and names the Gulf stream. Br loveve the Gulf stream. You know, the dream of warm water that keeps Britain free of subzero temperatures. And when he's in Britain He Ges for a walk on Clapam Common which is I should think a mile and a half from where I'm sitting right now And it's very stormy and there's a pond in Clapham Common And it's very rough and he plays a tremendous trick to impress the people he's walking with. He takes out a little flask of oil and he pours oil on it And I'm going to quote from my notes here. He thereby demonstrates the existence of what will subsequently be termed surface tension And for those of us not as clued up as you are How does that work exactly? Oil dominate, as you will know, spreads on water until it's only one molecule thick. and it therefore demonstrates how molecules interact with the surface of a liquid. Correct. I hoped you'd say that and you did becausecause I didn't want to do a podcast for somebody who didn't know So anyway You think he's brilliant? You you think he's Leonardo da Vinci basically? No, I don't think he's Leonardo because in a sense, this is all actually quite kind of secondecond division stuff, but he is seen by his peers in the eighteenth century as basically being the Leonardo of the Enlightenment. You think the flipper of the lightning rod and the oil on Troubled waters is secondcond division? I think the lightning rod is impressive But I think when it comes to kind of inventing and scientific breakthroughs and stuff, he's too folksy. It's all about flippers. and all this stuff makes him famous. and he's listen, I have never invented a lightning rod or anything. so who am I to criticize him It's the kind of stuff that you would get in a sciences fund. aimed at eight year old Totally. It's so BBC too It's BBC two, eight o'clock. It's nineteen eighty six It's some wacky science program presented by a comedian. Blue Peter. Exactly for children. So that's the kind of level he's operating, but that's the kind of level you know that kind of appeals. You can turn your cardboard box. into a hovercraft. That's Benjamin Franklin's vibe And I think also that it is a kind of very British vibe. This is the kind of stuff that everyone in Britain is doing at this time as well. You know, it's tinkering, kind of inventing steam engines and things like that. And so when Franklin comes to Britain, they welcome him as one of his own and He's in Britain a lot. So between seventeen fifty seven and seventeen seventy five, he spends sixteen years in all in the very center of things in a house just off what is now Trafalga Square. m so so by Whitehall And this is a house on Craven Street and it's the only surviving house where Franklin stayed. and you can go and see it it's well worth a visit. And I think he's such a celebrity partarticularly in Britain, but also in France, as we will see and further afield that he comes to have a huge impact on how America is seen Be he has this status as an inventor of flippers and lightning rods or whatever It helps him to brand the New world not as a kind of dumping ground for mad religious zealots, almost as the opposite, as a kind of laboratory of the future, you know, a testing ground for the enlightenment. And even before he's arrived, people have been putting lightning rods up on some of the most famous buildings in London. So Saint Paul's has got one, Saint James's palace. much, much admired He's also brilliant at portraying himself and by extension America as a kind of antidote to flummery and hierarchy and pretention and snobbery. And this again is going to be a theme of America's relationship to the old worldorld, that America is a frontier society people are somehow nobler, better, simpler there. And again, Franklin is the guy who really kind of brands this. He's the guy who initiates this whole kind of comparison So even though he's not a Quaker, he dresses like one. People in Britain are very respectful of Quakers. They like that. So Franklin is very self consciously kind of plugging into that image. He gets elected a member of the Royal Society, the great scientific community that Newton and everybody had belonged to And he casts himself as a member of the Ryal Societies belonging to the true aristocracy of the Enlightenment. This is much better than being a duke or something And again, he kind of weaponizes, I think in a overtly performative way a kind of eccentricity. He becomes well known in London for his air baths, he calls them. which involves that he gets up in the morning He opens all his windows He sits on the side of his bed without any clothes at all. so the great rolls of his belly kind of flummering over his knees. and he'll sit there for half an hour, whatever the season, whether it's summer or whether the snow is gusting in And he sees this as being good for his health. Do you know who would really approve of this? A new producer Canam Hill becauseuse he was telling me last week that he go he's gone all these foreign trips where he strips off naked and jumps into like pools and baths and stuff. Well, Turkey, Finland. I think that's not wrong. becausecause if you think how long Franklin lived Japan, he did it in Japan, he's written in the chat. Callum's like stripped off in countries all over the world. I mean, a Callum lives as long as Benjamin Franklin. He'll have done well. Also similar Callamore wears flippers on his