FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN. – Writer, inventor, diplomat, b. in Boston on 17 January 1706, d. in Philadelphia on 17 April 1790. He spent his early youth in the austerely Puritan atmosphere of New England. Self-taught and avid for reading, influenced by the authors with whom he was becoming acquainted (Collins, Shaftesbury, Locke, etc.), he soon turned to deism and to an earthly, utilitarian morality, which he practiced for the rest of his life and cleverly preached and popularized through his writings.
He was an apprentice in the printing shop of his brother James, learning the trade that he later practiced for many years and to which he owed his prosperity. After moving to Philadelphia (1723), a city more open to new currents of thought,
he acquired renown as an educator and benefactor, founding newspapers, cultural associations, and a public library, and publishing for more than 20 years Poor Richard’s Almanack, in which he collected aphorisms and maxims inspired by prudent common sense; and as a scientist, through his studies of electricity and the invention of the lightning rod (1752). A member of the Freemasons and a convinced advocate of a utilitarian religion of bourgeois virtues, inspired by the prevailing philanthropy and humanitarianism and by the easy optimism of his time, he placed full confidence in the power of reason and education to improve the human condition on earth.
He devoted himself chiefly to politics during the second half of the century, undertaking various missions as representative of the American colonies in England (1757–62 and 1764–75). During the conflict between them and the mother country, as an enemy of violence, he initially favored a policy of reconciliation; but from 1768 onward he decisively sided with the patriots and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence (1776). Sent to France by the new Confederation, he was received there triumphantly. Already popular owing to the wide circulation of his writings, he won the sympathies of French society, which saw in him the symbol and personification of the new man whom the Enlightenment sought and exalted. He negotiated treaties of alliance and commerce with Louis XVI (1778), Sweden (1783), and Prussia (1785). In 1783 he signed the Treaty of Paris, which brought the war with England to an end. Returning to his homeland, he took part in the work of drafting the new constitution (1787), promoting reconciliation within an assembly divided by conflicting tendencies.
Works: The writings of B. F., 10 vols., edited by A. H. Smyth (Nuova York 1905–1907).