Franklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)

**Tom** (0:01)
This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5K house deposit. And this is something that was last seen in 1996

**Dominic** (0:12)
Yes, the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity, doesn't it? Think of the sort of the advent of the Blair administration in 1997, all the enthusiasm and excitement that surrounded that, the economic growth of the time, the technological developments, the sort of sense of an endless golden summer where we're listening to Blair and Oasis and looking forward to buying their first houses. And that, of course, takes us to mortgages. Now, the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s, Lloyds are offering 5K deposit mortgages to first time buyers. So search 5K first time buyer.

**Tom** (0:49)
1996 average first time buyer deposits are based on ONS data subject to status. Your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments and conditions apply.

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**Paris Hilton** (1:32)
Hey babes, it's Paris Hilton. So I was checking my points balance in the Hilton Honors app the other day. And yeah, I've got about a billion, which feels excessive, even for me. Just kidding. You can never have too many Hilton Honors points. And I want to do something iconic this summer. So I'm giving away all my Paris points. Just find somewhere you've always wanted to stay, then go to my socials or Hilton's and tell me about it. Just make sure you're a Hilton Honors member and I might be sending you Paris points. Because when you want points that make your summer even hotter, it matters where you stay.

**Dominic** (2:13)
A lion's whelp was put on board a guinea ship bound to America as a present to a friend in that country. It was tame and harmless as a kitten, and therefore not confined, but suffered to walk about the ship at pleasure.
A stately, full-grown English mastiff belonging to the captain, despoising the weakness of the young lion, frequently took its food by farce and often turned it out of its lodging box when it had a moine to repose therein himself.
The young lion nevertheless grew daily in soys and strength, and the voyage being long, he became at last a more equal match for the mastiff, who, continuing his insults, received a stunning blow from the lion's paw that fetched his skin over his ears and deterred him from any future contest with such growing strength, regretting that he had not rather secured its friendship than provoked its enmity.
So that was a chilling parable. And it was first published in the General Advertiser on the 2nd of January, 1770 Two months before the event that Americans call the Boston Massacre. And that's the moment when British troops who were being attacked by a hostile mob fired on the crowd and killed no fewer than five Americans. And this so-called massacre was a crucial episode in the process that would see the 13 rebel colonies of North America secede from the mother country, Britain. They won a war that lasted eight years. And with the aid of the French, they established themselves as the United States of America, as an independent and sovereign republic. And this summer marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And Tom, we're marking it by exploring the lives of four of the Founding Fathers, as they would have called themselves. So in our first episode, we talked about George Washington, the most celebrated of the Founding Fathers, unquestionably the one with the worst teeth. But he did not sign the Declaration of Independence. Now today, we are with the first of the two signatories that we're talking about in this series. And this is the man who wrote that parable about the mastiff and the lion cub. And that is a man called Benjamin Franklin, correct?

**Tom** (4:48)
And I think the meaning of that parable is very clear. The mastiff, the pedigree dog is Britain, and the lion cub is America. And Franklin is basically warning the British, don't push us Americans around, assuming that we are always going to be as puny as we currently are because we are going to grow up.