Franklin: Father of Invention, Voice of Liberty

The words under this portrait began as an argument over who would pay for frontier defense.

In 1755, with the Pennsylvania frontier open to attack after Braddock's defeat, the Assembly wanted to raise defense money by taxing, among other property, the lands of the Penn family, the colony's proprietors. Governor Robert Hunter Morris, who served at the family's pleasure, kept blocking the bill. On November 11 the Assembly answered him in writing, in a reply drafted by a committee that included Franklin. In it is the sentence: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." The liberty in question, as the Assembly saw it, was its right to govern itself, starting with the power to tax.

The wording on the portrait, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety," is a looser version of the original.

Franklin stands in three-quarter view in a brown coat and white neckcloth, spectacles low on his nose, one hand resting beside an open book. To his right a candle burns in a brass holder, and the arms of a pair of scales catch the light in the shadows. The quote sits in cream type at the lower left over his name in spaced capitals.