Benjamin Franklin and His Moral Code

Abstract

The following pages will be dedicated to the close examination of all the fourteen letters while concentrating not only on the defects of the society of Franklin’s Boston but also on the way things should have been according to Franklin and his own rules of virtue and goodness with references to his Autobiography. Special attention will be given to Franklin’s family background, the history of the New England Courant – the newspaper of his elder brother, James, where the letters were published – the particular pseudonym he chose and the atmosphere that ruled the streets of Boston during the first half of the eighteenth century. Franklin’s harsh criticism was not completely groundless. At the age of sixteen he was able to see the defects of his society and mediate them in a purely socializing way.