Benjamin Franklin

Franklin expressed his doubts of this statement. “I will bring you proof,” the gentleman replied. A few days after, he visited Franklin, and brought with him a packet of letters, written by persons of high official station in the colonies, and native born Americans. The signatures of these letters were effaced; but the letters themselves were presented, and Franklin was confidentially informed of their writers. They were addressed to Mr. William Whately, an influential member of Parliament, who had recently died.

Franklin read them with astonishment and indignation. He found the representation of the gentleman entirely true. Six of the letters were written by Thomas Hutchinson, Governor of Massachusetts. He was a native of the colony he governed, a graduate of Harvard, and in his religious position a Puritan. Four were written by Andrew Oliver, Lieutenant-governor, and also a native of Massachusetts.

The rest were written by custom-house officers and other servants of the Crown. The openly avowed design of these letters was, that they should be exhibited to the Ministry, to excite them to prompt, vigorous and hostile measures. They teemed with misrepresentations, and often with downright falsehoods. The perusal of these infamous productions elicited from Franklin first a burst of indignation. The second effect was greatly to mitigate his resentment against the British government. The ministry, it seemed, were acting in accordance with solicitations received from Americans, native born, and occupying the highest posts of honor and influence.

The gentleman who obtained these letters and showed them to Franklin, was very unwilling to have his agency in the affair made public. After much solicitation, he consented to have Franklin send the letters to America, though he would not give permission to have any copies taken. It was his hope, that the letters would calm the rising animosity in America, by showing that the British ministry was pursuing a course of menace, which many of the most distinguished Americans declared to be essential, to save the country from anarchy and ruin. Franklin’s object was to cause these traitorous office-holders to be ejected from their positions of influence, that others, more patriotic, might occupy the stations which they disgraced.

On the 2d of December, 1772, Franklin inclosed the letters in an official package, directed to Thomas Cushing. He wrote,

“I am not at liberty to make the letters public. I can only allow them to be seen by yourself, by the other gentlemen of the Committee of Correspondence, by Messrs. Bowdoin and Pitts of the Council, and Drs. Chauncy, Cooper, and Winthrop, and a few such other gentlemen as you may think fit to show them to. After being some months in your possession, you are requested to return them to me.”

The reading of the letters created intense anger and disgust. John Adams, after perusing them, recorded in his diary, alluding to Hutchinson, “Cool, thinking deliberate villain, malicious and vindictive.” He carried the documents around to read to all his male and female friends, and was not sparing in his vehement comments.

Again he wrote, “Bone of our bone; born and educated among us! Mr. Hancock is deeply affected; is determined, in conjunction with Major Hawley, to watch the vile serpent, and his deputy, Brattle. The subtlety of this serpent is equal to that of the old one.”

For two months the letters were privately yet extensively circulated. Hutchinson himself soon found out the storm which was gathering against him. The hand-writing of all the writers was known. In June, the Massachusetts Assembly met. In secret session the letters were read. Soon some copies were printed. It was said that some one had obtained, from England, copies of the letters from which the printed impressions were taken. But the mystery of their publication was never solved.

The Assembly sent a petition to the king of England, imploring that Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, should be removed from their posts, and that such good men as the king might select, should be placed in their stead. The petition, eminently respectful, but drawn up in very forcible language, expressive of the ruinous consequences caused by the measures which these officials had recommended, was transmitted to Franklin, the latter part of the summer of 1773. He immediately forwarded it to Lord Dartmouth. With it he sent a very polite and conciliatory letter, in which he declared, that the Americans were very desirous of being on good terms with the mother country, that their resentment against the government was greatly abated, by finding that Americans had urged the obnoxious measures which had been adopted; and that the present was a very favorable time to introduce cordial, friendly relations between the king and the colonists.

