Every personal difference Franklin contended did not justify a quarrel nor

did every act of oppression on the part of the mother country justify a

war. The policy, which he laid down for the Colonies, was to exercise

patience and forbearance, and to look to political changes in England and

their own rapidly increasing numbers and wealth for the ultimate redress of

their grievances, but, in the meantime, to reaffirm fearlessly their

constitutional rights on every proper occasion. This policy is again and

again recommended in his letters to his friends and political

correspondents over-sea. Even before the Stamp Act was actually repealed,

he wrote to Charles Thomson expressing the hope that, when that happened,

the behavior of America would be so prudent, decent and grateful that their

friends in England would have no reason to be ashamed, and their enemies in

England, who had predicted that Parliamentary indulgence would only make

them more insolent and ungovernable, would find themselves, and be found,

false prophets. After the repeal of the Stamp Act, in a letter to Galloway,

he expressed deep regret that the English merchants, who had helped to

secure that result, and to communicate the knowledge of it, at their

expense to America, should feel that the Americans had proved themselves

ingrates, and he accordingly said that he hoped that some decent

acknowledgments or thanks would be sent to these merchants by the colonial

assemblies. When the idea of taxing America was subsequently revived, he

wrote to the same correspondent that he knew not what to advise, but that

they should all do their endeavors on both sides the water to lessen the

present unpopularity of the American cause, conciliate the affections of

the British towards them, increase by all possible means the number of

their friends, and be careful not to weaken their hands, and strengthen

their enemies, by rash proceedings on their side; the mischiefs of which

were inconceivable. In a letter to the printer of the _Gazetteer_, signed

"New England," he said: "I only hate calumniators and boutefeus on either

side the water, who would for the little dirty purposes of faction, set

brother against brother, turn friends into mortal enemies, and ruin an

empire by dividing it." In a letter to Cadwallader Evans, in 1768, he even

approved the idea that America should manufacture only such things as

England neglected.

These are but scant gleanings from the numerous letters in which, down to

the very last, Franklin unweariedly repeated his counsels of self-restraint

to his fellow-countrymen. Accompanying them was every word of good cheer

that he thought might tend to make this self-restraint easier. Several

times he assured his American correspondents that, in the debate with the

mother country, America had the sympathy of all Europe. For a long time, he

endeavored to allay the resentment of his countrymen, under the sting of

parliamentary injustice, by voicing the delusion that the King did not

share the sentiments of the corrupt legislature which, as a matter of fact,

he was all the time corrupting for the purpose of fostering such

sentiments. Every indication of a favorable disposition towards the

Colonies upon the part of the English People, during the alternations of

anxiety and confidence that his mind underwent with the rise and fall of

English ministries, friendly or unfriendly to America, was promptly

observed by him and reported to America. At times, it is plain enough that

he thought a war it would be; yet as late as 1775, when he believed that

the adverse ministry of that time was tottering, his sanguine nature

reached the conclusion in a letter to James Bowdoin that the redoubled

clamor of the trading, manufacturing and Whig interests in England would

infallibly overthrow all the enemies of America, and produce an

acknowledgment of her rights and satisfaction for her injuries. Parliament

rarely gave him any occasion to speak of it except in terms of mingled

amazement and indignation; but it is agreeable to remember that, in a

letter in 1774 to Jane Mecom, he made grateful mention of "the generous and

noble friends of America" in both houses, whose names, dear to the highest

traditions of human genius and public spirit, should never be forgotten in

any movement to reintegrate in some form the broken fragments of the china

vase in which Franklin saw a symbol of the unity of the British Empire.

