Itâ€™s time to kill the $100 bill

I posted the link precisely because it clarifies who the “savage” is. Franklin is not referring to the Indians specifically, but to the individual in general. He believed that individual rights (most exemplified in property rights) should be subordinate to the whims of the public.

I noted he referred to temporary houses and their ‘bow’. Those Savages he referred to were indeed the Indians. You only see the seed of Manifest Destiny there, not Socialism.

He uses the Indians as an example of why property rights should be limited. Perhaps I should have posted this passage, which upon looking at it more carefully provides more clarity:

All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition.

Kill cash, kill freedom. That is when the next revolution starts.

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it.

Is Franklin discussing the private property of the colonists (newly Americans), or is he discussing the Frontier?

To me, this is not completely clear from the passages quoted, but I think it is the latter. Here, he cedes to the Savage (note his use of the capital letter 'S', implying the indigenous peoples, only what they need to subsist and their personal effects and housing.

The public (government) does regulate Descents (inheritances), the sale or transfer of property (deeds recorded, plats and surveys) and even the use of property, in that there was some rudimentary zoning. Who would want a tavern next to an abattoir or a tannery, for instance?

All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition.

This, to my interpretation, speaks of the unclaimed lands of the frontier, owned by the State, that no man should be able to go forth and lay claim to vast tracts to the exclusion of others, which he himself could not use.

Even later during the homesteading era in the West, the homesteads were limited to 160 acres, a square area a quarter of a mile on either side or the equivalent, generally considered to be as much as any man could farm with the implements of the day. There were ways to thwart those limits, and they were used by some. Still others selected tracts which controlled access to water, and thus controlled the use of far larger tracts suitable for rangeland, but did not get title to the land which had no direct water access. That remained government owned, or commonly was homesteaded but the homestead failed for lack of good water. That go-back land (went back to the government because the homestead or farm did not prove out) became the BLM land of today. In some areas, where that is predominantly prairie, those lands are leased by the BLM to ranchers or are kept idle by the government through various means.

While mechanization means the farm of today (dry land wheat farming, for instance) is several sections (each a mile square, roughly 640 acres) in order to be economically viable, in Franklin's day it would have taken a huge herd of draft animals and a small army to farm grain on that much land--far beyond the scope of any homesteader.

Thus, placing limits on the acquisition of land--and likely, the Indians' retention of it, meant that more of the land would be productive instead of sitting idle, and that was important to the development of the colony/State and the Country. The taxes he mentions are the expenses of running what little enough government there was, and a means of disposing of the public debt.