hands all the time Its an eccentricity isn't Now Dominic, it has to be said that although there are lots of people in Britain who love all this, there are also lots of people who hateated and they mistrust lin and his kind of enlightenment posing as atheistical as icious as threatening to the established order. Now we're talking. They too, a bit like you, despise his folksiness as and rustic and a bit cringe, I think. And Tom, among their number of critics and skeptics, is there the greatest man in history Yes. Samuel Johns He views everything about Franklin as just the rankest hypocrisy. Now it's interesting. they are kind of the lions of London at the same time. as far as we know they never met, although James Boswell. who is Samuel Johnson's biographer, did meet Franklin and got on well with him. but I think the fact that Johnson and Franklin never met It's a kind of known unknown. The reason that they don't meet, I suspect is precisely because they're okay not to meet. They are very hostile to each other's principles. But also is it not that basically they are The room isn't big enough for both of them They you know, they're both got their eccentricities. They're both incredibly clever. They're both the center of the sty of the show, center of attention They like They're like two successful podcasters on rival Galhanger podcasts. You can't be brought into the same room Except for the fact that there is a very specific ideological point of difference between them, and this is the topic of slavery So Dr. Johnson was he was very hostile to Americans as a matter of principle And it was particularly hostile to the claim that Americans had to be fonder of liberty than people in Britain And he famously wrote of the War of Independence, How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes and Franklin had brought with him to London w slaves. One of these slaves had then absconded and Franklin had composed an advert that he wanted to put in the papers requesting the slave's return, he then thought better of it I think because he you know he was nervous of being accused of hypocrisy, but it didn't stop him in seventeen seventy from writing an anonymous defense of slavery that I think is probably the lowest point in his career And seventeen seventy is the year in which he also wrote that parable about the English Mastiff and the Lion Club and it was prompted by growing tensions between the British government and the American colonies and Franklin's own despair at the thought of where these tensions might lead. So he wrote Being born and bred in one of the countries and having lived long and made many agreeable connections in the other I wish all prosperity to both And his instinct throughout this period of growing tension between Britain and the American colonies is always to call for civility and good manners and essentially to behave as he had behaved on Claptam Common pour oil on troubled waters problem for Franklin he's by this point been in London For so long that he is essentially He' kind of lost touch with the growing mood of radicalism on the other side of the Atlantic, and he's failed to realise how far he's lacging behind this mood of radicalism And that means that You know, he is going to have to wise up point is approaching essentially where he is going to have to decide where his loyalties lie. Do they lie with Britain or do they lie with the colonies in America. So Franklin has an excruciating choice to make and he'll be making that choice after the break Hi, this is Garalinica from Goldhangers, The restest is foootball. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than one hundred sixty countries and with over forty currencies mostost transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. 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If your doctor decides that you can self inject trmphia, proper training is required. Tremphia is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease, and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection flu like symptoms or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremphia today. Call one eight hundred five two six seven seven thir six to learn more. or visit Trempharadio d. com The bloody struggle will end in absolute slavery to America, or ruined to Britain by the loss of her colonies. So welcome back to The Rest is History. topop flipper enthusiast and deffender of slavery Benjamin Franklin. still hoping that he can somehow bridge the gap. between Parliament in London and the militant separatists in New England So it's december sevententh seventy two. And he has been leaked, he's been given some letters. They've been written by the Governor of Massachusetts. H us Hutchinson So Tom, tell me about these letters So in these letters, Hutchinson has been advising the British government on how best to cool the colonial unrest in America And he writes and says there must be an abridgement of what are called English liberties. And these are the liberties that the colonists in Massachusetts are asserting against the demands of the British government for taxes and other such similar goods. And Franklin Seeze, when he's got these letters, he is going to now leak them in turn to the radicals in Boston And his reason for doing this isn't to cause trouble for the British government, but the absolute opposite. He wants to demonstrate to the radicals