Accompanying Franklin's counsels of patience, however, was also an

unceasing warning to America not to alter for a moment her posture of

resistance and protest. "If under all the Insults and Oppressions you are

now exposed to," he told Dr. Cooper, "you can prudently, as you have lately

done, continue quiet, avoiding Tumults, but still resolutely keeping up

your Claim and asserting your Rights, you will finally establish them, and

this military Cloud that now blusters over you will pass away, and do no

more Harm than a Summer Thunder Shower." "The Colonies," he wrote

subsequently to Robert Morris and Thomas Leach, "have Adversaries enow to

their common Privileges: They should endeavour to agree among themselves,

and avoid everything that may make ill-Blood and promote Divisions, which

must weaken them in their common Defence." To Thomas Cushing he wrote that

America should continue from time to time to assert its rights in

occasional solemn resolves and other public acts, never yielding them up,

and avoiding even the slightest expressions that seemed confirmatory of the

claim that had been set up against them. As the end of it all became more

and more obvious, his note of warning assumed an additional significance.

In a letter to Thomas Cushing in 1773, he wrote:

But our great Security lies, I think, in our growing

Strength, both in Numbers and Wealth; that creates an

increasing Ability of assisting this Nation in its

Wars, which will make us more respectable, our

Friendship more valued, and our Enmity feared; thence

it will soon be thought proper to treat us not with

Justice only, but with Kindness, and thence we may

expect in a few Years a total Change of Measures with

regard to us; unless, by a Neglect of military

Discipline, we should lose all martial Spirit, and our

Western People become as tame as those in the Eastern

Dominions of Britain, when we may expect the same

Oppressions; for there is much Truth in the Italian

saying, _Make yourselves Sheep_, _and the Wolves will

eat you_.

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.

The reputation, which called forth these tributes, brought Franklin at once

to the very forefront of the American Revolution, when he arrived at

Philadelphia. The morning after his arrival, he, Thomas Willing and James

Wilson, were elected by the Assembly of Pennsylvania as additional deputies

to the Continental Congress that was to meet in Philadelphia in a few days,

and he was re-elected to Congress at every succeeding election until his

departure for France. By the first Congress, he was appointed Chairman of a

Committee to devise a postal system for America; and when this Committee

recommended the appointment of a Postmaster-General and various postal

subordinates, and the establishment of a line of posts from Falmouth (now

Portland) in Maine to Savannah, with as many cross posts as the

Postmaster-General might think fit, Franklin was elected by Congress the

Postmaster-General for the first year. He was also appointed by Congress

one of the members of a committee to draw up a declaration, to be published

by Washington when he took command of the American army, but the paper

drafted by him does not appear to have ever been presented by him to

Congress. At any rate, it adds nothing to his literary reputation, and is

disfigured by one of the unseasonable _facetiae_ into which he had a way of

wandering at times on grave occasions, after he found his feet again in the

easy slippers of his old American environment.

Franklin also made some wise suggestions to Congress with respect to the

best method of preventing the depreciation of the paper money issued by it.

His first suggestion was that the bills should bear interest. This

suggestion was rejected. His next was that, instead of the issuance of any

more paper money, what had already been issued should be borrowed back upon

interest. His last was that the interest should be paid in hard money, but

both of the latter suggestions, though approved by Congress, were approved

too late to accomplish their objects. After due tenderness had been

exhibited by him to John Dickinson and the other members of Congress, who

still clung to the hope of a reconciliation with England, Franklin brought

forward a plan for the permanent union and efficient government of the

Colonies. Under this plan each colony was to retain its internal

independence, but its external relations, especially as respected

resistance to the measures of the English Ministry, were committed to an

annually-elected Congress. The supreme executive authority of the union was

to be vested in a council of twelve, to be elected by the Congress.

