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 novel taxes to the oppression wrought by the army and navy; the result was, as he said, comprehensive. These themes were so familiar from long reiteration that in their usual form they might well have evoked no more than a shrug from the British public. By recasting them in the “out-of-the-way” form of satire he gave them a new bite. But the effect was short-lived. The government soon bit him in turn and then—the final irony—legislated many of his “Rules” in the Coercive Acts of 1774.
What Franklin achieved is another matter. Satire is a poor instrument of persuasion, for the open-minded are likely to be entertained—perhaps shocked—rather than convinced, and the close-minded to be angered. He was aware of the danger. Although he hoped to turn a spotlight on colonial grievances in order to gain redress, he realized that the effect might be to make matters worse. 1 For him personally that seems to have been the effect. The government dared not mention these attacks for fear of giving them even greater publicity, he concluded later, but they accounted in great part for the official fury unleashed upon him early in 1774. 2
Franklin was pleased with this satire, which was a companion piece to “An Edict by the King of Prussia.” 7 Both had the virtues, he believed, of brevity, comprehensiveness, and “out-of-the-way forms” that caught attention; but he preferred the “Rules” to the “Edict” for the breadth and variety of its contents and for “a kind of spirited ending of each paragraph.” 8 His technique in the two was different: in this one he challenged his readers to see their government’s policy through colonial eyes; in the “Edict” he jolted them with the fiction that they were colonists themselves. The two essays had a single purpose, to induce the public to take a fresh look at the American problem. When Parliament reconvened in the autumn, that problem promised to be a major subject of discussion; and the sensational demand from Massachusetts for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver was sure, when it came before the Privy Council, to provoke a storm. Moderate counsels could never prevail unless the folly of past measures was exposed, and Franklin devoted himself to exposing it. At the top of his satirical bent he could not be ignored, and the initial public reaction to his efforts was gratifying. The issue of the Public Advertiser containing the “Edict” sold out immediately, and both satires were widely reprinted in England and then in America. 9
For the Public Advertiser.
Rules by which a GREAT Empire may be reduced to a SMALL ONE. [Presented privately to a late Minister, when he entered upon his Administration; and now first published.]3
An ancient Sage valued himself upon this, that tho’ he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great City of a little one.4 The Science that I, a modern Simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse.
I address myself to all Ministers who have the Management of extensive Dominions, which from their very Greatness are become troublesome to govern, because the Multiplicity of their Affairs leaves no Time for fiddling.
I. In the first Place, Gentlemen, you are to consider, that a great Empire, like a great Cake, is most easily diminished at the Edges. Turn your Attention therefore first to your remotest Provinces; that as you get rid of them, the next may follow in Order.
II. That the Possibility of this Separation may always exist, take special Care the Provinces are never incorporated with the Mother Country, that they do not enjoy the same common Rights, the same Privileges in Commerce, and that they are governed by severer Laws, all of your enacting, without allowing them any Share in the Choice of the Legislators. By carefully making and preserving such Distinctions, you will (to keep to my Simile of the Cake) act like a wise Gingerbread Baker, who, to facilitate a Division, cuts his Dough half through in those Places, where, when bak’d, he would have it broken to Pieces.
III. These remote Provinces have perhaps been acquired, purchas’d, or conquer’d, at the sole Expence of the Settlers or their Ancestors, without the Aid of the Mother Country. If this should happen to increase her Strength by their growing Numbers ready to join in her Wars, her Commerce by their growing Demand for her Manufactures, or her Naval Power by greater Employment for her Ships and Seamen, they may probably suppose some Merit in this, and that it entitles them to some Favour; you are therefore to forget it all, or resent it as if they had done you Injury. If they happen to be zealous Whigs, Friends of Liberty, nurtur’d in Revolution Principles, remember all that to their Prejudice, and contrive to punish it: For such Principles, after a Revolution is thoroughly established, are of no more Use, they are even odious and abominable.5
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