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DXCI: THE RESULT OF ENGLAND’S PERSISTENCE IN HER POLICY TOWARDS THE COLONIES ILLUSTRATED 1 - Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. VI Letters and Misc. Writings 1772-1775 [1904]

Edition used:

The Works of Benjamin Franklin, including the Private as well as the Official and Scientific Correspondence, together with the Unmutilated and Correct Version of the Autobiography, compiled and edited by John Bigelow (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). The Federal Edition in 12 volumes. Vol. VI (Letters and Misc. Writings 1772-1775).

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DXCI

THE RESULT OF ENGLAND’S PERSISTENCE IN HER POLICY TOWARDS THE COLONIES ILLUSTRATED1

Explanation

Great Britain is supposed to have been placed upon the globe; but the colonies (that is, her limbs), being severed from her, she is seen lifting her eyes and mangled stumps to Heaven; her shield, which she is unable to wield, lies useless by her side; her lance has pierced New England; the laurel branch has fallen from the hand of Pennsylvania; the English oak has lost its head, and stands a bare trunk, with a few withered branches; briers and thorns are on the ground beneath it; the British ships have brooms at their topmost heads, denoting their being on sale; and Britannia herself is seen sliding off the world (no longer able to hold its balance), her fragments overspread with the label, Date obolum Belisario.

The Moral

History affords us many instances of the ruin of states by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy, it being a matter of no moment to the state whether a subject grows rich and flourishing on the Thames or the Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin. These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections necessarily ensue, by which the whole state is weakened, and perhaps ruined forever.

lf1438-06_figure_002

MAGNA Britannia her Colonies REDUCED

[1 ]W. T. Franklin gives the following account of this device, and the use made of it by its author: “During the disputes between the two countries, Dr. Franklin invented a little emblematical design, intended to represent the supposed state of Great Britain and her colonies, should the former persist in her oppressive measures, restraining the latter’s trade, and taxing their people by laws made by a legislature in which they were not represented. It was engraved on a copper plate. Dr. Franklin had many of them struck off on cards, on the back of which he occasionally wrote his notes. It was also printed on a half-sheet of paper, with the explanation and moral.”—Editor.