Ireland, Canada, the West Indies, Bermuda, Nova Scotia and Florida as well

as the thirteen colonies within the present limits of the United States,

were to be invited to join the confederacy. The union was to last until

British oppression ceased, and reparation was made to the Colonies for the

injuries inflicted upon them; which, of course, under the circumstances,

meant until the Greek Calends. The plan was referred to a committee, but it

was never acted upon by the House; being too bold a project to suit the

cautious scruples of John Dickinson and the other moderate members of the

Continental Congress, who dreaded the effect of a project of union upon the

mind of the King, while the petition of Congress to him was pending. Among

other important committees upon which Franklin served, when a member of the

first Continental Congress, was one to investigate the sources of

saltpetre; another to treat with the Indians; another to look after the

engraving and printing of the continental paper money; another to consider

Lord North's conciliatory resolution; another on salt and lead; and still

another to report a plan for regulating and protecting the commerce of the

Colonies. At the next session of the Congress, he was equally active. Among

the things in which we find him engaged at this session, are the

arrangement of a system of posts and expresses for the rapid transmission

of dispatches; the establishment of a line of packets between America and

Europe; an effort to promote the circulation of the continental money; and

the preparation of instructions for the American generals. It was at this

session of Congress, too, that Thomas Lynch, of South Carolina, Benjamin

Harrison, of Virginia, and himself were appointed the committee to visit

Washington's camp before Boston. The journey to Boston consumed thirteen

days, and the conference, which followed with the American

Commander-in-Chief and the delegates from the New England Colonies,

resulted in many judicious conclusions with regard to the organization of

the American army, and the conduct of the war, and, moreover, was an

additional assurance to Washington and New England that, in the military

operations before Boston, they could count upon the support of all America.

It is obvious enough from writings, found among the papers of Franklin in

his handwriting, that months before the Declaration of Independence was

signed he was fully ready to renounce all allegiance to Great Britain. When

the more conservative members of Congress so far yielded to their fears as

to adopt, with the aid of some of the members from New England, a

declaration that independence was not their aim, Franklin approved a plan

then formed by Samuel Adams of bringing at least all the New England

provinces together in a confederacy. "If you succeed," he said to Adams, "I

will cast in my lot among you." This was six months before the adoption of

the Declaration of Independence. Franklin also served with John Jay and

Thomas Jefferson upon a committee to interview a mysterious foreigner who

had repeatedly expressed a desire to make a confidential communication to

Congress. The stranger, who possessed a military bearing and spoke with a

French accent, assured the committee that his most Christian Majesty, the

King of France, had heard with pleasure of the exertions made by the

American Colonies in defence of their rights and privileges, wished them

success, and would, when necessary, manifest in a more open manner his

friendly sentiments towards them. But, as often as he was asked by the

committee for his authority for conveying such flattering assurances, he

contented himself with drawing his hand across his throat, and saying,

"Gentlemen, I shall take care of my head."

When the report of this committee was made to Congress, a motion on the

strength of it to send envoys to France was defeated, but later a

committee composed of Benjamin Harrison, John Dickinson, Thomas Johnson,

John Jay and Franklin was appointed "to correspond secretly with friends in

Great Britain, Ireland, and other parts of the world." The duties of this

committee were mainly discharged by Franklin, who had, as we have seen,

contracted many durable friendships abroad with men whose aid might mean

much to America. To Charles W. F. Dumas, a native of Switzerland, residing

at The Hague, he wrote, asking him to sound secretly the ambassadors of the

different Powers, other than Great Britain, there for the purpose of

ascertaining whether any of their courts were inclined to aid the Colonies

or to form alliances with them, to let the mercantile world know that

America was prepared to pay very high prices for arms, gunpowder and

saltpetre, to send to America two engineer officers qualified to direct

siege operations, construct forts and field-works and command artillery,

and to receive and forward all letters that passed between the committee

and its friends and agents abroad. A draft for one hundred pounds sterling

accompanied the letter, together with an assurance from the committee that

Dumas' services would be "considered and honorably rewarded by Congress." A

similar letter was sent to Arthur Lee in London, accompanied by a

remittance of two hundred pounds as his compensation. By the same ship went

a letter from Franklin to Don Gabriel de Bourbon of Spain, in which, after

thanking the Prince for the copy which he had sent him of the handsome

Sallust, printed several years before at the royal press at Madrid,

Franklin cleverly leads the attention of the Prince on to the consideration

of a rising state which seemed likely soon to act a part of some importance

on the stage of human affairs, and to furnish materials for a future

Sallust. This letter, in which literary sympathy, the high-bred courtesy of

a Spanish hidalgo and political address are mingled with the happiest

effect, is a good example of what it meant to America to have such a man as

Franklin as her world-interpreter. These letters were all entrusted to the

care of a special messenger, Thomas Story. Soon after he left America, M.

