"When the imperious Anglican clergyman William Smith attacked Benjamin Franklin, the artisans' hero, his opponents wrote that 'the Vomiting of this infamous Hireling... betoken[s] that Redundancy of Rancour, and Rottiness of Heart which render him the most despicable of his Species." (125)
--both quotes from Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution
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| Benjamin Franklin From: Wikimedia Commons, Metropolitan Museum of Art |
Nash describes the increasingly virulent, shrill political discourse that appeared in pamphlets and newspapers of the northern colonies in the 1750s. Regular newspapers had only existed for around half a century at this point. In the early 1700s, those who attacked political opponents in newspapers were more polite, using words like "intolerable," "unreasonable," and "strange." (Nash, 125) The shift in tone by political writers of the 1750s coincided with a shift in how explicit political factions and interests were viewed. Previously, the existence of groups unified by and advocating for a specific political interest was seen as destructive of the common good; a healthy state required more unity. However, in the mid-1700s a view that competing political factions could produce a healthy power balance in the state and that it was morally acceptable to act politically for one's self-interest had gained momentum. Once it became acceptable to identify oneself with a political interest group and oppose other such groups, a steady escalation in the intensity of public criticism occurred. The criticism was all the more severe as writers pitched their most convincing arguments to a slowly growing population of voters caused by widening suffrage laws. Given these circumstances, we should not be surprised to learn of Benjamin Franklin's "Rottiness of Heart."
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