Chapter III: Franklin as a Statesman (5)

Indeed the almost miraculous way in which the population and wealth of America were increasing from year to year was one of the facts which entered most deeply into Franklin's calculation of the resources upon which she could rely not for the purpose of breaking away from the British connection but for the purpose of preventing it from being abused by England. No one saw more clearly than he that the day would come when some descendant, such as Gladstone, of one of his British contemporaries might well apostrophize America as a daughter that, at no very distant time, would, whether fairer or less fair, be unquestionably stronger than the mother.[22] To Thomas Cushing he wrote in 1773 that the longer England delayed the accommodation, which finally for her own sake she must obtain, the worse terms she might expect, since the inequality of power and importance that then subsisted between her and America was daily diminishing; while the latter's sense of her own rights and of England's injustice was continually increasing.

Optimistic on the whole, however, as was Franklin's outlook during the interval of political strife which preceded the American Revolution, intently as he watched every ebb and flow of English feeling, while this period lasted, it is manifest that in its later stages he realized that the currents upon which he was being borne were steadily moving towards the jaws of the maelstrom. This is apparent enough in his perspicacious letter of May 15, 1771, to the Committee of Correspondence in Massachusetts.

I think one may clearly see, in the system of customs
to be exacted in America by act of Parliament, the
seeds sown of a total disunion of the two countries,
though, as yet, that event may be at a considerable
distance. The course and natural progress seems to be,
first, the appointment of needy men as officers, for
others do not care to leave England; then, their
necessities make them rapacious, their office makes
them proud and insolent, their insolence and rapacity
make them odious, and, being conscious that they are
hated, they become malicious; their malice urges them
to a continual abuse of the inhabitants in their
letters to administration, representing them as
disaffected and rebellious, and (to encourage the use
of severity), as weak, divided, timid, and cowardly.
Government believes all; thinks it necessary to support
and countenance its officers; their quarreling with the
people is deemed a mark and consequence of their
fidelity; they are therefore more highly rewarded, and
this makes their conduct still more insolent and
provoking.

The resentment of the people will, at times and on
particular incidents, burst into outrages and violence
upon such officers, and this naturally draws down
severity and acts of further oppression from hence. The
more the people are dissatisfied, the more rigor will
be thought necessary; severe punishments will be
inflicted to terrify; rights and privileges will be
abolished; greater force will then be required to
secure execution and submission; the expense will
become enormous; it will then be thought proper, by
fresh exactions, to make the people defray it; thence,
the British nation and government will become odious,
the subjection to it will be deemed no longer
tolerable; war ensues, and the bloody struggle will end
in absolute slavery to America, or ruin to Britain by
the loss of her colonies; the latter most probable,
from America's growing strength and magnitude.

But, as the whole empire must, in either case, be
greatly weakened, I cannot but wish to see much
patience and the utmost discretion in our general
conduct, that the fatal period may be postponed, and
that, whenever this catastrophe shall happen, it may
appear to all mankind that the fault has not been ours.

Franklin's written comments upon the American controversy between the passage of the Stamp Act and his return to America in 1775 are usually marked by a sobriety and dignity of expression worthy of their wisdom. It is only at times that the strong character, habitually held in leash by innate prudence and severely disciplined self-control, breaks out into impatience. Naturally enough now and then he has a word of scorn for the graceless venality which made Westminster almost as much a market as Smithfield, and was, after all, the real thing that rendered England deaf to the warning "Time is" of Friar Bacon's brazen mouth-piece.

Many think the new Parliament will be for reversing the
late proceedings [he wrote to Galloway in 1774], but
that depends on the Court, on which every Parliament
seems to be dependent; so much so, that I begin to
think a Parliament here of little Use to the People:
For since a Parliament is always to do as a ministry
would have it, why should we not be govern'd by the
Ministry in the first Instance? They could afford to
govern us cheaper, the Parliament being a very
expensive Machine, that requires a vast deal of oiling
and greasing at the People's Charge; for they finally
pay all the enormous Salaries of Places, the Pensions,
and the Bribes, now by Custom become necessary to
induce the Members to vote according to their
Consciences.

Franklin would have been more than human if he had not had a resentful word to say too, when, as the result of the refusal of the Americans to drink any tea, except such as was smuggled into America, free of the detested duty, by the commercial rivals of England, the East India Company could no longer meet its debts, let alone pay dividends and the annuity of four hundred thousand pounds, payable by it to the British Government, and bankruptcy was following bankruptcy like a series of falling bricks, and thousands of Spitalfield and Manchester weavers were starving, or subsisting upon charity. "Blessed Effects of Pride, Pique, and Passion in Government, which should have no Passions," was the caustic observation of Franklin in one of his letters to his son. Bitterness welled up again in his throat when, after he had been bayed by the Privy Council, and dismissed from his office, a special instruction was issued to the Governor of Massachusetts not to sign any warrant on the Treasury for the purpose of paying him any salary as the agent of Massachusetts or reimbursing him for any expenses incurred on her behalf.

The Injustice [he said in his _Tract Relative to the
Affair of Hutchinson's Letters_] of thus depriving the
People there of the Use of their own Money, to pay an
Agent acting in their Defence, while the Governor, with
a large Salary out of the Money extorted from them by
Act of Parliament, was enabled to pay plentifully
Maudit and Wedderburn to abuse and defame them and
their Agent, is so evident as to need no Comment. But
this they call GOVERNMENT!

