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have said a thousand things that nothing should have tempted me to have said to anybody else, for I knew they would be safe with you. I’ll only beg the favor of one line. What is become of my letters? Tell me you are well and forgive me and love me one-thousandth part as well as I do you, and then I will be contented.” Benjamin wrote back with this advice: “Go constantly to meeting or church ‘til you get a good husband, then stay at home and nurse the children and live like a Christian. . . . When I have again the pleasure of seeing you, I may find you like my grape vine, surrounded with clusters, plump, juicy, blushing, pretty little rogues, like their Mama. Adieu.”
    While Franklin traveled, his mind was not idle. Moving from colony to colony inspired him to write one of his more important scientific treatises, published under the title, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries . A combination of mathematics and social observation, Franklin noted there were more than a million Englishmen in North America, yet little more than 80,000 had emigrated from England. His research showed a radical difference between the New World and the Old, where the population was relatively stable. America, with its virtually unlimited land and capacity, didn’t offer challenges to marriage and the raising of families that the Old World did. For this reason, Franklin predicted the population of America would double every twenty to twenty-five years - a prophecy fulfilled until 1860, when immigration created more growth. For Franklin, this increase meant one significant thing: America will “in another century be more than the people of England, and the greatest number of Englishmen will be on this side of the water.”
    Franklin didn’t see this as a threat to the mother country; he spoke as an Anglo-American and loyal member of the empire. “What an accession of power to the British Empire by sea as well as land! What increase of trade and navigation! What numbers of ships and seamen!” Underlying this, however, was an American sentiment. In 1750, because British ironmasters had complained that American-made iron competed with their products, Parliament restricted the manufacture of iron in Pennsylvania. This baffled Franklin; the population of the colonies was increasing so fast there was sure to be a market for manufacturers, whether British or American. “A wise and good mother,” Franklin said, placed no distressing restraints on her children. “To distress is to weaken, and weakening the children weakens the whole family.”
    Franklin was unafraid to speak. Shortly after he finished his essay on population, he suggested a way for Americans to stop another bad British practice. Whenever jails became overcrowded, the British deported criminals to America. Often these men continued in crime in the New World. The best way to solve the problem, Franklin suggested in the Pennsylvania Gazette, was to return the compliment: Export America’s rattlesnakes to England.
    As deputy postmaster general, he was one of the few Americans who thought in terms of the entire continent. Pennsylvania appointed Franklin to be a delegate to the Albany Congress , convened in 1754 to negotiate an inter-colonial defense against the French and Indians. He did more than think defensively. He proposed a plan of union that would have created a governor general and a Grand Council consisting of members chosen by the assemblies of each colony. Although delegates to the conference approved the plan, it received little attention from colonial assemblies and from England. The assemblies thought it conceded too much local power to the General Council and especially to the governor general, whom the king would appoint. London thought it came too close to creating a political body strong enough to challenge the power of parliament.
    Disappointed, Franklin nevertheless continued to