REV. SIR,

Dr. Franklin to Dr. Johnson of Stratford.

PHILADELPHIA, August 9, 1750.

At my return home, I found your favor of June the 28th, with the Bishop of Cloyne's letter inclosed, which I will take care of, and beg leave to keep a little longer.

Mr. Francis, our Attorney General, who was with me at your house, from the conversation then had with you, and reading some of your pieces, has conceived an esteem for you equal to mine. The character we have given of you to the other trustees, and the sight of your letters relating to the Academy, has made them very desirous of engaging you in that design, as a person whose experience and judgment would be of great use in forming rules and establishing good methods in the beginning, and whose name for learning would give it a reputation. We only lament that, in the infant state of our funds, we can not make you an offer equal to your merit. But as the view of being useful has most weight with generous and benevolent minds, and in this affair you may do great service, not only to the present but to future generations, I flatter myself sometimes that if you were here, and saw things as they are, and conversed a little with our people, you might be prevailed with to remove. I would therefore earnestly press you to make us a visit as soon as you conveniently can; and in the mean time, let me represent to you some of the circumstances as they appear to me.

1. The Trustees of the Academy are applying for a charter, which will give an opportunity of improving and modeling our constitution in such a manner as, when we have your advice, shall appear best. I suppose we shall have power to form a regular college.

2. If you undertake the management of the English Education, I am satisfied the Trustees would, on your account, make the salary £100 pounds sterling, (they have already voted £150 currency, which is not far from it), and pay the charge of your removal. Your son might also be employed as tutor at £60 or perhaps £70 per annum.

3. It has been long observed, that our church is not sufficient to accommodate near the number of people who would willingly have seats there. The buildings increase very fast toward the south end of the town, and many of the principal merchants now live there; which being at a considerable distance from the present church, people begin to talk much of building another, and ground has been offered as a gift for that purpose. The Trustees of the Academy are, three-fourths of them, members of the Church of England, and the rest men of moderate principles. They have reserved in the building a large hall for occasional preaching, public lectures, orations, etc.; it is 70 feet by 60, furnished with a handsome pulpit, seats, etc. In this Mr. Tennent collected his congregation, who are now building him a meeting-house. In the same place, by giving now and then a lecture, you might, with equal ease, collect a congregation that would, in a short time, build you a church, if it should be agreeable to you. In the meantime, I imagine you will receive something considerable yearly, arising from marriages and christening in the best families, etc., not to mention presents that are not unfrequent from a wealthy people to a minister they like; and though the whole may not amount to more than a due support, yet I think it will be a comfortable one. And when you are well settled in a church of

your own, your son may be qualified by years and experience to succeed you in the Academy; or if you rather choose to continue in the Academy, your son might probably be fixed in the Church.

These are my private sentiments, which I have communicated only to Mr. Francis, who entirely agrees with me. I acquainted the Trustees that I would write to you, but could give them no dependence that you would be prevailed on to remove. They will, however, treat with no other till I have your answer. You will see by our newspaper, which I inclose, that the Corporation of this city have voted £200 down, and £100 a year out of their revenues to the Trustees of the Academy. As they are a perpetual body, choosing their own successors, and so not subject to be changed by the caprice of a governor or of the people, and as eighteen of the members (some the most leading) are of the Trustees, we look on this donation to be as good as so much real estate; being confident it will be continued as long as it is well applied, and even increased, if there should be occasion. We have now near £5,000 subscribed, and expect some considerable sums besides may be procured from the merchants of London trading hither. And as we are in the center of the Colonies, a healthy place, with plenty of provisions, we suppose a good Academy here may draw numbers of youth for education from the neighboring Colonies, and even from the West Indies.

In reply to Dr. Johnson's answer presenting the difficulties in the way of his accepting Dr. Franklin's proposal, and an invitation from Rev. Richard Peters to visit Philadelphia, Dr. Franklin wrote again on the 23d of August, 1750:

DEAR SIR,—We received your favor of the 16th inst. Mr. Peters will hardly have time to write to you per this post, and I must be short. Mr. Francis spent the last evening with me, and we were all glad to hear that you seriously meditate a visit after the middle of next month, and that you will inform us by a line when to expect you. We drank your health and Mrs. Johnson's, remembering your kind entertainment of us at Stratford.

I think, with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are, in my opinion, the strength of a state far more so than riches or arms, which, under the management of ignorance and wickedness, often draw on destruction, instead of promoting the safety of a people. And though the culture bestowed on youth be successful only with a few, yet the influence of those few, for the service in their power, may be very great. Even a single woman, that was wise, by her wisdom saved a city.