Indecent, however, as was the treatment accorded by the Privy Council to the man, who had striven so loyally, so zealously and so wisely to promote the greatness and glory of England, it hardly conveyed a ruder shock to his mind than that which it received later when he saw the plan for the settlement of the American Controversy drafted by Lord Chatham rejected by the House of Lords, with as much contempt he told Charles Thomson, "as they could have shown to a Ballad offered by a drunken Porter."

To hear so many of these _Hereditary_ Legislators [he
said in his _Account of Negotiations in London_],
declaiming so vehemently against, not the Adopting
merely, but even the _Consideration_ of a Proposal so
important in its Nature, offered by a Person of so
weighty a Character, one of the first Statesmen of the
Age, who had taken up this Country when in the lowest
Despondency, and conducted it to Victory and Glory,
thro' a War with two of the mightiest Kingdoms in
Europe; to hear them censuring his Plan, not only for
their own Misunderstandings of what was in it, but for
their Imaginations of what was not in it, which they
would not give themselves an Opportunity of rectifying
by a second Reading; to perceive the total Ignorance of
the Subject in some, the Prejudice and Passion of
others, and the wilful Perversion of Plain Truth in
several of the Ministers; and upon the whole to see it
so ignominiously rejected by so great a Majority, and
so hastily too, in Breach of all Decency, and prudent
Regard to the Character and Dignity of their Body, as a
third Part of the National Legislature, gave me an
exceeding mean Opinion of their Abilities, and made
their Claim of Sovereignty over three Millions of
Virtuous, sensible People in America seem the greatest
of Absurdities, since they appear'd to have scarce
Discretion enough to govern a Herd of Swine.
_Hereditary Legislators_! thought I. There would be
more Propriety, because less Hazard of Mischief, in
having (as in some University of Germany) _Hereditary
Professors of Mathematicks_.

Yet this is the Government [Franklin declared in the
letter to Charles Thomson, in which he used the simile
of the ballad and the drunken porter, and also referred
to equally rash conduct upon the part of the House of
Commons], by whose Supreme Authority, we are to have
our Throats cut, if we do not acknowledge, and whose
dictates we are implicitly to obey, while their conduct
hardly entitles them to Common Respect.

But it was only after he had been shamelessly and publicly proscribed, under circumstances which gave him good reason to believe that he was but the vicarious victim of a People unfeelingly doomed to the cruel alternatives of fratricidal resistance or vassalage, that he gave way, though still engaged in a last effort to stave off the evil day of separation, to such reproachful or denunciatory utterances as these. Indeed, as it is a satisfaction to a stupid man to know that Homer sometimes nodded, and to a vicious man to know that the character of Washington is supposed to have been at last successfully fly-specked by some petty scandal-monger, so it ought to be a relief to a hasty man to know that Franklin was once on the point of succumbing entirely to a sudden flaw of anger. Goaded beyond endurance by the reflections, which he had just heard in the House of Lords on everything American, including American courage, honesty and intelligence, reflections as contemptuous, he said, as if his countrymen were the lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from the English of Britain, he drew up a heated protest, as the agent of Massachusetts, demanding from Great Britain present satisfaction for the blockade of Boston, and stating that satisfaction for the proposed exclusion of Massachusetts from the Newfoundland and other fisheries, if carried into effect, would probably also some day be demanded. When he showed the paper to his friend, Thomas Walpole, a member of the House of Commons, Walpole, we are told by him, looked at it and him several times alternately, as if he apprehended him to be out of his senses. However, Franklin asked him to lay it before Lord Camden, which he undertook to do. When it came back to Franklin, it was with a note from Walpole telling him simply that it was thought that it might be attended with dangerous consequences to his person, and contribute to exasperate the nation. The caution that Franklin exhibited before permitting the protest to pass from his possession suggests the idea that, in writing it, he was merely seeking a safe vent for the mental ferment of the moment. It was doubtless well for him that the paper got no further; for it is painful to relate that the disposition was not wanting in England to construe some of his letters to Thomas Cushing as treasonable. In a letter to Cushing, he said that he was not conscious of any treasonable intention, but that, after the manner in which he had recently been treated in the matter of the Hutchinson letters, he was not to wonder if less than a small lump in his forehead was voted a horn. Six months later, he wrote to Galloway that it was thought by many that, if the British soldiers and the New Englanders should come to blows, he would probably be taken up; for the ministerial people affected everywhere to represent him as the cause of all the misunderstanding. We know nothing better calculated to show how hopeless it is for the lamb downstream to convince the wolf upstream that the water flowing by him was not muddied from below than the fact that, during the debate over Lord Chatham's conciliatory Plan, Lord Sandwich referred to Franklin as one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies that England had ever known. That is to say, Franklin, the loyal Englishman who, in one of his early papers on electricity, could not even mention the King without adding, "God preserve him," who had shrunk in the beginning from the agitation against the Stamp Act as little less than treason, who had deprecated the Boston tea-party as lawless violence, and had, from first to last, condemned mob-license in every form in America as steadfastly as tyranny in England.

