Rules by which a great empire may be reduced to a small one (1773)
The substance behind the “Rules” was scarcely new. Franklin had, in more sober fashion, made almost every point before. He touched hardly at all upon the constitutional issues that the Bostonians had set boiling, no doubt because they were difficult to treat satirically; but he marshaled most of the other themes that were his stock in trade as a controversialist. Some related to the colonies in general, some to Massachusetts in particular, and they ran the gamut from old trade restrictions and n