Lord Dartmouth returned a very polite reply, laid the all-important petition aside, and for five months never alluded to it, by word or letter. In the meantime, some of the printed copies reached London. The Tories thought that perhaps the long sought opportunity had come when they might pounce upon Franklin, and at least greatly impair his influence. Franklin had nothing to conceal. He had received the letters from a friend, who authorized him to send them to America, that their contents might be made known there.

In all this he had done absolutely nothing, which any one could pronounce to be wrong. But the Court, being determined to stir up strife, began to demand who it was that had obtained and delivered up the letters. Franklin was absent from London. He soon heard tidings of the great commotion that was excited, and that two gentlemen, who had nothing to do with the matter, were each accused of having dishonorably obtained the letters. This led to a duel. Franklin immediately wrote,

“I think it incumbent for me to declare that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston, the letters in question.”

The Court decided to summon Franklin to meet the “Committee for Plantation Affairs,” to explain the reasons for the petition against Hutchinson and Oliver. To the surprise of Franklin, it appeared that they were organizing quite a formidable trial; and very able counsel was appointed to defend the culprits.

Thus Franklin, who simply presented the petition of the Assembly, was forced into the obnoxious position of a prosecutor. The array against him was so strong, that it became necessary for him also to have counsel. It was manifest to all the friends of Franklin, that the British Court was rousing all its energies to crush him.

The meeting was held on the 11th of January, 1773. Four of the Cabinet ministers were present, and several Lords of the Privy Council. They addressed Franklin as a culprit, who had brought slanderous charges against his majesty’s faithful officers in the colonies. He was treated not only with disrespect but with absolute insolence. But nothing could disturb his equanimity. Not for one moment did he lose serenity of mind.

There was an adjournment, to meet on the 29th of the month. In the meantime one of the court party, who had received many favors from Franklin, commenced a chancery suit against him, accusing him of stealing the letters, and being by trade a printer, of having secretly published them, and sold immense numbers, the profits of which he had placed in his own pocket. All this Franklin denied on oath. The charge was so absurd, and so manifestly malignant, that his foes withdrew the suit. Franklin was however assured that the Court was clamoring for his punishment and disgrace.

All London was agitated by the commotion which these extraordinary events created. At the appointed day, the Council again met. The assembly was held in a large apartment in the drawing-room style. At one end was the entrance door; at the other the fire-place, with recesses on each side of the chimney. A broad table extended from the fire-place to the door. The Privy Council, thirty-five in number, sat at this table. They were inveterate Tories, resolved to bring the Americans down upon their knees, and, as a preliminary step, to inflict indelible disgrace upon Franklin. Lord North, the implacable Prime Minister was there. The Archbishop of Canterbury was present. As Franklin cast his eye along the line of these haughty nobles, he could not see the face of a friend.

The remainder of the room was crowded with spectators. From them many a sympathizing glance fell upon him. Priestly and Burke gave him their silent but cordial sympathy. There were also quite a number of Americans and prominent members of the opposition, whose presence was a support to Franklin, during the ordeal through which he was to pass. He stood at the edge of the recess formed by the chimney, with one elbow resting upon the mantel, and his cheek upon his hand. He was motionless as a statue, and had composed his features into such calm and serene rigidity, that not the movement of a muscle could be detected. As usual, he was dressed simply, but with great elegance. A large flowing wig, with abundant curls, such as were used by elderly gentlemen at that day, covered his head. His costume, which was admirably fitted to a form as perfect as Grecian sculptor ever chiseled, was of rich figured silk velvet. In all that room, there was not an individual, who in physical beauty, was the peer of Franklin. In all that room there was not another, who in intellectual greatness could have met the trial so grandly.