The wonder is that he should not have reached the decision sooner than he did that there was nothing to be gained for his country by his longer sojourn in England. His intercourse, as an American agent with Lord Hillsborough, when Secretary of State for America and First Commissioner to the Board of Trade, was alone enough to bring him to such a decision.[23] As an Irishman, familiar with the repressive policy of England in Ireland, Hillsborough could not well approve of British restrictions upon American commerce and manufactures; but there his sympathy with America ceased. Franklin truly said that the agents of the Colonies in England were quite as useful to England as to the Colonies, since they had more than once by timely advice kept the English Government from making mistakes arising out of ignorance of special conditions peculiar to America. But this view was not shared by Hillsborough. He insisted that no agent from Massachusetts should be recognized in England, who was not appointed, from year to year, by the General Court of Massachusetts by an act, to which the Governor of that colony had given his assent. As the Governor was dependent for his appointment upon the British Ministry, and would hardly fail to name any one as agent, who might be selected by it, such a tenure was equivalent to vesting the selection of the agent in Hillsborough himself, whose wishes, when selected, the agent was not likely to oppose. Under such conditions, an agent would be of no value to the colony, Franklin declared, and, under such conditions, he further declared, he would not be willing himself to hold the post. "His Character is Conceit, Wrongheadedness, Obstinacy, and Passion." Such were the terms in which Franklin summed up the moral attributes of Hillsborough to Dr. Cooper, after he had vainly striven for several years to give the former some salutary conception of the importance of ascertaining the real sentiments and wants of America. The letter, in which these terms were employed, was accompanied by minutes of a spirited dialogue between Franklin and Hillsborough, which almost makes us regret that the former, among his other literary ventures, had not tested his qualifications as a playwright. The part of Hillsborough in the colloquy was to let Franklin fully know in language of mixed petulance and contempt that he declined to recognize him as an agent.

No such appointment shall be entered [he is minuted as
declaring]. When I came into the administration of
American affairs, I found them in great disorder. By
_my firmness_ they are now something mended; and, while
I have the honour to hold the seals, I shall continue
the same conduct, the same _firmness_. I think my duty
to the master I serve, and to the government of this
nation, requires it of me. If that conduct is not
approved, _they_ may take my office from me when they
please. I shall make them a bow, and thank them; I
shall resign with pleasure. That gentleman knows it,
(_pointing to Mr. Pownall_), but, while I continue in
it, I shall resolutely persevere in the same FIRMNESS.
(_Spoken with great warmth, and turning pale in his
discourse, as if he was angry at something or somebody
besides the agent, and of more consequence to
himself._)

Then follows Franklin's reply:

B. F. (_Reaching out his hand for the paper, which his
Lordship returned to him_). I beg your Lordship's
pardon for taking up so much of your time. It is, I
believe, of no great importance whether the appointment
is acknowledged or not, for I have not the least
conception that an agent can _at present_ be of any use
to any of the colonies. I shall therefore give your
Lordship no further trouble. (Withdrew.)

As the dialogue discloses, Hillsborough had quite enough enemies already to render it prudent for him to abstain from making another of a man who had declared in the letter, with which it was enclosed, that, if there was to be a war between them, he would do his best to defend himself, and annoy his adversary little, regarding the story of the Earthen Pot and Brazen Pitcher.

One encouragement I have [Franklin said in his letter],
the knowledge, that he is not a whit better lik'd by
his Colleagues in the Ministry, than he is by me, that
he can not probably continue where he is much longer,
and that he can scarce be succeeded by anybody, who
will not like me the better for his having been at
Variance with me.

Later, Franklin wrote to Thomas Cushing:

This Man's Mandates have been treated with Disrespect
in America, his Letters have been criticis'd, his
Measures censur'd and despis'd; which has produced in
him a kind of settled Malice against the Colonies,
particularly ours, that would break out into greater
Violence if cooler Heads did not set some Bounds to it.
I have indeed good Reason to believe that his Conduct
is far from being approved by the King's other
Servants, and that he himself is so generally dislik'd
by them that it is not probable he will continue much
longer in his present Station, the general Wish here
being to recover (saving only the Dignity of
Government) the Good-Will of the Colonies, which there
is little reason to expect while they are under his
wild Administration. Their permitting so long his
Eccentricities (if I may use such an Expression) is
owing, I imagine, rather to the Difficulty of knowing
how to dispose of or what to do with a man of his
wrong-headed bustling Industry, who, it is apprehended,
may be more mischievous out of Administration than in
it, than to any kind of personal Regard for him.

The Earthen Pot and the Brazen Pitcher _did_ collide, and, contrary to every physical law, it was not the Earthen Pot that suffered. Certain Americans, including Franklin himself, and certain Englishmen had applied to the Crown for a tract of land between the Alleghanies and the Ohio River, and their petition was referred to the Board of Trade of which Hillsborough was President. It asked for the right to settle two million, five hundred thousand acres. Hillsborough, who was secretly hostile to the grant, for the purpose of over-loading the application, deceitfully suggested that the applicants should ask for enough land to constitute a province; whereupon Franklin took him at his word and changed the acreage petitioned for to twenty-three million acres. When the report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, drafted by Hillsborough, was made, it opposed the grant.