Penet, a merchant of Nantes, sailed for France with a contract from the

committee for furnishing arms, ammunition and clothing to the American army

and various letters from Franklin to friends of his in France, including

his devoted pupil, Dr. Dubourg. Subsequently, before a reply had been

received to any of the letters written by Franklin on its behalf, the

committee decided to send an agent to Paris duly empowered to treat with

the French King. Silas Deane, a Yale graduate, and a man, who might have

left an unblemished reputation as an American patriot behind him, if Arthur

Lee had not hounded him out of France and America into England, was

selected for this mission. He was selected, Adams is so unkind as to

intimate, because he was a Congressman who had lost his seat in Congress.

For him Franklin drew up a letter of instruction, fixing the character that

he was to assume, that of a merchant, when he reached France, mentioning

the persons friendly to America with whom he was to establish a familiar

intercourse, and prescribing the manner in which he was to approach M. de

Vergennes, the French Minister, for the purpose of soliciting the

friendship and assistance of France.

Another important call was made upon the services of Franklin, when with

Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, as his colleagues, he was

appointed by Congress to visit Canada, and to endeavor to rescue our

affairs in that country from the lamentable condition of confusion and

distress into which they had fallen. Quebec had been assaulted by

Montgomery and Arnold, and had repelled the assault, Montgomery being

killed and Arnold wounded in the attempt, and the American army was

wasting away in the face of the intense cold, hunger and the small-pox. For

the Continental paper money the Canadians had come to entertain a supreme

contempt, and their attitude towards the Americans, with whom they had so

often been at war in their earlier history, was in every respect that of

distrust and aversion. With the committee went John Carroll, the brother of

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who had been educated for the priesthood in

France, and spoke its language with perfect fluency. It was thought at the

time that for the Commission to take with it to Catholic and French Canada

such a companion was a masterly stroke of policy. The powers, with which

the Commission were clothed, were of a plenary description; to admit Canada

into the union of the Colonies, when brought over to the American cause by

the appeals of the Commissioners, and to admit it with a republican form of

government, to settle disputes between the civil and military authorities

in Canada, and to exercise an extraordinary degree of authority in one form

or another with respect to the military forces of America there. They were

even to take steps to establish a newspaper in Canada to help along the

American propaganda.

Of all the episodes in the life of Franklin, this is the one upon which the

reader dwells with the least satisfaction. He was entirely too old for the

fatigues and hardships of the long April journey of five hundred miles from

Philadelphia to New York, and up the Hudson, and over Lakes George and

Champlain, and across the country at the head of Lake Champlain to

Montreal. The distance between Philadelphia and New York was covered by the

party in two days, the journey up the Hudson to Albany was made in a sloop,

engaged for them by Lord Stirling, and from Albany to the country seat of

General Philip Schuyler at Saratoga, thirty-two miles from Albany, they

were conveyed over deep roads in a large country-wagon furnished by the

General. Here it was that Franklin, debilitated by the exposure and shocks,

to which his frame had been subjected, began to apprehend that he had

undertaken a fatigue which, at his time of life, might prove too much for

him, and sat down to write to some of his friends by way of farewell. After

a few days' rest at Saratoga, the party, preceded by General Schuyler, went

forward to Lake George. Though it was the middle of April, the lakes of

that country were still covered with ice, and the roads with six inches of

snow. After two days and a half of further travel, the southern end of the

lake was reached. So encumbered with ice was it that the batteau, equipped

with an awning for a cabin, with which General Schuyler had provided the

party, took about thirty-six hours to traverse the thirty-six miles between

the southern extremity of the lake and its northern. Then came the portage

over the neck of land between Lake George and Lake Champlain, and the

re-embarkation, after a delay of five days, on the waters of the latter

lake. The portage was effected by placing the batteau on wheels and yoking

it up to a string of oxen. Three days and a half more brought the party to

St. John's, near the head of Lake Champlain, after a strenuous struggle

with baffling ice and head winds. Another day's journey in _caleches_

brought them to Montreal where they were received by Arnold and a concourse

of officers and citizens, and saluted with military honors.

