It was inevitable in a state having no staple crop, such as rice, sugar, tobacco, or cotton, which offered at least economic justification for negro slavery, that abolition of slaves should be urged partially on purely economic grounds, and that Pennsylvania should have been the first colony to legislate in favor of abolition, in 1780. Although one may feel that economic determinism is overly simple and audacious in its doctrinaire interpretations, one can not refuse to see the extent to which economics tended to buttress humane and religious factors in Franklin's mind to make him a persuasive champion of abolition.[i-195]
_A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency_[i-196] has been appraised as "by far the ablest and most original treatise that had been written on the subject up to 1728 and was probably the most widely read work on paper currency that appeared in colonial America."[i-197] That Franklin's interest in paper money was not unique, one may gather from the fact that between 1714 and 1721 "nearly thirty pamphlets appeared" on this subject in Massachusetts alone.[i-198] One of the 1728 theses at Harvard, answered in the affirmative, was: "Does the issue of paper money contribute to the public good?"[i-199] "Since there was a scarcity of circulating medium, caused by the constant drain of specie for export," explains Mr. D. R. Dewey, "it is not strange that projects for converting credit into wealth should have sprung up in the colonies."[i-200] Franklin argued in his _Modest Enquiry_[i-201] that (1) "A plentiful Currency will occasion Interest to be low," (2) it "will occasion the Trading Produce to bear a good Price," (3) it "will encourage great Numbers of labouring and Handicrafts Men to come and settle in the Country," and (4) it "will occasion a less consumption of European Goods, in proportion to the Number of the People." Thus he saw paper money as a "Morrison's Pill," promising to cure all economic ills.[i-202] It has been suggested that as a printer Franklin naturally would favor issues of paper money. In view of his later apostasy one should note that in this essay Franklin apparently accepted the current mercantilist notions, best expressed here in his conviction that paper money will secure a favorable balance of trade. Demands for emissions of paper money were inevitable in a colony in the grip of such a restrictive commercial policy as British mercantilism. It must be observed, however, that Franklin differed from the proper mercantilists to the extent that simple valuable metals were not to be measures of value. Deriving his idea from Sir William Petty, Franklin took labor as the true measure of value,[i-203]--a position later held by Karl Marx. In his preoccupation with the growth of manufactures and favorable balances of trade, Franklin gave no suggestions that at least by 1767 he was to become an exponent of agrarianism and free trade. One wonders to what extent his warnings against the purchase of "unnecessary Householdstuff, or any superfluous thing," his inveterate emphasis on industry and frugality, were conditioned by his view that such indulgence would essentially cause a preponderance of imports, hence casting against them an unfavorable trade balance.[i-204]