Benjamin franklin inventions

Printed in [William Clarke], Observations On the late and present Conduct of the French, with Regard to their Encroachments upon the British Colonies in North America.

… To which is added, wrote by another Hand; Observations concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries,&c. Boston: Printed and Sold by S. Kneeland in Queen-Street. 1755. (Yale University Library)

The “immediate occasion” for writing this essay, according to Van Doren,6 was the British Iron Act of 1750, which prohibited the erection of additional slitting and rolling mills, plating forges, and steel furnaces in the American colonies.7 While English ironmasters rejoiced in the protection the law afforded them, a few farsighted Britons and most Americans appreciated that the act would curb colonial growth at just the moment when Britain and France were engaged in a climactic struggle for possession of North America.8

Franklin wrote the essay in 1751.

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