that the British government is pursuing a hard line, not because the British despise the Americans as you know colonials because they are receiving terrible advice from people like Hutchinson. In other words, if they can just be educated then the British will start behaving well and stop demanding taxes But the whole thing, you know, this whole wheeze goes terribly wrong. becausecause this is an example of how Franklin doesn't recognize what's going on now in Boston. The radicals there. completely ignore Franklin's direct request to them not to publicize Hutchinson's letters. They immediately published them and make a massive massive song and dance about them And There's a huge blowback in London about this, and Franklin ends up being summoned to appear before the privy cououncil in the tremendously named cockpit, and it's called that because it's a room in Whitehall where Henry VIII supposedly had staged cockfights But Franklin goes there and he finds it's more like bullbaiting or something. Everyone has gathered there take down the representative of the upperty colonials Um And Frankon himself put it, All the courtiers were invited as to an entertainment. Everyone there is keen to see him savaged. And he is savaged. Paul Franklin, he's there dressed in a blue Manchester velvet coat and he's described as standing conspicuously erect without the smallest movement of any part of his body for all that, he is absolutely torn pieces. and he is prodduced not just for his role in having made Hutchinson's letters public, even though he hadn't wanted this to happen, but as a kind of upperity reat treasonous colonial and there is such fury. And's the object of this kind of venomous fury, I think because the Boston Tea Party has just happened So just the month before and the mood in London against the Americans as a result is very angry, very, very embittered. and Franklin because he's actually in the Capitol Be he is the most famous American, almost the kind of the representative American. and because after all, he had actually leaked the Hutchinson letters. it doesn't matter what his motives are if you're in the British government. I mean he is the guy who's lets slit these secrets You know, he provides the perfect scapegoat. Right. And just to remind especially British listeners, the Boston Ta partartyies w basically a load of Americans who are angry about the monopoly It's a monopoly on tea, isn't there And they they're very cross about it and they throw load of tea into the harbour. ecological vandalism Yes, and they dress up as Native Americans. Terrible cultural appropriation. shocking. It's a bad business, however you look at it. And Franklin agrees. This is the irony of the whole situation. So he had described the Boston Tea Party as an act of violent injustice on our part. But Franklin's experience will to make up his mind this invidious choice he has. know he's sympathetic both to Britain and to the colonists But he sees his own experience at the cockpit as an indication of the fact that Britain is lurching into tyranny and repression, just as the kind of the radicals back in Boston are saying. In other words, Franklin's take is that He hasn't changed, It's Britain that has changed. He still lingers in London even after coming to this decision, kind of desperately trying to work with those in the British elite who are sympathetic to American aspirations, But by seventeen seventy five, he's had enough. He throws his hands up And he leaves Britain forever on the twentieth of march. he sets sail from Portsmouth on a packet ship bann for Pennsylvania And typically being Franklin while he's at sea He busies himself by measuring the temperatures of the Gulf stream three or four times a day, providing the scientific backing for his theory And while he is doing that in America open hostilities are breaking out. So by the time Franklin lands in Philadelphia on the fifth of May. the shot heard round the world has been fired at Lexington Green, British redcoats and colonial Milissa are at war outside Boston And so when Franklin lands in Philadelphia Triotic Americans This is You know, this is a tremendous moment The world's most famous American has landed, it seems in the nick of time provide their cause with the kind of prestige and authority that it so desperately needs Well, they're just about to open the Cinental Congress, aren't they? So they've summoned all these delegates from the thirteen rebel colonies And the continental Congress is going to end up being what did I describe it as in the last episode, the political wing of the insurgency. And for Franklin to have turned up a bloke who You know, he's very famous across the world He knows about Europe, doesn't he in European affairs and I guess also precisely because he hasn't been a militant until now That makes him a great asset to their cause. Yes, absolutely. And so a reporter is sent down to the docks to interview Franklin and he writes that Franklin thinks nothing else can save us from the most abject slavery and destruction So Franklin has essentially kind of made his decision. And so it's not surprising that the moment he's back He's chosen by the Pennsylvania Assembly to be one of their delegates to the Continental Congress Be he is Benjamin Franklin, because everybody knows he's brilliant at organizing things. He's you a great guy for showing initiative He gets