It will be remembered that the Assembly of Massachusetts had petitioned for the removal of an obnoxious governor and lieutenant governor. Franklin, as the agent in London of that colony, had presented the petition to the crown. He was now summoned to appear before the privy council, to bring forward and substantiate charges against these officers. The council had appointed a lawyer to defend Hutchinson and Oliver. His name was Wedderburn. He had already obtained celebrity for the savage skill with which he could browbeat a witness, and for his wonderful command of the vocabulary of vituperation and abuse. Before commencing the examination, he addressed the assembly in a long speech. After eulogizing Governor Hutchinson, as one of the best and most loyal of the officers of the crown, who merited the gratitude of king and court, he turned upon Franklin, and assailed him with a storm of vituperative epithets, such as never before, and never since, has fallen upon the head of a man. The council were in sympathy with the speaker. Often his malignant thrusts would elicit from those lords a general shout of derisive laughter.

Such was the treatment which one of the most illustrious and honored of American citizens received from the privy council of king George III., when he appeared before that council as a friendly ambassador from his native land, seeking only conciliation and peace.

Wedderburn accused Franklin of stealing private letters, of misrepresenting their contents, that he might excite hostility against the loyal officers of the king. He accused him of doing this that he might eject them from office, so as to obtain the positions for himself and his friends. Still more, he accused him of having in an unexampled spirit of meanness, availed himself of his skill as a printer, to publish these letters, and that he sold them far and wide, that he might enrich himself. Charges better calculated to ruin a man, in the view of these proud lords, can scarcely be conceived. It is doubtful whether there were another man in the world, who could have received them so calmly, and in the end could have so magnificently triumphed over them.

During all this really terrific assailment, Franklin stood with his head resting on his left hand, apparently unmoved. At the close, he declined answering any questions. The committee of the council reported on that same day, “the lords of the committee, do agree humbly to report as their opinion to your majesty, that the said petition is founded upon resolution’s, formed upon false and erroneous allegations, and that the same is false, vexatious and scandalous; and calculated only for the seditious purposes of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in said province.” The king accepted the report, and acted accordingly. Franklin went home alone. We know not why his friends thus apparently deserted him.

The next morning, which was Sunday, Priestly breakfasted at Franklin’s table. He represents him as saying that he could not have borne the insults heaped upon him by the privy council, but for the consciousness, that he had done only that which was right. On Monday morning Franklin received a laconic letter from the Postmaster General, informing him that the king had found it necessary to dismiss him from the office of deputy Postmaster General in America.

This outrage, inflicted by the privy council of Great Britain, upon a friendly ambassador from her colonies, who had visited her court with the desire to promote union and harmony, was one of the most atrocious acts ever perpetrated by men above the rank of vagabonds in their drunken carousals. Franklin, in transmitting an account to Massachusetts, writes in a noble strain:

“What I feel on my own account, 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, and 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?”

The speech of Wedderburn gave great delight to all the Tory party. It was derisively said, “that the lords of the council, went to their chamber, as to a bull-baiting, and hounded on the Solicitor General with loud applause and laughter.” Mr. Fox, writing of the assault said, “All men tossed up their hats and clapped their hands, in boundless delight.”

When the tidings of the affair reached America, it added intensity to the animosity, then rapidly increasing, against the British government. The dismissal of Franklin from the post-office, was deemed equivalent to the seizure, by the crown, of that important branch of the government. None but the creatures of the Ministry were to be postmasters. Consequently patriotic Americans could no longer entrust their letters to the mail. Private arrangements were immediately made for the conveyance of letters; and with so much efficiency, that the general office, which had heretofore contributed fifteen thousand dollars annually to the public treasury, never after paid into it one farthing.24

The spirit of the Tories may be inferred from that of one of the most applauded and influential of their leaders. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who wrote the notorious “Taxation no Tyranny,” said,

“The Americans are a race of convicts. They ought to be thankful for any thing we can give them. I am willing to love all mankind except an American.” Boswell in quoting one of his insane tirades writes, “His inflammable corruption, bursting into horrid fire, he breathed out threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, robbers, pirates, and exclaiming that he would burn and destroy them.”

