Did Benjamin Franklin Influence Patrick Matthew?

I have earlier (here) explored the likelihood that Matthew (1831) was influenced by Empedocles. In this blog post I explore the very probable influence of Benjamin Franklin.

Writers before me have concluded that Matthew most probably was influenced by the writings of Malthus - the man who both Darwin and Wallace claimed as a most important influence on their "own" work.  Dempster (1983, p. 51) writes that both Malthus and Paley were influenced by Franklin's essay of 1755.  From that cause, it is worth looking at what Franklin wrote that may have influenced Matthew directly, or else indirectly through knowledge contamination.

In 1751, Franklin penned an essay that was finally published in Boston, USA, in 1755. It is entitled: Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries.

The relevant sections of Franklin's essay are the very final ones 22 to 24:

22. There is in short, no bound to the prolific nature of plants 
or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering 
with each others means of subsistence. Was the face of the earth 
vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread 
with one kind only; as, for instance, with Fennel; and were it empty 
of other inhabitants, it might in a few Ages be replenish d from one 
nation only; as for Instance, with Englishmen. Thus there are 
suppos d to be now upwards of One Million English Souls in North 
America, (tho tis thought scarce 80,000 have been brought over 
sea) and yet perhaps there is not one the fewer in Britain, but rather 
many more, on Account of the employment the Colonies afford to 
manufacturers at home. This million doubling, suppose but once 
in twenty-five years, will in another century be more than the peo 
ple of England, and the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on 
this side the water. What an accession of Power to the British 
empire by the Sea as well as Land! What increase of trade and navi 
gation! What numbers of ships and seamen! We have been here 
but little more than one hundred years, and yet the force of our 
Privateers in the late war, united, was greater, both in men and 
guns, than that of the whole British Navy in Queen Elizabeth s time. 
How important an affair then to Britain, is the present treaty for 
settling the bounds between her Colonies and the French, and how 
careful should she be to secure room enough, since on the room de 
pends so much the increase of her people? 

223 



10 OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE INCREASE OF MANKIND 

23. In fine, A nation well regulated is like a Polypus; take 
away a limb, its place is soon supply d; cut it in two, and each de 
ficient part shall speedily grow out of the part remaining. Thus 
if you have room and subsistence enough, as you may by dividing 
make ten Polypes out of one, you may of one make ten nations, 
equally populous and powerful; or rather, increase a nation ten fold 
in numbers and strength. 

And since detachments of English horn Britain sent to America, 
will have their places at home so soon supply d and increase so large 
ly here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into 
our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages 
and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, 
founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly 
be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, 
and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they 
can acquire our complexion? 

24. Which leads me to add one remark: That the number 
of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small. 
All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (ex 
clusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Span 
iards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what 
we call a swarthy complexion ; as are the Germans also, the Saxons 
only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of 
white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers 
were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our 
planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of 
our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars 
or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its 
people? why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in Ameri 
ca, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks 
and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps 
I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of 
partiality is natural to Mankind. 

If these three sections of  Franklin's (1755) essay, with what Zirkle (1941) saw as the texts that influenced Malthus, that so by 'knowledge contamination' influenced Darwin (and also Wallace)  did not inspire Matthew to write "On Naval Timber" in 1831 and "Emigration Fields" in 1839 then the coincidences are astounding. For Franklin writes on so many of Matthew's key themes: (1) A belief in the superiority of the Saxon's (2) The importance of trade and navigation, (3) The voracious need of the British to obtain timber (4) The fact that some varieties of the human species suffer overcrowding and so need to emigrate so as not to be 'interfering with each other's means of subsistence' (5) The likelihood that by emigration Anglo Saxon's would overtop existing populations in colonies. (6) The ability for any species  to have an ecological power of occupancy in the most circumstance suited environment - namely one that is supportive of life and devoid of superior competitors (think Dodo - until humans turned up). 

See PatrickMathew.com for more information on the discovery of Natural Selection