appointed to a kind of insane number of committees. So he's set to organizing the infant American postal system. You did a documentary, didn't you once for Radio four about the postal system. So he's very like you. He loves the postal system. We're very similar And it's not surprising because it's being estimated that over the course of his life, Franklin Center received some fifteen thousand letters. So if you're doing that, you need a good functioning ost office and he will actually end up the first postmaster genereral of the United States He's also set to organizing the military supplies to Washington And remember he'd done this already before in the Seven yearsars War And most importantly of all, he is cooopered to help draft one last appeal to George IId. and this will become known as the Olive brranch petition. So basically saying, Yo, come on George giveive us what we want and then we won't rebel. But actually, even while he's working on this, Franklin has already made up his mind. He thinks, know there's no option. The breach with Britain is irreparable. It's got to be war and he knows that this is going to cost him. becausecause his son, William, the boy who had helped him with his flying kite experiment. He has become the governor of New Jersey on behalf of the British Crown, and he is a very committed loyalist. he's one of those, you know many, many people in America who back what Parliament is doing And William writes from New York to try and persuade his father to remain neutral, if you know, if if you can't side with Britain, at least stay neutral But Franklin is having none of it. and he tells William very flatly, I am now in favor of independence. and father and son have to accept. that they are now the other's enemy and there the breach between them you know, as between Britain and America breach between Franklin and his son is going to prove irreparable. It's never never healed. And Franklin wants to illustrate this for his friends in Britain. He wants them to know that he has made his mind up And this is partly, I think, to counter the sense that the radicals in the Congress have that he is You know, he's famously an anglophile. so they they're suspicious of him. They think that perhaps he's You know, he's secretly a British agent But it is also an attempt to sway those in the Congress who are nervous of declaring independence. He wants to kind of apply all his prestige and status to the cause of declaring independence On the fifth of July which is two and a half weeks after Bunkers Hill in Boston, a very kind of bloody battle. The Olive brranch petition is formally adopted by Congress, so they still haven't given up. They still want to give, the British one last chance And Franken had voted for it But he wanted to indicate to everybody in America that he didn't really back it So this is kind of a very recognizable political technique, isn't it? pololiticians who are bound, say by cabinet collective responsibility will leak something Tony Ben enters the chat. Yeah. So Franklin, he pulls this trick by writing a public letter to an old friend in London who is a printer called William Strahan. Franklin himself have been a printer. And Franklin addresses this friend of his with very icy formality. so he calls him Mr. Strahan. And Franklin wrote You are a member of Parliament and one of that majority which has doomed my country to destruction. You have begun to burn our towns and murder our people Look upon your hands. They are stained with the blood of your relations You and I were long friends. You are now my enemy and I am yours B Franklin. And it's a very famous letter and it's famous because rather than actually sending it to Strahan Franklin instead circulated it among his fellow members of Congress as a way of stiffening their resolve. So it's just a PR exercise. he never actually sends it. Yeah, it's completely a PR exercise. And actually, he and Strahan remained great friends, and when in due course Franklin goes to France, Strahan sent him a lovely cheese. All right. The Declaration of Independence, that doesn't take place until the following year, seventeen seventy six hence the fiftth anniversary this year And Franklin is part of the committee charged with drafting it, but he actually leaves most of the writing to Thomas Jefferson, doesn't he? Yeah, That's partly because he's got a very bad attack of Boyilles at this point and Bad attacks of Boyil's a feature. It's well It's not an aspect of the founding fathers that gets a lot of attention, I think in America, but it will on our podcast probablyro even gets Bad Bils a lot But I think it's also because he can recognize that Jefferson's prose is perhaps better suited to the kind of elevated tone that the Declaration of Independence needs than his own kind of folksy. folksy Christmas crracker Maxims, but he does make one very famous edit to Jefferson's first draft. So Jefferson has written the phrase, We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable And Franklin brrossses out the last three words and changes it to h we hold these truths to be self evident guess it's a kind of classic example of what had been lin's lifelong project as a moralist, which is to veil the assumptions that are derived from his Christian upbringing behind the pretense that they were somehow objective and derived from reason. course The notion that these rights are