If a vast territory [said His Majesty's Governor of
Georgia, in a letter to the Commissioners, which is
quoted in the Report], be granted to any set of
gentlemen, who really mean to people it, and actually
do so, it must draw and carry out a great number of
people from Great Britain; and I apprehend they will
soon become a kind of separate and independent people,
and who will set up for themselves; that they will soon
have manufactures of their own; that they will neither
take supplies from the mother country, nor from the
provinces, at the back of which they are settled; that,
being at a distance from the seat of government,
courts, magistrates, &c., &c., they will be out of the
reach and control of law and government; that it will
become a receptacle and kind of asylum for offenders,
who will fly from justice to such new country or
colony.

To this report, which sought to confine America to practically the same limits as those fixed by the French, Franklin, with his knowledge of American conditions, and breadth of vision, made such a crushing reply that, when the report and the reply came before the Privy Council, the application for the grant, partly because of the strength of Franklin's reply, and, partly from dislike to Hillsborough, was approved. Mortified by this action, Hillsborough resigned his office, and was succeeded by Lord Dartmouth, the nobleman described by Cowper as "One who wears a coronet, and prays."

In keeping with the deceit, practiced by Hillsborough, in endeavoring to give an extravagant turn to the Ohio petition, was his previous bearing towards Franklin after the interview with the latter, at which he paid such a fulsome tribute to his own firmness. During the year preceding the action of the Privy Council, Franklin had heard that Hillsborough had expressed himself about him in very angry terms, calling him a Republican, a factious, mischievous fellow, and the like. Nevertheless, a few weeks later, when he was in Ireland, Hillsborough pressed him so warmly to call upon him at his country-seat, upon his way to the North of Ireland, that he did so, and was detained there no less than four days, in the enjoyment of a hospitality so assiduous that his host, Franklin tells us, even put his oldest son, Lord Kilwarling, into his phaeton with him, to drive him a round of forty miles, that he might see the country, the seats, manufactures, etc., and moreover covered him with his own great coat lest he should take cold. Later, after both Franklin and Hillsborough had returned to London, the former called upon the latter repeatedly for the purpose of thanking him for his civilities in Ireland. On each day, he was told that his Lordship was not at home, although on two of them he had good reason to know the contrary. On the last of the two, which was one of his Lordship's levee days, the porter, seeing Franklin, came out and surlily chid the latter's coachman for opening the door of his coach before he had inquired whether his Lordship was at home. Then, turning to Franklin, he said, "My Lord is not at home." "I have never since been nigh him," Franklin wrote to his son, "and we have only abused one another at a distance."

During the year succeeding the action of the Privy Council, when Franklin was with his friend Lord Le Despencer at Oxford, Lord Hillsborough, upon being told by Lord Le Despencer, as they were descending the stairs in Queen's College, that Franklin was above, reascended them immediately, and, approaching Franklin in the pleasantest manner imaginable, said, "Dr. Franklin, I did not know till this Minute that you were here, and I am come back _to make you my Bow_! I am glad to see you at Oxford, and that you look so well," &c.

In Return for this Extravagance [Franklin said in a
letter to his son], I complimented him on his Son's
Performance in the Theatre, tho' indeed it was but
indifferent, so that Account was settled. For as People
say, when they are angry, _If he strikes me_, _I'll
strike him again_; I think sometimes it may be right to
say, _If he flatters me_, _I'll flatter him again_.
This is _Lex Talionis_, returning Offences in kind. His
Son however (Lord Fairford), is a valuable young Man,
and his Daughters, Ladys Mary and Charlotte, most
amiable young Women. My Quarrel is only with him, who,
of all the Men I ever met with, is surely the most
unequal in his Treatment of People, the most insincere,
and the most wrong-headed.

Such was the man, to whom the oversight of American affairs was committed at a highly critical period in the relations of England and the Colonies. Speaking of Hillsborough's successor, Lord Dartmouth, Franklin said, "he is truly a good Man, and wishes sincerely a good Understanding with the Colonies, but does not seem to have Strength equal to his Wishes." This minister was wise enough to recognize the agents of the American colonies, including Franklin, again, despite the stand taken by Hillsborough against them. But, when Lord Chatham's conciliatory plan was so summarily rejected by the House of Lords, Dartmouth, though he had, when the motion was first made, suggested that it should be deliberately considered, was later swept along unresistingly by the majority. In his account of the incident, Franklin said, "I am the more particular in this, as it is a Trait of that Nobleman's Character, who from his Office is suppos'd to have so great a Share in American affairs, but who has in reality no Will or Judgment of his own, being with Dispositions for the best Measures, easily prevail'd with to join in the worst."