It is enough to say that the Commissioners found American credit in Canada

sunk to the lowest point. Even the express, sent by them from St. John's to

tell Arnold of their arrival at that point, was held at a ferry for the

ferriage charge until a friend, who was passing, changed an American paper

dollar for him into silver; nor would the _caleches_ have come for the

Commissioners if this friend had not engaged to pay the hire. Military

defeat, violated contracts, discredited paper money and the anticipated

coming of a British force overhung like a bank of nimbus cloud the entire

horizon of American hopes in Canada. The Commissioners could not borrow

money either upon the public or upon their own private credit. In a letter

to Congress after they had been in Canada a week, they declared that, if

money could not be had to support the American army in Canada with honor,

so as to be respected instead of being hated by the people, it was their

firm and unanimous opinion that it would be better to immediately withdraw

it. With his usual public spirit, Franklin advanced on the credit of

Congress to Arnold and other servants of Congress three hundred and

fifty-three pounds in gold out of his own pocket--a loan which proved of

great service in procuring provisions for the American army at a time of

dire necessity. Two days after the letter of the Commissioners to Congress

was written, news came to Montreal that a British fleet, full of troops,

had reached Quebec, and landed a force, which had routed the small American

army there. The decision was at once reached that there was nothing for the

American forces to do but to retire to St. John's, and to prepare to resist

at that point the advance of the British. This decision was acted upon at

once, and the next morning Franklin, attended by John Carroll, set out on

his return to Philadelphia; leaving his fellow-commissioners to oversee the

retreat to St. John's and the establishment of defensive works at that

point. With the assistance of General Schuyler, he and his companion passed

safely down the lakes to Albany, and from Albany, after they had again

enjoyed the General's hospitality, they were conveyed by his chariot to New

York. Here Franklin wrote to his fellow-commissioners that he grew daily

more feeble, and thought that he could hardly have got along so far but for

Mr. Carroll's friendly assistance and tender care of him. Some symptoms of

the gout, he further said, had appeared, which made him believe that his

indisposition had been a smothered fit of that disorder, which his

constitution wanted strength to form completely. But, with the reappearance

of his old malady, came back the wit which, indeed, seems to have

languished but little at any time under the rigors of his arduous mission.

After congratulating Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll upon the recent

capture of a British prize, loaded with seventy-five tons of gunpowder and

a thousand carbines with bayonets, he further wrote: "The German

Auxiliaries are certainly coming. It is our Business to prevent their

Returning."

In the early part of June, Franklin was again in Philadelphia after an

absence of about ten weeks. A little later the Declaration of Independence

was reported to Congress by the committee, consisting of Thomas Jefferson,

John Adams, Robert R. Livingston, Roger Sherman and himself, which had been

elected by Congress to draft it, and after a debate, during which John

Adams won only less reputation in defending, than Jefferson in writing, it,

was adopted and given to the world, whose political opinions it was to

influence so profoundly. Owing to a serious attack of the gout, Franklin

had no hand in its preparation beyond suggesting a few verbal alterations.

His part, however, in the adoption of the Articles of Confederation was

more active. To the plan of allowing the thirteen States to vote on all

questions by States, and of giving to each State, without reference to

population or wealth, a single vote, he was strongly opposed; so much so

that he even thought at one time of counselling Pennsylvania not to enter

into the union if the plan was adopted. He hotly declared that a

confederation upon such iniquitous terms would not last long. But we know

from what Jefferson tells us that he also had his humorous fling at it. "At

the time of the union of England and Scotland," he said, "the Duke of

Argyle was most violently opposed to that measure, and among other things

predicted that, as the whale had swallowed Jonah, so Scotland would be

swallowed by England." "However," added Franklin, "when Lord Bute came into

the government, he soon brought into its administration so many of his

countrymen that it was found, in event, that Jonah had swallowed the

whale."