I think, also, that general virtue is more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth than from the exhortation of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured.

I think, moreover, that talents for the education of youth are the gift of God; and that he on whom they are bestowed, whenever a way is opened for the use of them, is as strongly called as if he heard a voice from heaven. Nothing more surely pointing out duty, in a public service, than ability and opportunity of performing it.

I have not yet discoursed with Dr. Jenney concerning your removal hither.

You have reason, I own, to doubt whether your coming on the foot I proposed would not be disagreeable to him, though I think it ought not. For should his particular interest be somewhat affected by it, that ought not to stand in competition with the general good; especially as it can not be much affected, he being old, and rich, and without children. I will, however, learn his sentiments before the next post. But whatever influence they might have on your determinations about removing, they need have none on your intention of visiting. And if you favor us with the visit, it is not necessary that you should previously write to him to learn his dispositions about your removal, since you will see him, and when we are all together those things may be better settled in conversation than by letters at a distance. Your tenderness of the Church's peace is truly laudable; but, methinks, to build a new church in a growing place is not properly dividing but multiplying; and will really be a means of increasing the number of those who worship God in that way. Many who can not now be accommodated in the church go to other places or stay at home; and if we had another church, many, who go to other places or stay at home, would go to church. I suppose the interest of the Church has been far from suffering in `Boston by the building of two new churches there in my memory. I had for several years nailed against the wall of my house, a pigeon-box that would hold six pair; and though they bred as fast as my neighbor's pigeons, I never had more than six pair; the old and strong driving out the young and weak, and obliging them to seek new habitations. At length I put up an additional box, with apartments for entertaining twelve pair more, and it was soon filled with 'inhabitants, by the overflowings of my first box and of others in the neighborhood. This I take to be a parallel case with the building a new church here.

On the 24th of December, Dr. Franklin addressed a letter to Dr. Johnson, who had made some suggestion as to the pamphlet issued by the former respecting an Academy:

DEAR SIR,-I received your favor of the 11th inst., and thank you for the hint your give of the omission in the 'Idea.' The 'Sacred Classics' are read in the English school, though I forgot to mention them. And I shall propose at the meeting of the Schools, after the Holidays, that the English master read select portions of them daily with the prayers, as you advise.

But if you can be thus useful to us at this distance, how much more might you be so if you were present with us, and had the immediate inspection and government of the schools. I wrote to you in my last that Mr. Martin, our Rector, died suddenly of a quinsy. His body was carried to the church, respectfully attended by the trustees, all the masters and scholars in their order, and a great number of the citizens. Mr. Peters preached his funeral sermon, and gave him the just and honorable character he deserved. The schools are now broke up for Christmas, and will not meet again till the 7th of January. Mr. Peters took care of the Latin and Greek school after Mr. Martin's death till the breaking up. And Mr. Allison, a dissenting minister, has promised to con⚫ tinue that care for a month after their next meeting. Is it impossible for you to make us a visit in that time; I hope by the next post to know something of your sentiments, that I may be able to speak more positively to the Trustees concerning the probability of your being prevailed with to remove hither.

The English master is Mr. Dove, a gentleman about your age, who formerly

taught grammar sixteen years at Chichester in England. He is an excellent master, and his scholars have made a surprising progress.

Dr. Johnson to Dr. Franklin.

DEAR SIR-I now write my most thankful acknowledgments for your two kind letters of December 24 and January 8, and have received your most obliging letters of the summer before last, to which you refer me. There was one of August 23, to which I did not make a particular reply by reason of my illness at that time. In that you reasoned, I own, in a very forcible manner upon the head of duty. You argued that ability, with opportunity, manifestly pointed out duty, as though it were a voice from Heaven. This, Sir, I agree to, and therefore have always endeavored to use what little ability I have that way in the best manner I could, having never been without pupils, of one sort or other, half a year at a time, and seldom that, for thirty-eight years. And, thank God, I have the great satisfaction to see some of them in the first pulpits, not only in Connecticut, but also in Boston and New York, and others in some of the first places in the land. But I am now plainly in the decline of life, both as to activity of body and vigor of mind, and must, therefore, consider myself as being an Emeritus, and unfit for any new situation in the world, or to enter on any new business, especially at such a distance from my hitherto sphere of action and my present situation, where I have as much duty on my hands as I am capable of, and where my removal would make too great a breach to be countervailed by any good I am capable of doing elsewhere, for which I have but a small chance left for much opportunity. So that I must beg my good friends at Philadelphia to excuse me, and I pray God they may be directed to a better choice. And as Providence has so unexpectedly provided so worthy a person as Mr. Dove for your other purpose, I hope the same good Providence will provide for this. I am not personally acquainted with Mr. Winthrop, the Professor at Cambridge, but by what I have heard of him, perhaps he might do.