But it is in the history of the Hutchinson letters that we find the most convincing proof of the hopelessness of Franklin's task in his endeavor to bring public opinion in England over to his generous views of her true interests. On one occasion, when speaking in terms of warm resentment of the conduct of the ministry in dispatching troops to Boston, he was to his great surprise, to use his own words, assured by a gentleman of character and distinction that the action of the ministry in this, and the other respects, obnoxious to America, had been brought about by some of the most reputable persons among the Americans themselves. He was skeptical, and the gentleman, whose name he never revealed, being desirous of establishing the truth of his statement to the satisfaction of both Franklin and Franklin's countrymen, called upon Franklin a few days afterwards, and exhibited to him letters from Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson and Secretary Andrew Oliver of Massachusetts, and other residents of that colony which only too conclusively confirmed what had been said. The gentleman would not permit copies to be taken of the letters, but he delivered the originals to Franklin with the express understanding that they were not to be printed, that no copies were to be taken of them, that they were to be shown only to a few leading men in Massachusetts, and were to be carefully returned. Franklin transmitted them, subject to these conditions, to Thomas Cushing of the Committee of Correspondence at Boston. He did so, he tells us, because he thought that to shift the responsibility for the recent ministerial measures from England to America would tend to restore good feeling between the people of Massachusetts and England, and, moreover, because he felt that intelligence of such importance should not be withheld from the constituents whose agent he was. In his communication, accompanying the letters, Franklin stipulated that they were to be read only by the members of the Massachusetts Committee of Correspondence, Messrs. Bowdoin and Pitts of the Council, Drs. Chauncey, Cooper and Winthrop, and a few such other persons as Cushing might select; and were to be returned in a few months to him; but it is not true, as was afterwards alleged by his enemies, that his communication was attended by any effort to conceal his personal relations to the letters. A part of the communication is too good a specimen of the precision that Franklin always brought to the language of rebuke or condemnation not to be quoted at length.

As to the writers [he said], I can easily as well as
charitably conceive it possible, that a Man educated in
Prepossessions of the unbounded Authority of
Parliament, &c. may think unjustifiable every
Opposition even to its unconstitutional Exactions, and
imagine it their Duty to suppress, as much as in them
lies, such Opposition. But when I find them bartering
away the Liberties of their native Country for Posts,
and negociating for Salaries and Pensions extorted from
the People; and, conscious of the Odium these might be
attended with, calling for Troops to protect and secure
the Enjoyment of them: When I see them exciting
Jealousies in the Crown, and provoking it to Wrath
against so great a Part of its most faithful Subjects;
creating Enmities between the different Countries of
which the Empire consists; occasioning a great Expence
to the _Old_ Country for Suppressing or Preventing
imaginary Rebellions in the _New_, and to the new
Country for the Payment of needless Gratifications to
useless Officers and Enemies; I can not but doubt their
Sincerity even in the political Principles they
profess, and deem them mere Time-servers seeking their
own private Emolument, thro' any Quantity of Publick
Mischief; Betrayers of the Interest, not of their
native Country only, but of the Government they pretend
to serve, and of the whole English Empire.

Later, after strong representations had been made to Franklin by Cushing that the letters could be put to no effective use, unless they could be retained or copied, Franklin obtained leave from the gentleman, who had entrusted them to him, to authorize Cushing to show them to any persons that he chose. The fact that the letters were in Boston was soon noised abroad, whereupon the Assembly required them to be laid before it, though under its promise that they would not be printed. An occasion or pretext for disregarding this promise soon arose, when copies were produced in the House by a member who was said to have received them from England. Then the Assembly adopted a series of indignant resolutions, declaring, among other things, that the authors of the letters were justly chargeable with the great corruption of morals, and all the confusion, misery and bloodshed which had been the natural effects of the introduction of troops into the Province, and that it was its bounden duty to pray that his Majesty would be pleased to remove Hutchinson and Oliver forever from the Government thereof. These resolutions were duly followed by a petition for the removal which was transmitted to Franklin and by him transmitted to Lord Dartmouth, who laid it before the King.

When the news reached England that the letters had been published in Massachusetts, there was great curiosity to know who had transmitted them. Thomas Whately, a London banker, and the brother of William Whately, then deceased, to whom they were written, was suspected; he suspected John Temple, a former Governor of New Hampshire, who had had access to the papers of the decedent, and, his suspicions having been brought to the attention of Temple, the latter called upon him, denied all knowledge of the letters, and demanded a public exoneration. The written statement from Whately which followed was not satisfactory to Temple, and he challenged the former to a duel in which Whately was severely wounded. Up to this time, it was not known except to a few persons that Franklin had forwarded the letters to America; nor even for a time after the duel did he feel that it was incumbent upon him to tell the world that he had done so. But, when he heard that the duel would probably be renewed, as soon as Whately recovered his strength, he felt discharged from the obligation of silence that he had previously recognized to the person from whom he had received the letters, and published a communication in the _Public Advertiser_ stating that it was impossible for Whately to have sent the letters to Boston, or for Temple to have purloined them from Whately, because they had never been in Whately's possession, and that he, Franklin alone, was the person who "obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question."[24]

Franklin had put his head into the lion's jaws. While he was preparing for his return to America, for the purpose of attending to a matter arising out of the operations of the American Post-office Department, he received a notice from the Clerk of the Privy Council, informing him that the Lords of the Committee for Plantation Affairs would meet at the Cockpit on Tuesday, January 11, 1774, at noon, for the purpose of considering the petition for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, which had been referred to the Council by the King, and requiring him to be present. A similar notice was sent to Bollan, the London Agent of the Massachusetts Council. When the petition came on for hearing, at the request of Franklin, its consideration was postponed for some three weeks, so that he could retain counsel to face Alexander Wedderburn, the Solicitor-general, who had been retained by Israel Mauduit, the agent of the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts.

