Long before Australia became famous as the place Britain sent convicted criminals, the British government had another conveniently distant destination available: America. Thousands of convicts were transported across the Atlantic and deposited in Britain’s North American colonies, where they were expected to provide labor, increase the population, and remain an ocean away from the people who had sentenced them.

The colonists were not uniformly delighted with this arrangement. Benjamin Franklin, who possessed the unfortunate habit of noticing absurdity and the even more unfortunate habit of owning a printing press, proposed a solution.

If Britain insisted upon sending America its criminals, America should send Britain something equally useful in return. Benjamin Franklin, approaching the matter with all the solemnity of a trade negotiator, proposed the obvious solution: rattlesnakes for felons.

Britain Discovers a Conveniently Distant Prison

For centuries, English law permitted the government to remove convicted criminals from the country and send them somewhere else. This was known as “transportation,” because “placing unwanted people aboard a ship and making them someone else’s problem” required too much space in official records.

Transportation offered the government several advantages. It removed offenders from British streets, reduced pressure on overcrowded jails, supplied cheap labor to the colonies, and spared some criminals from execution.

Britain’s criminal law imposed the death penalty for an impressive range of offenses. Transportation therefore sometimes served as a welcome alternative to hanging, particularly for people whose crimes were considered serious enough to demand severe punishment but not quite serious enough to justify all the paperwork associated with a public execution.

Under the Transportation Act of 1718, courts could sentence offenders to terms of transportation. Many were shipped to colonies such as Maryland and Virginia, where merchants sold their labor for a period of years.

This should not be mistaken for some early version of community service disguised as the Peace Corps. The voyage was involuntary, the accommodations lacked several amenities, and upon arrival the passenger could expect to spend years working for someone who had purchased the right to his labor. The travel brochure, had one existed, would have consisted largely of warnings printed beneath a drawing of a locked door.

Colonial governments repeatedly attempted to restrict the importation of convicts or impose duties that would discourage the trade. Britain generally objected, maintaining that transported offenders helped populate and develop the colonies.

This was technically true in the same sense that termites contribute to the population of a house. The colonies needed labor, and not everyone transported to America remained a criminal menace. Some completed their terms, established new lives, and became productive members of their communities.

Others did not. Colonial newspapers regularly reported robberies, assaults, murders, escapes, and other crimes involving transported convicts, reinforcing the belief that Britain was improving colonial society by emptying its prisons directly into it.

It was an unusually generous imperial policy. Britain kept the benefit of having fewer criminals while allowing the colonies to enjoy the character-building experience of having more.

Benjamin Franklin Proposes Rattlesnakes for Felons

On May 9, 1751, the Pennsylvania Gazette published a letter signed “Americanus.” The essay is generally known as Rattle-Snakes for Felons or Felons and Rattlesnakes, and its author was Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin began by pretending to accept Britain’s explanation entirely. Of course the government refused to let colonial assemblies discourage the importation of convicts. Such restrictions would interfere with the “well peopling” of the colonies, and surely the colonists ought to appreciate such tender parental concern from the mother country.

That generosity demanded an appropriate expression of colonial gratitude. America could never fully repay Britain for the gift of thieves, burglars, highway robbers, and assorted graduates of the British criminal justice system, but it should at least make an effort.

Fortunately, the colonies possessed a valuable native resource. In the less populated regions of America lived large numbers of rattlesnakes, which Franklin described as “felons-convict from the beginning of the world.”

When colonists encountered one of these snakes, they generally killed it. Franklin acknowledged that this practice could be considered excessively harsh. Perhaps the snakes should not receive the death penalty merely for being dangerous, venomous, and unwelcome; perhaps their sentences should be commuted to transportation.

A Humane Program for Rehabilitating Rattlesnakes

Franklin’s proposal had the reassuring tone of a man who had considered every administrative detail. In early spring, rattlesnakes emerged from their dens sluggish and weakened by the cold, making them relatively easy to capture—at least by eighteenth-century standards of workplace safety.