About the same time, Franklin, Jefferson and John Adams were appointed a

committee by Congress to hit upon a device for the seal of the Confederacy.

No more congenial task could possibly have been set for Franklin, whose

ingenuity always revelled in conceits of this kind. A device, based upon

the drowning of Pharaoh, and accompanied by the motto, "Rebellion to

tyrants is obedience to God," was suggested by him, and was made by the

Committee, together with the Eye of Providence in a radiant triangle, the

motto, _E Pluribus Unum_, and other elaborate features a part of its

recommendation. As soon as Franklin was safely out of the country in

France, Congress, perhaps not forgetting his story of John Thompson, the

hatter, rejected as too redundant the entire complicated design except the

_E Pluribus Unum_ and the Eye of Providence.

In the summer of 1776, Franklin also endeavored to carry out in another

form his idea of preventing the Hessians from returning to their own

country by assisting in distributing among them tobacco wrapped in copies

of an address offering in the name of Congress a tract of land to every

soldier who should desert the British service. Congress could not see why,

if these hirelings were to be sold, they should not do the selling

themselves instead of their Princes.

It was in the summer of 1776, too, that Franklin, John Adams and Edward

Rutledge, of South Carolina, were elected a committee by Congress to call

upon Lord Howe at Staten Island for the purpose of ascertaining whether he

had any authority to negotiate a treaty of peace, and, if so, of learning

what that authority was, and of receiving such propositions as he should

think fit to make. Lord Howe was at the time the Admiral of the King's

naval forces in America and joint commissioner with his brother General

William Howe to grant pardons to such of the American rebels as should be

ready to renew their allegiance to the King. On his arrival in July, 1776,

at Sandy Hook, he had taken steps to distribute throughout the Colonies a

declaration explaining the nature of the commission committed to his

brother and himself. At the same time, he had written a letter to Franklin

indicating his earnest desire to be instrumental in restoring peace between

England and America. The same carrier delivered a copy of the declaration

to Congress and the letter to Franklin. Both the declaration and the letter

were given rude rebuffs. Congress ordered the declaration to be inserted in

the newspapers so that, as it said, the few, who still remained suspended

by a hope, founded either in the justice or moderation of their late King,

might now at length be convinced that the valor alone of their country was

to save its liberties. Franklin, after obtaining the permission of

Congress, sent a reply to Lord Howe's letter by the hand of Colonel Palfrey

of the American army. It is one of the best letters that he ever wrote, and

told Lord Howe such blunt truths, and gave him such candid advice that,

after reading it with surprise repeatedly flitting over his face, Lord Howe

remarked to Colonel Palfrey with a gentleness as honorable to his amiable

character as to that of Franklin that his old friend had expressed himself

very warmly. Then subsequently had followed the disaster on Long Island,

and the arrival of General Sullivan on parole at Philadelphia with a verbal

message from Lord Howe to Congress, stating that he would like to confer

with some of its members as private individuals though he could not yet

treat with Congress itself. The result was the appointment of the committee

to call upon him at Staten Island. The conference between the committee

and Lord Howe took place at a house on that island and came to nothing. The

committee had no authority to do anything except to receive proposals from

Lord Howe, who really had no seasonable proposition to make, and Lord Howe

had no authority to do anything except to grant pardons to persons who were

not conscious of having committed any offence. When he stated in polite

terms that he could not confer with the members of the committee as a

committee of Congress but only as gentlemen of great ability and influence

in the colonies, Adams declared in his emphatic way that he was willing to

consider himself for a few moments in any character which would be

agreeable to his Lordship except that of a British subject. "Mr. Adams,"