The counsel retained by Franklin were John Dunning, a former Solicitor-general, and subsequently Lord Ashburton, and John Lee, who later became the Solicitor-general under the administration of Charles James Fox. When the hearing did take place, it proved for every reason a memorable one. Edmund Burke could not recollect that so many Privy Councillors had ever attended a meeting of the Council before. There were no less than thirty-five in attendance. The Lord President Gower presided. In the audience, among other persons, were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord North, the Prime Minister, Lord Shelburne, Edmund Burke, Joseph Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, Arthur Lee, of Virginia, then a law student in London, who had been selected by the Legislature of Massachusetts to act as its agent, in the event of the absence or death of Franklin, Ralph Izard, of South Carolina, who had borne Temple's challenge to Thomas Whately, and Dr. Edward Bancroft, who was afterwards at Paris with Franklin. The hearing was opened by the reading of the letter written by Franklin to Lord Dartmouth, when transmitting the petition to him, the petition itself, the resolutions of the Massachusetts Assembly and the letters upon which they were based. In Franklin's opinion, Dunning and Lee in their pleas "acquitted themselves very handsomely." Dunning's points, Burke thought, were "well and ably put." The appeal of the Massachusetts Assembly, Dunning argued was to the wisdom and goodness of his Majesty; they were asking a favor, not demanding justice. As they had no impeachment to make, so they had no evidence to offer. Of similar tenor was the address of John Lee. The reply of Wedderburn was pointed and brilliant, and as rabid as if he had been summing up against an ordinary criminal at an ordinary assize.

The letters, could not have come to Dr. Franklin [he
argued], by fair means. The writers did not give them
to him; nor yet did the deceased correspondent, who,
from our intimacy, would otherwise have told me of it.
Nothing, then, will acquit Dr. Franklin of the charge
of obtaining them by fraudulent or corrupt means, for
the most malignant of purposes, unless he stole them
from the person who stole them. This argument is
irrefragable. I hope, my lords, you will mark and brand
the man, for the honor of this country, of Europe, and
of mankind. Private correspondence has hitherto been
held sacred in times of the greatest party rage, not
only in politics but religion.... He has forfeited all
the respect of societies and of men [the orator went
on]. Into what companies will he hereafter go with an
unembarrassed face, or the honest intrepidity of
virtue? Men will watch him with a jealous eye; they
will hide their papers from him, and lock up their
escritoirs. He will henceforth esteem it a libel to be
called a _man of letters_; _homo TRIUM literarum_!
[_Trium litterarum homo_, a man of three letters, was a
fur, or thief]. But [continued Wedderburn], he not only
took away the letters from one brother; but kept
himself concealed till he nearly occasioned the murder
of the other. It is impossible to read his account,
expressive of the coolest and most deliberate malice,
without horror. Amidst these tragical events, of one
person nearly murdered, of another answerable for the
issue, of a worthy governor hurt in his dearest
interests, the fate of America in suspense; here is a
man, who, with the utmost insensibility of remorse,
stands up and avows himself the author of all. I can
compare it only to Zanga, in Dr. Young's _Revenge_:

"Know then 'twas--I;
I forged the letter, I disposed the picture;
I hated, I despised, and I destroy."

I ask, my Lords, whether the revengeful temper
attributed by poetic fiction only, to the bloody
African, is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of
the wily American?

More than one bystander has recorded the impressions left upon his mind by this savage philippic.

I was not more astonished [Jeremy Bentham tells us] at
the brilliancy of his lightning, than astounded at the
thunder that accompanied it. As he stood, the cushion
lay on the council table before him; his station was
between the seats of two of the members, on the side of
the right hand of the Lord President. I would not for
double the greatest fee the orator could on that
occasion have received, been in the place of that
cushion; the ear was stunned at every blow.

"At the sallies of his sarcastic wit," Priestley declares, "all the members of the Council, the President himself not excepted, frequently laughed outright. No person belonging to the Council behaved with decent gravity, except Lord North, who, coming late, took his stand behind the chair opposite to me." Burke spoke of the attack on "Poor Dr. Franklin" as "beyond all bounds and decency," and the language, used by Lord Shelburne, in describing it to Lord Chatham, was hardly, if any, less emphatic. "The behavior of the Judges," he said, "exceeded, as was agreed on all hands, that of any committee of elections." Dunning's rejoinder to Wedderburn was wholly ineffective. His voice, always thick, was, from illness, feebler and huskier than usual even in his first address, and, exhausted as he was by standing for three hours in a room, in which no one was allowed to sit but the Privy Councillors themselves, who were supposed on such occasions to be the immediate representatives of the King, his second address was hardly audible. Lee was equally ineffective. Wedderburn's speech, therefore, which from a purely forensic point of view was really a masterpiece, was left to assert its full effect, to become the sensation of every Club in London, and to win the plaudit of every bigoted or unreflecting Englishman. "All men," Fox said, "tossed up their hats and clapped their hands in boundless delight at it."

What of Franklin during the malignant assault? The apartment, in which the hearing took place, was a small one. At one end, was an open fireplace, with a recess on each side of it. The Council table stretched from a point near this fireplace to the other end of the room. The Lord President sat at its head, and the other councillors were ranged in seats down its sides. Such spectators as had been able to secure the highly-prized privilege of being present remained standing throughout the session. In the chimney recess to the left of the President, stood Franklin with Burke and Priestley nearby. The dialectical ability and skill, which made his examination before the House of Commons so famous, he now had no opportunity to display; and unfailing fortitude was all that he could oppose to the outrage for which he had been singled out. With that, however, his uncommon strength of character abundantly supplied him.