The colonial governments could offer a small bounty for each snake. Enterprising Americans would then collect thousands of them annually and place them aboard ships bound for Britain.

The plan combined wildlife management, economic development, and international trade. It also gave young colonists valuable experience in placing venomous reptiles into shipping containers, a skill that presumably looked impressive on an eighteenth-century résumé.

Franklin did not explain what the snakes would eat during the voyage or how the ship’s crew might feel about the cargo. These were operational details; the important thing was the vision.

Once the snakes reached Britain, they would be distributed throughout the country. Some could be released in St. James’s Park and other popular recreational areas around London, while others could be placed in the gardens of Britain’s nobility and landed gentry.

Franklin was especially eager to stock the gardens belonging to the prime ministers, members of Parliament, and officials of the Board of Trade. These gentlemen had been particularly instrumental in preserving the convict trade, so it was only proper that they receive the first specimens.

One imagines a government minister stepping outside on a pleasant spring morning, tea in hand, only to discover that the American colonies had sent a delegation. The delegation would not require a formal audience; it would already be under the shrubbery.

No Government Program Is Entirely Free of Drawbacks

Franklin conceded that objections might be raised. Rattlesnakes were dangerous. Some might bite people, children could be killed, and a beloved household pet might encounter one while exploring the garden and experience an abrupt decline in enthusiasm.

Franklin did not deny these possibilities. Instead, he borrowed the logic Britain used to defend convict transportation: no public policy is perfect, every useful program has disadvantages, and private suffering should not be allowed to obstruct a policy that serves the public good.

Britain expected Americans to accept that reasoning despite colonial complaints that transported criminals committed robberies, corrupted young people, assaulted families, and sometimes committed far worse crimes. Franklin gleefully assembled the most horrifying examples available, but what were a few ruined lives compared with the grand imperial objective of increasing the colonial population?

By the same reasoning, Britain should not become distracted merely because an imported rattlesnake occasionally killed a child or dispatched an aristocrat’s favorite lapdog. Progress demands sacrifice, although the people making the sacrifice had not been consulted. This was apparently a feature of eighteenth-century imperial administration rather than an oversight.

Rattlesnakes Could Improve British Politics

Franklin then identified another benefit of his proposal. Critics might argue that rattlesnakes would not become less dangerous merely because they had crossed the Atlantic, but Franklin responded that the snakes could nevertheless provide useful instruction to members of the British political class.

By observing rattlesnakes, ambitious courtiers could learn how to creep, wriggle into positions of influence, insinuate themselves into favorable situations, and poison anyone standing between them and advancement. The snakes would therefore function as political consultants.

This portion of Franklin’s proposal may have been the least necessary. British courtiers had presumably developed most of those skills without professional instruction from reptiles, but continuing education is important.

A garden full of rattlesnakes could serve as an outdoor leadership seminar. Government officials could study efficient movement, strategic concealment, sudden attacks, and the advantages of remaining perfectly still until an unsuspecting person wandered within range. Attendance would be mandatory; departure would depend upon where everyone stepped.

International Trade Requires a Return Shipment

Franklin’s final argument was economic. Britain’s transportation of convicts could be regarded as a form of trade: the mother country exported criminals, and the colonies received them.

Proper trade, however, requires something to move in the opposite direction. America could not continue accepting British cargo without supplying a suitable colonial product in return.

Tobacco, rice, timber, and animal skins were valuable, but none adequately expressed the colonies’ feelings about receiving boatloads of convicted criminals. Rattlesnakes were better.

Britain sent human serpents to America, and America would send actual serpents to Britain. The arrangement was balanced, commercially respectable, and remarkably easy to explain on a customs declaration.

Franklin nevertheless admitted that Britain would still receive the better end of the bargain: “For the Rattle-Snake gives Warning before he attempts his Mischief; which the Convict does not.”

After several paragraphs comparing transported criminals to venomous reptiles, Franklin concluded that the comparison was unfair—to the reptile.