self evident has been hugely influential I still believe it to this day So the Declaration of Independence is presented to Congress and it's adopted, The die is cast The Rubicon is crossed and on the second of August, the Delaration is formally signed by the members of the Congress including Benjamin Franklin And it's President John Hancock. He adds his signature to it, then declares solemnly, There must be no pulling different ways we must all hang together. And Franklin makes a famous reply, Yes, we must indeed all hang together or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately because of course they are now traitors in the eyes of the British crown and that will be their fate. And we talked in the previous episode, didn't we about the American strategy, about the fact that basically it's a little bit like Vietnam. They basically have to stay in the game avoid a pitch battle, hope that the British you know, struggling to subdue or to impose themselves on the vast canvas of the North American continent will eventually lose heart and be sick of throwing money into this down the drain give up. but obviously what the Americans want above all Is they want some form of European intervention. I mean, you think you were implying in the previous episode, they didn't really have a prospect of winning unless they could get that backing. The might of the British Empire is so huge that they will lose without it. And so the obvious person to try to get this, I suppose, is the most famous living American, and that's Benjamin Franklin And this is why onn the twenty sixth of october, seventeen seventy six. so three months after You know, he and the other delegates have signed the Declaration of Iependence He he boards this American sleep of war called the repeprisal and he set sail back across the Atlantic, but this time he is heading Britain For France and Franklin will end up spending nine years there as America's first ambassador to a foreign power in that time back in his homeland, as we heard in our previous episode battles or As you put it, skirmishes will rage. cities will burn Franklin's own house in Philadelphia will be occupied and converted into British Time and ever since Ckins Souchen in France amid the flesh pots of Asan Reime Paris has cast as a kind of episode of high comedy and as a dereliction of duty So Woody Holton in Liberty is Seet, who doesn't agree with that characterization. he characures it as one long flirtation with female aristocrats And Franklin's friend in London, Edmund Burke philosopher and politician and the man who had been perhaps his most formidable ally in the British establishment. He went so far as to condemn Franklin for a foul and dishonorable flight. But I think that is a mad Judgment, oldld Franklin Because to make a winter crossing, which is what Franklin was doing to get to France, at the age of seventy you know, the conditions were so rough that Franklin said they almost demolished him cross an ocean controlled by the Royal Navy. I mean the fact that Britain rules the waves is part of what Franklin is going to France to try and upend. I mean, this is not the action of a coward. Franklin is incredibly brave and resolute man. But when he gets to France, he does rather enjoy the flirtation of female aristocrats,t he? Yeah off course he does. Of course he does. I mean, Franklin is a man who does not see enjoying yourself as a sin you know, to that extent he has his childh buritanism behind him As we've said, he's gone there because he's a celebrity. and so he can say, well, it's my patriotic duty to behave like a celebrity. He plays it up massively and he has a complete genius for it becausecause is he understands the roles that the French public want him to play He is familiar with the cast of thought in the Enlightenment So this is the eight of Rousau. And Risu identifies virtue and liberty with the primitive beginnings of humanity. And so Franklin Whenever he goes to court, makes sure to wear a kind of frontiersman's for cab Davy Crockett or something. Almighty Iagine that out of the quarter, Louis the sixteenth or whatever You know, if they're all wearing their wigs, you know, theirre kind of powdered wigs and Franklin is turning up with this this fur cap It's a massive fashion statement. And get his flippers plunging into the fountains of Versailles. So that's kind of playing to fans of Rousseau. This is also the age of Voltaire the kind of fe line witty Enlightened champion of reason. And Franklin, this is the man who has tamed lightning, who has redeemed humanity from the superstition of fear againain in is the guy cost himself in America as a kind of embodiment of a new, enlightened future So in seventeen seventy eight, he has two massively histrionic meetings with Voltaire. And the first occasion, Voltaire lays his hands on the head of Franklin's grandson who has come with Franklin to France and declares in English good and liibere And everybody hasazars and burst tears and it's absolute scenes. And then the second, they have a meeting at the Academy of Royale two men embrace and they are described by one observer being like solon embracing Sophicically say the two great sages of ancient Greece and again, everyone, not a dry eye in the house So this plays tremendously well to the intellectual gallery, the gallery of the kind of ministers who will be deciding whether America