The Autobiography and Other Writings by Benjamin Franklin

Author:Benjamin Franklin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

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AN EDICT BY THE

KING OF PRUSSIA (1773)

A prolific political journalist, Franklin generally considered his political writings ephemeral. When asked for a gathering of such pieces he said he never kept them: “I could as easily make a Collection . . . of all the past Parings of my Nails.” An exception was his “Edict by the King of Prussia,” which he wrote with special care and considered particularly effective. Until about the time of the Stamp Act he had been a strong monarchist. In fact he worked so strenuously to avoid war with England that local patriots threatened to pull down his house. In the “Edict,” however, now grown passionately resentful toward British policy, he attempted to hold up what he called “a Looking-Glass in which some Ministers may see their Ugly Faces, and the Nation its Injustice.”

To provide such a mirror, Franklin adopted still another of his many guises. Writing as the King of Prussia, he used a rhetorical equivalent of the categorical imperative, asking English readers to imagine how their country’s policies toward America might feel if applied to themselves. The harsh measures he attributes to the king were invented but plausible, for Frederick III was at the time on ill terms with England. To give the king’s words special bite, Franklin paid more than usual attention to emphatic italics and capitals, and chose an “out-of-the-way” form as being “most likely to take the general attention.” That this hoax was widely taken as an authentic royal edict again testifies to his uncanny power of persuasion. More important, in the “short, comprehensive, and striking” way that he hoped, the piece summarizes a century of colonial grievances against the mother country.

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