The Doctor was dressed in a full dress suit of spotted
Manchester velvet [Dr. Edward Bancroft wrote years
afterwards to William Temple Franklin], and stood
_conspicuously erect_, without the smallest movement of
any part of his body. The muscles of his face had been
previously composed, so as to afford a placid, tranquil
expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the
slightest alteration of it to appear during the
continuance of the speech, in which he was so harshly
and improperly treated. In short, to quote the words
which he employed concerning himself on another
occasion, he kept "his countenance as immovable as if
his features had been made of wood."

Alone, in the recess on the left hand of the president,
stood Benjamin Franklin [is the account of Bentham], in
such position as not to be visible from the situation
of the president, remaining the whole time like a rock,
in the same posture, his head resting on his left hand;
and in that attitude abiding the pelting of the
pitiless storm.

Nothing but Jedburgh justice, of course, was to be expected from such a Committee in such a case, represented by such an advocate. Its report, dated the same day as its sitting, and as likely as not drafted beforehand, found that the letters had been surreptitiously obtained, and contained "nothing reprehensible"; that the petition was based on resolutions, formed on false and erroneous allegations; and was groundless, vexatious and scandalous; and calculated only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the province; and that nothing had been laid before the Committee which did, or could, in their opinion, in any manner, or in any degree, impeach the honor, integrity, or conduct of the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor. Wherefore, the Lords of the Committee were humbly of the opinion that the petition ought to be dismissed. This recommendation was approved by the King, and an order was issued by him that the petition be dismissed, as answering the character imputed to it by the Committee. Nor did vengeance stop here. On the second day, after the Committee rose, Franklin was handed a communication from the Postmaster-General, informing him in brief terms that the King had "found it necessary" to dismiss him from the office of Deputy Postmaster-General in America.

In reporting the manner in which he had been affronted by the Privy Council to his Massachusetts constituents, Franklin used language in keeping with the sober spirit in which he had striven from the beginning to bring about an understanding between England and her Colonies.

What I feel on my own account [he said], is half lost
in what I feel for the public. When I see, that all
petitions and complaints of grievances are so odious to
government, that even the mere pipe which conveys them
becomes obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace and
union are to be maintained or restored between the
different parts of the empire. Grievances cannot be
redressed unless they are known; and they cannot be
known but through complaints and petitions. If these
are deemed affronts, and the messengers punished as
offenders, who will henceforth send petitions? And who
will deliver them? It has been thought a dangerous
thing in any state to stop up the vent of griefs. Wise
governments have therefore generally received petitions
with some indulgence, even when but slightly founded.
Those, who think themselves injured by their rulers,
are sometimes, by a mild and prudent answer, convinced
of their error. But where complaining is a crime, hope
becomes despair.

His fellow-Americans were not so self-restrained. The American Post Office was shunned by its former patrons, and letters were delivered largely by private agencies, effigies of Wedderburn and Hutchinson were carried about the streets of Philadelphia, and, at night, were burnt, we are told, by Joseph Reed, "with the usual ceremonies, amidst the acclamations of the multitude." "Nothing can exceed," the same narrator adds, "the veneration in which Dr. Franklin is now held, but the detestation we have of his enemies." Wedderburn, who had complained in his speech of the attention paid by the press to the movements of Franklin, as though he were a great diplomatic character, had more occasion than ever to sneer at his public prominence. Hutchinson was compelled to resign his office, and to retire from execration in America to a slender pension and obscurity in England. Even in England, Horace Walpole stayed the pen, to which we are indebted for so many charming letters, long enough to write:

"Sarcastic Sawney, swol'n with spite and prate,
On silent Franklin poured his venal hate,
The calm philosopher, without reply,
Withdrew, and gave his country liberty."[25]

Lord John Russell has said that it is "impossible to justify the conduct of Franklin" in the matter of the Hutchinson letters, and from time to time the same idea has been more or less hesitatingly advanced by others. Its justice, we confess, has never been apparent to us. That the letters did pass into the possession of Franklin, under the circumstances stated by him, which certainly do not reflect in any manner upon his honor, can hardly be doubted, unless mere suspicion is to give the lie to a life of uniform integrity. The mode, in which they were transmitted to America, under the restrictions imposed by him, was attended with so little regard to secrecy, so far as his connection with them was concerned, that Dr. Cooper wrote to him, "I can not, however, but admire your honest openness in this affair, and noble negligence of any inconveniences that might arise to yourself in this essential service to our injured country." It was not until the letters had been printed in America, contrary to his engagement with the gentleman, who had handed them to him, that he expressed the wish to Dr. Cooper that the fact of his having sent them should be kept secret, and not then until his inclinations on the subject were pointedly sounded by Dr. Cooper. As soon as they threatened to cause bloodshed, which he had a chance to avert, he made his connection with them public, and assumed the full responsibility for his act. Moreover, he truly said of the letters, when he assumed this responsibility in his communication to the _Public Advertiser_, "They were not of the nature of _private_ letters between friends. They were written by public officers to persons in public stations, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures; they were therefore handed to other public persons, who might be influenced by them to produce those measures." Little can be added to this convincing statement. If a political agent of England in Boston had, under the same circumstances, come into possession of letters from English officials in England to Cushing or Dr. Cooper, revealing a deliberate intent on the part of the writers to initiate measures aimed at the just prerogatives of the Crown or Parliament, who would have thought the worse of him if he had transmitted them to King or Parliament? Were letters designed to help along the introduction of a military force into Boston for the purpose of abridging the political liberties of its people entitled to any higher degree of privacy? The accusation that Franklin had violated the confidence of private correspondence came with but poor grace, to say the least, from a Government which made a practice of breaking the seals of letters, and of no letters oftener than of those of Franklin, entrusted to its care. Indeed, not only were the seals of Franklin's letters frequently broken, and the letters read, but, in some instances, the letters were permanently retained by the English Government.