Franklin Was Joking, but the Anger Was Real

Franklin was not genuinely organizing an international rattlesnake exchange. No colonial snake bounty was created, no fleet of reptile transports sailed for London, and no member of Parliament opened his garden shed to discover several hundred expressions of American gratitude. He was using absurdity to illustrate the absurd.

Franklin’s gift for turning irritation into literature was hardly limited to venomous reptiles. He also famously proposed that Parisians could save candles by getting out of bed earlier—an idea sometimes credited as the origin of daylight saving time—and devoted an entire mock-scientific essay to the question of whether human flatulence might be made less offensive to polite society in Fart Proudly.

Franklin’s satire was funny precisely because it was effective: he simply reversed Britain’s reasoning. British officials maintained that transporting criminals benefited the colonies despite colonial objections and the harm caused by some of those transported. Franklin imagined Americans making precisely the same argument after releasing dangerous animals in British neighborhoods.

Do the snakes sometimes cause injuries? Possibly, but they contribute to Britain’s improvement. Are local residents opposed to receiving them? They are mistaken about their own interests. Would government officials prefer that the snakes be placed somewhere else? How curious. The colonists felt the same way about the convicts.

This was one of Franklin’s favorite satirical methods. He accepted an opponent’s logic, carried it calmly in the opposite direction, and waited for everyone to notice that it had become ridiculous.

Franklin’s Proposal, in His Own Words

Franklin’s argument in its full, magnificently venomous form appears below. We have modernized the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation for readability, but otherwise left Franklin’s wording intact.

America Learns to Appreciate the Rattlesnake

Franklin’s 1751 article did not portray the rattlesnake as a noble creature. It was dangerous, venomous, and particularly suitable for placement near government officials.

Over the next quarter-century, however, the rattlesnake acquired a considerably more flattering place in American political imagery. In 1754, Franklin published his famous “Join, or Die” cartoon, showing a snake divided into sections representing the colonies and urging colonial unity during the conflict with France.

As relations with Britain deteriorated, the snake became a symbol of American vigilance and resistance. By the Revolutionary era, coiled rattlesnakes appeared on flags, military drums, newspaper mastheads, and other patriotic images. The best-known example is the Gadsden flag, with its rattlesnake and warning not to tread upon it.

The rattlesnake was well suited to the role. It was distinctively American, possessed formidable defensive weapons, and generally warned an approaching threat before striking.

The animal that Franklin once offered as a sarcastic export eventually became an emblem of the colonies themselves. In 1751, Franklin told Britain, “We should send you rattlesnakes.” By the Revolution, America was saying, “We are the rattlesnake.”

Britain continued stepping closer.

A Founding Father with Venom

Franklin’s real target was not the convicts, the rattlesnakes, or even the British officials who might unexpectedly discover both venom and irony in the shrubbery. It was the logic behind the policy. Britain insisted that transporting criminals to America was good for the colonies, and Franklin’s response was essentially, “Excellent. Then surely the same principle will work just as well when applied in the opposite direction.”

That was one of Franklin’s most effective satirical tricks. He did not need to invent a complicated counterargument because the government had already supplied him with one. He simply accepted its reasoning, polished it, extended it to its logical conclusion, and handed it back with a rattlesnake attached.

The brilliance of the piece is that Franklin never has to announce that the policy is absurd. He lets the policy demonstrate that for itself. Each time the imagined objections grow louder—people could be injured, families could suffer, innocent victims might pay the price—Franklin responds with the same sort of assurances colonists had already been receiving from London. Yes, there may be unfortunate consequences, but one must consider the larger public good. It is remarkable how quickly a principle loses its charm when the person explaining it proposes releasing rattlesnakes near your house.

That is why Rattle-Snakes for Felons still works nearly three centuries later. Franklin understood that some government policies are difficult to defeat with indignation because their defenders have already developed an impressive immunity to indignation. Sometimes the better approach is simply to take the official reasoning seriously—far more seriously than its authors ever intended—and follow it all the way to the point where everyone can see what is hiding under the rosebushes.

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