Dr. Franklin to Dr. Johnson, July 2, 1752.

Our Academy, which you so kindly inquire after, goes on well. Since Mr. Martin's death, the Latin and Greek school has been under the care of Mr. Allison, a Dissenting minister, well skilled in those languages and long practiced in teaching. But he refused the Rectorship, or to have any thing to do with the government of the other schools. So that remains vacant, and obliges the Trustees to more frequent visits. We have now several young gentlemen desirous of entering on the study of Philosophy, and Lectures are to be opened this week. Mr. Allison undertakes Logic and Ethics, making your work his text to comment and lecture upon. Mr. Peters and some other gentlemen undertake the other branches, till we shall be provided with a Rector capable of the whole, who may attend wholly to the instructions of youth in the higher parts of learning as they come out fitted from the lower schools. Our proprietors have lately wrote that they are extremely well pleased with the design, will take our Seminary under their patronage, give us a charter, and, as an earnest of their benevolence, Five Hundred Pounds sterling. And by our opening a charity school, in which near one hundred poor children are taught Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, with the rudiments of religion, we have gained the general good will of all sorts of people, from whence donations and bequests may be reasonably expected to accrue from time to time.

Dr. Johnson to President Clap.

Dr. Johnson, after accepting the presidency of the new college in New York, writes to President Clap of Yale College, in reference to the denial by the latter of the privilege once accorded to the children of Episcopal parents of attending a church in which a Missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel officiated, as follows:

REV. AND DEAR SIR,

STRATFORD, February 5, 1754.

I thank you for your kind congratulation on my being chosen President of their intended College at New York, and I shall desire, by all means, if I undertake it, to hold a good correspondence not only as Colleges but as Christians, supposing you and the Fellows of your College act on the same equitable, Catholic, and Christian principles as we unanimously propose to act upon, i. e., to admit that the children of the Church may go to church when ever they have opportunity, as we think of nothing but to admit that the children of dissenting parents have leave to go to their meetings; nor can I see any thing like an argument in all you have said to justify the forbidding it. And I am prodigiously mistaken if you did not tell me it was an allowed and settled rule with you heretofore.

The only point in question, as I humbly conceive, is, whether there ought of right to be any such law in your College as, either in words or by necessary consequence, forbids the liberty we contend for! What we must beg leave to insist on is, That there ought not; and that it is highly injurious to forbid it; unless you can make it appear That you ever had a right to exclude the people of the Church belonging to this Colony, from having the benefit of Public education in your Col lege, without their submitting to the hard condition of not being allowed to do what they believe in their conscience it is their indispensable duty to do, i. e., to require their children to go to church whenever they have opportunity, and at the same time, a right to accept and hold such vast benefactions from gentlemen of the Church of England, wherewith to support you in maintaining such a law in exclusion of such a liberty. Can you think those gentlemen would ever have given such benefactions to such a purpose! And ought it not to be considered, at the same time, that the parents of these children contribute also their proportion every year to the support of the College?

Your argument in a former letter was, That it is inconsistent with the original design of the founders, which was only to provide ministers for your churches. But pray, Sir, why may not our Church also be provided for with ministers from one common College as well as your churches? And ought not the Catholic design of the principal benefactors also in strict justice to be regarded, who, in the sense of the English law, are to be reckoned among the founders? See Viner, on the Title FOUNDERS. What Mr. Yale's views* were,

• Jeremiah Dummer, Agent of the Colony of Connecticut, writing to Gov. Saltonstall, from 'Middle Temple [London], 14th April, 1719,' says: 'I heartily congratulate you upon the happy union of the Colony, in fixing the College at New Haven, after some differences which might have been attended with ill consequences. Mr. Yale is very much rejoiced at this good news, and more than a little pleased with his being the Patron of such a seat of the Muses. Saving that he expressed at first some kind of concern, whether it was well in him, being a Churchman, to promote an Academy of Dissenters. But when we had discoursed that point freely, he appeared convinced that the business of good men is to spread religion and learning among mankind without being too