gravely observed Lord Howe, "is a decided character." All three of the

Commissioners one by one made it clear to Lord Howe that the colonies were

irrevocably committed to Independence. There was, therefore, nothing for

him to do except to say in the end, "I am sorry, gentlemen, that you have

had the trouble of coming so far to so little purpose." Minutes of this

interesting conference were jotted down by Henry Strachey, Lord Howe's

Secretary, and he has recorded two highly characteristic utterances of

Franklin on the occasion. Such, Lord Howe declared, were his feelings

towards America, on account of the honor conferred upon his family, by its

recognition of the services rendered to it by his eldest brother (Viscount

Howe), that, if America should fall, he would feel and lament it like the

loss of a brother. Franklin's answer to this generous outburst is thus

recorded by Strachey. "Dr. Franklin (with an easy air, a collected

countenance, a bow, a smile, and all that _naivete_ which sometimes

appeared in his conversation and often in his writings), My Lord, we will

use our utmost endeavors to save your Lordship that mortification." Later,

when Lord Howe assured Franklin that it was the commerce, the strength,

the men of America rather than her money that Great Britain wanted,

Franklin, ever alive to the military advantage possessed by the Colonies in

the amazing capacity for reproduction of their people, replied, "Ay, My

Lord, we have in America a pretty considerable manufactory of men."

Strachey supposed that he meant to convey by this remark the impression

that the American army was a large one, but Lord Howe knew Franklin's turn

of mind better, and penciled on the margin of Strachey's manuscript, "No;

their increasing population."

Lord Howe seems to have borne himself on this occasion in every respect

like a gallant gentleman. When the three members of Congress reached the

shore opposite to Staten Island, after the journey from Philadelphia, which

Adams had made on horseback, and Franklin and Rutledge in chairs, they

found a barge from him awaiting them with an officer in it as a hostage for

their safe return from the island. Adams suggested that the hostage should

be dispensed with, and his colleagues, he tells us in his grandiose way,

"exulted in the proposition and agreed to it instantly." The fact was

communicated to the officer, who bowed his assent, and re-embarked with the

Americans. When Lord Howe saw the barge approaching the beach of the

island, he walked down to meet it, and the Hessian regiment, which attended

him, was drawn up in two lines facing each other. Upon seeing that the

officer, whom he had sent over to the Jersey shore, had returned, Lord Howe

exclaimed, "Gentlemen, you make me a very high compliment, and you may

depend upon it I will consider it as the most sacred of things." When the

party landed, he shook hands very cordially with Franklin, and, after being

introduced to Adams and Rutledge, conducted the three between the two files

of Hessians to the house where the conference was to take place; all four

chatting pleasantly together as they walked along. Adams, who was far too

intense an American not to hate savagely a Hessian, fresh from the

cattle-pen of his Prince, described these soldiers as "looking fierce as

ten Furies, and making all the grimaces, and gestures, and motions of their

muskets with bayonets fixed, which, I suppose, military etiquette requires,

but which we neither understood nor regarded." The house, which was to be

the scene of the conference, was dilapidated and dirty from military use,

but the apartment, into which the Americans were ushered, had been hung

with moss and branches by Lord Howe with such refinement of taste that

Adams subsequently pronounced it "not only wholesome, but romantically

elegant." After reaching it, the whole party, including the colonel of the

Hessian regiment, sat down to a collation "of good claret, good bread, cold

ham, tongues, and mutton." When the repast was over, the colonel withdrew,

the table was cleared and the fruitless conference began.

Nor was the activity of Franklin after his return from England limited to

his duties as a member of Congress. If he fell asleep at times, when

questions were under discussion by that body, it might well have been

because he had no other time to sleep. Shortly after his return, he was

elected Chairman of the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety, which was charged

with the duty of arming and defending the Province, and of issuing bills of

credit to defray the expense. In this office, he proved quite as fertile in

expedients as he had done at the time of the Association years before. In

the course of a year, the Delaware was effectively protected by forts and

batteries and by a marine _chevaux-de-frise_, planned by Franklin himself;

so much so that, when a British fleet attempted several years later to

ascend the river, its progress was blocked for two months. Other features

of the defensive plans adopted by the committee were row-galleys, fully

armed and manned, of which Josiah Quincy spoke in a letter to Washington as

"Dr. Franklin's row-galleys."