It was a day of vicious indulgence, of dissipation in every form, when it was fashionable to be godless, and to sneer at all the restraints of the Christian religion. Volumes might be filled with accounts of the atrocities perpetrated by drunken lords at the gaming table and in midnight revel through the streets. Such men of influence and rank as Fox, Lord Derby, the Duke of Ancaster, inflamed with wine, could set the police at defiance. They were constantly engaged in orgies which would disgrace the most degraded wretches, in the vilest haunts of infamy in our cities. Instead of gambling for copper, they gambled for gold. Horace Walpole testifies that at one of the most fashionable clubs, at Almack’s, they played only for rouleaux of two hundred and fifty dollars each. There were often fifty thousand dollars in specie on the gaming tables, around which these bloated inebriates were gathered. It is said that Lord Holland paid the gambling debts of his two sons to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars.

The trade of the colonies had become of immense value to the mother country. It amounted to six and a half millions sterling a year. Philadelphia numbered forty thousand inhabitants. Charleston, South Carolina, had become one of the most beautiful and healthy cities in America. The harbor was crowded with shipping, the streets were lined with mansions of great architectural beauty. Gorgeous equipages were seen, almost rivaling the display in French and English capitals. But there were many Tories in Charleston, as malignant in their opposition to the popular cause in America, as any of the aristocrats to be found in London.

The unpardonable insult which Franklin had received, closed his official labors in London. His personal friends and the Opposition rallied more affectionately than ever around him. But he ceased to appear at court and was seldom present at the dinner-parties of the ministers. Still he was constantly and efficiently employed in behalf of his country. The leaders of the opposition were in constant conference with him. He wrote many pamphlets and published articles in the journals, which exerted an extended and powerful influence. He wrote to his friends at home, in October, 1774,

“My situation here is thought, by many, to be a little hazardous; for if by some accident the troops and people of New England should come to blows, I should probably be taken up; the ministerial people, affecting everywhere to represent me as the cause of all the misunderstanding. And I have been frequently cautioned to secure all my papers, and by some advised to withdraw. But I venture to stay, in compliance with the wish of others, till the result of the Congress arrives, since they suppose my being here might, on that occasion, be of use. And I confide in my innocence, that the worst that can happen to me will be an imprisonment upon suspicion; though that is a thing I should much desire to avoid, as it may be expensive and vexatious, as well as dangerous to my health.”

CHAPTER XII.

The Bloodhounds of War Unleashed

The mission of Josiah Quincy – Love of England by the Americans – Petition to the king – Sickness and death of Mrs. Franklin – Lord Chatham – His speech in favor of the colonists – Lord Howe – His interview with Franklin – Firmness of Franklin – His indignation – His mirth – Franklin’s fable – He embarks for Philadelphia – Feeble condition of the colonies – England’s expressions of contempt – Franklin’s reception at Philadelphia – His letter to Edmund Burke – Post-office arrangements – Defection and conduct of William Franklin – His arrest

Young Josiah Quincy, of Boston, one of the noblest of patriots, who was dying of consumption, visited London, with instructions to confer with Franklin upon the posture of affairs. He wrote home, in the most commendatory terms, of the zeal and sagacity with which Franklin was devoting himself to the interests of his country. Tory spies were watching his every movement, and listening to catch every word which fell from his lips. Lord Hillsborough, in a debate in the House of Lords, said,

“There are two men, walking in the streets of London, who ought to be in Newgate or at Tyburn.”

The duke of Richmond demanded their names, saying that if such were the fact the ministry were severely to be blamed. Hillsborough declined to give their names; but it was generally known that he referred to Dr. Franklin and Josiah Quincy.

The policy of Franklin was clearly defined, and unchanging. He said virtually, to his countrymen, “Perform no political act against the government, utter no menace, and do no act of violence whatever. But firmly and perseveringly unite in consuming no English goods. There is nothing in this which any one will pronounce to be, in the slightest degree, illegal. The sudden and total loss of the trade with America, will, in one year, create such a clamor, from the capitalists and industrial classes of England, Ireland and Scotland, that the despotic government will be compelled to retrace its steps.”