is worth investing in At the same time, he is definitely flirting with female aristocrats and he is definitely enjoying it. I think in his sexual ethics, he remains a puritan. As a young man, we haven't talked about his marriage up to now, you said that Martha Washington was the most boring woman in history. I think that Clintn's wife What is it about American women? She She was a very frugal. Yeah and incredibly boring widow. I called Deborah Reid And Franklin had essentially only married her as a way of taming his sexual appetites. She's not a laugh and she's not a great romance. And the evidence for this is that he had not taken with him London, he'd refused to return to Philadelphia in seventeen seventy four, even though by this point he'd decided that he was on the American side and she was dying. William, his son, kept saying, youve got to come back. He doesn't. He can't be bothered with her. And she actually died three months before he left England. So he's really not interested in that. What Franklin is interested in What he likes doing. is to hang out with very posh, very pretty girls in salons it's kind of It's half flirtation. it's half playing the jovial father figure. and he'd done this in London and now he's in Paris. he does it again And they all absolutely adore him. But this isn't just self indulgent because it is also prompted by calculation becausecause again Salons Light hanging out with Voltaire is a way to raise his credit among the circles of those who matter Franklin's mission in Paris is very, very simple He has to scure military financial backing from the French G government cause of American independence, and this is actually a huge challenge because France at the beginning of the war is not at war with Britain They' two countries at peace, France had a terrible bruising in the seeven Years warar, hugely in debt and everyone in Paris assumes, well the British are bound to win You know, the Americans are rubbish. But gradually the tide of war starts to turn And Franklin, because he has made himself the toas of Versailles and of French public opinion of Vala. of all these aristocrats They all love him, as well as admire him He is perfectly placed to press the advantage. and in due course the French do enter the war And when Franklin goes to sign the Treaty of Alliance, he does so wearing the blue velvet coat that he had worn at the cockpit when the British establishment had torn him to pieces. and he was asked why he had worn this coat And he answered to give it a little revenge and revenge is what he gets because as we described in the previous episode, France's entry into the war does tip the balance And when in seventeen eighty three the British finally agree terms with their rebellious colonies. They agree to recognize American independence. It is Franklin who has led the negotiations and it is Franklin who signs what comes to be known as the Treaty of Paris. And this has been described by the great American historian Edmin Morgan. greatest diplomatic victory the United States has ever achieved I don't know whether you'd agree with that, but I mean I it was an incredible achievement. because it's essential to their independence. Of course the great iron of this is the Franklin who's been hanging out at Versailles and going to all these salons and enjoying the charms of the Hosh pretty French ladies by securing French agreement to that alliance He has also signed the death warrant of the unsen regime and the French monarchy and Louis XteI and M Antoinette. The irony. Yes, there is that consolation for British listeners to bear in mind. this will have disastrous consequences for the French and that's the important thing. So that is Franklin's term in France. It's highly successful. And when he returns from France in seventeen eighty five It is to hero's welcome. So he lands in Philadelphia and there are huusars and cannon fire and church bells and all of that, but he still has one last charge to meet, one last celebrated document to sign And this of course is going to be Constitution So Franklin by this point, he is seventy nine years old He is a very tired man. He is ill. he can barely walk But of course, by this point, it's his very age which makes him so valuable to the infant state. He serves them as a kind of living symbol of what America had been. has become and might yet be And two years later when a constitutional Cvention meets in Philadelphia, to determine what form of government the newly independent American state should have Franklin is, you know, he's he's in his eighties by now He's not in any condition to do any of the heavy lifting But his kind of very presence is a kind of a blessing, a kind of benediction And I think above all, he bodies the spirit of kind of reaching after truth all his life he had believed was the surest way for people and indeed states to secure life and liberty. and happiness. So his his house is a short walk away from the state House where the delegates are deciding. they, um the Constitution and he has a lovely garden And this provides a refuge from all the heat and anger and turmoil of the convention. and it's a place where delegates can go to cool down to sit beneath the mulby tree in his garden and to hammer out compromises And Franklin himself, you know, he makes occasional addresses to the convention, not many. But when he makes these addresses What