It was the fashion in England for a long time to ascribe the intense resentment felt by Franklin against England, after war broke out between that country and the colonies, to the indignity to which he was subjected by the Privy Council, and his dismission from office. The statement is not supported by the facts. That these circumstances made a deep impression upon his mind is undeniable, but it was really not until he found himself in America in 1775 that he gave himself up to the conclusion that nothing was to be gained by his remaining longer in England. After his removal from office, he still counselled his correspondents in America to adhere to a policy of patience and self-restraint, and in a letter to Thomas Cushing and others, written only a few days after the hearing at the Cockpit, he termed the destruction of the tea at Boston an unwarrantable destruction of private property and "an Act of violent Injustice." To all the efforts of Lord Chatham and his high-minded associates, after this hearing, to bring about a reconciliation between England and America, he lent the full weight of his advice and experience. And, when some of the members of the British Ministry, after it, ashamed to deal with him directly, covertly opened up an interchange of proposals with him through David Barclay, Dr. Fothergill and Lord Howe, in regard to the terms upon which a reconciliation might still be reached, he entered into the negotiations with a spirit singularly free from personal bitterness. There are few things more pathetic in the history of sundered ties than the account that Priestley has given us of the last days that Franklin spent in England in 1775. "A great part of the day above-mentioned that we spent together," Priestley tells us, "he was looking over a number of American newspapers, directing me what to extract from them for the English ones; and in reading them, he was frequently not able to proceed for the tears literally running down his cheeks." These, however, were not womanish tears, but rather such iron tears as ran down Pluto's cheeks. Never was there a time after the heart of America was laid bare to Franklin by the remonstrance against the Stamp Act when he was not unflinchingly prepared, if the painful necessity was forced upon him, to unite with his countrymen in defying the armed power of England. As the fateful issue of the protracted controversy approached nearer and nearer, his language became bolder and bolder.

The eyes of all Christendom [he wrote to James Bowdoin
a few days before he left England in 1775], are now
upon us, and our honour as a people is become a matter
of the utmost consequence to be taken care of. If we
tamely give up our rights in this contest, a century to
come will not restore us in the opinion of the world;
we shall be stamped with the character of dastards,
poltrons and fools; and be despised and trampled upon,
not by this haughty, insolent nation only, but by all
mankind. Present inconveniences are, therefore, to be
borne with fortitude, and better times expected.

"Informes hyemes reducit
Jupiter; idem
Summovet. Non si male nunc, et olim
Sic erit."[26]

When he reached the shores of his native land, it was to hear that, while he was at sea, the battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought, and that the veins of the two countries, which he had striven so hard to keep closed, were already open and running.[27]

From that day, Franklin took his place with Washington, the Adamses, Jefferson and Patrick Henry as an inflexible champion of armed resistance to England. If he humored the more timid patriots, who were disposed to make still further appeals to English generosity, it was not because he shared their fallacious hopes but because he did not wish one column of the revolutionary movement to get too far in advance of the other. At this period of his life, his reputation was already very great. The English Tories believed or affected to believe that he was the father of all the mischief responsible for the American crisis. The English Whigs leaned upon his advice and assistance as those of a man who had the welfare of the entire British Empire deeply at heart. How he was regarded at home, is well illustrated in what General Nathanael Greene and Abigail Adams had to say of him when he subsequently visited Washington's head-quarters during the siege of Boston as a member of the Committee appointed by Congress to confer with Washington and delegates from the New England Colonies as to the best plan for raising, maintaining and disciplining the continental army. Recalling an occasion at this time, when Franklin had been brought under his observation, Greene wrote, "During the whole evening, I viewed that very great man with silent admiration." The language of Abigail Adams was not less intense.

I had the pleasure of dining with Dr. Franklin [she
said], and of admiring him, whose character from my
infancy I had been taught to venerate. I found him
social but not talkative; and, when he spoke, something
useful dropped from his tongue. He was grave, yet
pleasant and affable. You know I make some pretensions
to physiognomy, and I thought I could read in his
countenance the virtues of his heart, among which,
patriotism shone in its full lustre: and with that is
blended every virtue of a Christian.

Those were dramatic hours when highly wrought feelings readily ran into hyperbole; nor had any Madame Helvetius come along yet with her "Helas! Franklin," and disordered skirts.