Even at this time the Americans had no desire to break loose from the government of Great Britain. England was emphatically their home. Englishmen were their brothers. In England their fathers were gathered to the grave. The Americans did not assume a new name. They still called themselves Englishmen. They were proud to be members of the majestic kingdom, which then stood at the head of the world.

Congress met. Its members, perhaps without exception, were yearning for reconciliation with the mother-country, and for sincere and cordial friendship. It was resolved to make another solemn appeal to the king, whom they had ever been accustomed to revere, and, in a fraternal spirit, to address their brethren, the people of England, whom they wished to regard with all the respect due to elder brothers.

The intelligence of Christendom has applauded the dignity and the pathos of these documents. The appeal fell upon the profane, gambling, wine-bloated aristocrats of the court, as if it had been addressed to the marble statuary in the British Museum. Nay worse. Those statues would have listened in respectful silence. No contemptuous laughter, and no oaths of menace, would have burst from their marble lips. The following brief extract will show the spirit which pervaded these noble documents. It is one of the closing sentences of the address to the king:

“Permit us then, most gracious sovereign, in the name of all your faithful people in America, with the utmost humility to implore you, for the honor of Almighty God, whose pure religion our enemies are undermining; for the glory which can be advanced only by rendering your subjects happy and keeping them united; for the interests of your family, depending on an adherence to the principle that enthroned it; for the safety and welfare of your kingdom and dominions, threatened with unavoidable dangers, and distresses; that your majesty, as the loving father of your whole people, connected by the same bands of law, loyalty, faith and blood, though dwelling in various countries, will not suffer the transcendent relation, formed by these ties, to be further violated, in uncertain expectation of effects which, if attained, never can compensate for the calamities through which they must be gained.”

This petition was sent to Franklin, and the other colony agents, to be presented by them to the king. They were instructed also to publish both the Petition and the Address, in the newspapers, and to give them as wide a circulation as possible.

Dr. Franklin, with two other agents, Arthur Lee and Mr. Bollan, presented to Lord Dartmouth the petition to be handed by him to the king. They were soon informed that the king received it graciously, and would submit the consideration of it to Parliament. It was thought not respectful to the king to publish it before he had presented it to that body. But as usual, the infatuation of both king and court was such, that everything that came from the Americans was treated with neglect, if not with contempt. The all-important petition was buried in a pile of documents upon all conceivable subjects, and not one word was said to commend it to the consideration of either house. For three days it remained unnoticed. Dr. Franklin, then, with his two companions, solicited permission to be heard at the bar of the house. Their request was refused. This brought the question into debate.

The House of Commons was at that time but a reflected image of the House of Lords. It was composed almost exclusively, of the younger sons of the nobles, and such other obsequious servants of the aristocracy, as they, with their vast wealth and patronage, saw fit to have elected. There was an immense Tory majority in the House. They assailed the petition with vulgarity of abuse, which could scarcely be exceeded; and then dismissed it from further consideration. Noble lords made themselves merry in depicting the alacrity with which a whole army of Americans would disperse at the very sound of a British cannon.

While these disastrous events were taking place in England – events, sure to usher in a cruel and bloody war, bearing on its wings terror and conflagration, tears and blood, a domestic tragedy was taking place in the far distant home of Franklin on the banks of the Delaware. Mrs. Franklin had been separated from her husband for nearly ten years. She was a cheerful, motherly woman, ever blessing her home with smiles and with kindly words; and in the society of her daughter and her grandchildren, she found a constant joy. The lapse of three-score years and ten, had not brought their usual infirmities. Though yearning intensely for the return of her husband, she did not allow the separation seriously to mar her happiness. Every spring she was confident that he would return the next autumn, and then bore her disappointment bravely in the assurance that she should see him the coming spring.