he has to say is the perfect embodiment of the kind of the fusion between Christian and enlightenment thinking that I think so characterizes the American Revolution So he appeals to reason You know, that's the enlightenment aspect but also to the father of lights, as he called it, to illuminate our understanding. He's a big enthusiast for starting sessions with prayers, for instance And when finally on the seventeenth of september, seventeen eighty seven Constitution of the United States is finally endorsed. It is Franklin who gives the most resonant and memorable speech He acknowledges that this Constitution has imperfections. But he urges his fellow delegates to sign it anyway. I cons censor to this constitution because I expect no better and because I am not sure that it is not the best And in my opinion if there has to be a revolution This is the spirit in which revolutions should be And I think it makes frranklin frankly my my favorite revolutionary. who wouldn't prefer that kind of spirit of pragmatic compromise to the white hot certainty of a Cromwell or a Robespierre or a Lenin. I think that's about a bit harsh of a Crwall, frankly The Crumler is more full of sefoubt than Robs Bare anden Yes, but I think Comwell did things that Franklin would not have countenanced. It was more robust than no question I like the lack of robustness in that phrase, I am not sure that it is not the best. right I think more politicians should say that I think we'd all be happy. I'll be very clear about this, Tom. I think that this is. I mean, yeah, if you to, if you want to be pragmatic, if you want to have be a personal compromise, and I think compromise is always a good thing you know, say it. But I think also the other great thing about Franklin and why I find him kind of really admirable person is that he is always alert to the possibility that he might be wrong. Yes very attractive quality that you might need to change your mind. I mean that is what had brought him from being a great enthusiast for the relationship with Britain to deciding that No, you know, it's got to go. We need independence. And it's also what brings him in february seventeen ninety, so by which point he is eighty four years old present a very startling petition to Congress And remember Franklin had been a slave owner And this one time slave owner, he no longer has slaves by this point He urges Congress to bestow the enjoyment of happiness on all the peoples of the United States and to grant and I quote liberty to those unhappy men. who are alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage. And the petition is rejected, but Franklin does not give up. And one month later, he publishes, I think a brilliant satire, a satire that is clearly derived from Jonathan Swift, the greatest of all satirists. And he writes under the pseudonym of Siddy Mhet Ibrahim And he deploys the same arguments that are being used by anti abolitionists in America to justify the enslavement of Africans to defend the enslavement of Europeans by the barbarary states of North Africa. So in this pamphlet Franklin writes pretending to be a Muslim propagandist for slavery. Let us then hear no more of this detestable proposition, the manumission of Christian slaves, the adoption of which would by depreciating our lands and houses, and thereby depriving so many good citizens of their properties create universal discontent and provoke insurrections. And that of course is exactly the language be used by Americans in favor of keeping slavery right the way up to the civil War had I actually didn't know about that until I saw it in your notes. I think it's fascinating. I think it is a brillant piece of work and I think the debt to Jonathan Swift is absolutely there. Like a modest proposal or something. And it is an act of repentance Franklin had owned slaves, he came to repent of it and he sought to right the wrong that he had done The slaves. of America and that That piece of writing was his last to be published because on the seventeenth of april seventeen ninety, Benjamin Franklin breathed his last and he died as he had lived as a man. prepared to follow his conscience no matter where it might lead and I salute him I think he is a tremendous a tremendous man I think one of the more attractive who have had a measurable impact on the course of world history, I think. Okay I mean, he's no Dror Johnson, but he's not too far, he's not too far, shorts But Dr. Johnson didn't sign for crucial historical documents and sway the fate of nations. No, that's all true. I mean, I think you could say of Franklin that had he not got history might have been very different and he played it brilliantly. I mean, again, we've talked about the series about John Adams, who actually goes to France to kind of provide backup for Franklin and Adams, who is very puritanical really objects to this whole hanging out with aristocrats kind of malaki totally balls us up Franklin's methods are definitely better. So I think he does change history and I think he's one as I say, one of the more amiable Um figures to have changed history. Okay Brilliant Brilliant episode, Tom, Thankk you very much. Now in our next episode, we should be looking at a founding father who went one stage further than Benjamin Franklin and he became the hero of his own musical. And this is of course, Alexander Hamilton We were talking about the Hamilton