In the morning at six [Franklin wrote to Priestley], I

am at the Committee of Safety, appointed by the

Assembly to put the Province in a state of defence;

which committee holds till near nine, when I am at the

Congress, and that sits till after four in the

afternoon. Both these bodies proceed with the greatest

unanimity, and their meetings are well attended. It

will scarce be credited in Britain, that men can be as

diligent with us from zeal for the public good, as with

you for thousands per annum. Such is the difference

between uncorrupted new states, and corrupted old ones.

To the period when the Committee of Safety was holding its sessions belongs

a story which William Temple Franklin tells us of his grandfather. Some of

the more intolerant Pennsylvanians asked the Committee to call upon the

Episcopal clergy to refrain from prayers for the King.

The measure [said Franklin, who always preserved his

sense of proportion] is quite unnecessary; for the

Episcopal clergy, to my certain knowledge, have been

constantly praying, these twenty years, that "_God

would give to the king and his council wisdom_"; and we

all know that not the least notice has ever been taken

of that prayer.

While a member of Congress and the Committee of Safety, Franklin was also

elected a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, but, as the members of that

body were still required before taking their seats to pledge their

allegiance to the King, he was unwilling to actually take his seat. The

Assembly was under the dominion of John Dickinson, the leader of the

Proprietary Party, and was very reluctant to break finally with the Crown.

Nevertheless, it re-elected Franklin to Congress, though he alone of the

nine delegates, elected from Pennsylvania to that body, was unhesitatingly

in favor of independence. This position of isolation he was not condemned

to occupy long. At a subsequent election, the party in Pennsylvania, which

shared Franklin's views, obtained the upper hand, followed the lead of

Congress in repudiating all authority derived from the King and declared

the Proprietary Government dissolved. For a time, there was no government

of any kind in Pennsylvania for even the most elementary needs of society.

The result, however, was an impressive illustration of the fact that all

government is by no means on paper, for, at a later period of his life,

Franklin told Sir Samuel Romilly that, while this anarchical condition

lasted, order was perfectly preserved in every part of Pennsylvania, and

that no man, who should have attempted to take advantage of the situation,

for the purpose of evading the payment of a debt, could have endured the

contempt with which he would have been visited.

The first step towards the restoration of civil government was taken by the

Committee of Safety. It advised the people of Pennsylvania to elect

delegates to a conference; they responded by doing so, and the delegates

met at Philadelphia, sat five days, renounced allegiance to the King, took

an oath of obedience to Congress and issued a call to the people to elect

delegates to meet in convention and to form a constitution. At the

election, which ensued, Franklin was one of the eight delegates elected

from Philadelphia, and, when the convention met, he was unanimously chosen

its President. On account of his duties as a member of Congress, his

attendance upon the sessions of the convention was irregular, but it was

regular enough to exert a marked influence over the proceedings of the

body. In one respect, that is in the adoption of a single legislative

chamber, the constitution framed by the convention bore the unmistakable

impress of his peculiar political ideas.[28]

A few weeks after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, Franklin

received a long letter from Dubourg addressed to "My Dear Master," which

justified at least the inference that Vergennes leaned towards the cause of

the Colonies. Encouraged by this letter, Congress elected three envoys to

represent America in France: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Silas

Deane. Deane was already in France. Jefferson was compelled by the ill

health of his wife to decline, and Arthur Lee, then in London, was elected

in his stead.

After a voyage of thirty days in the _Reprisal_, commanded by Captain

Wickes, a small war-vessel in the service of Congress, Franklin reached

Quiberon Bay. Thence he proceeded by land to Nantes and from Nantes to

Paris. After his arrival at Paris, he lodged at the Hotel d'Hambourg, in

the Rue de l'Universite, until he found a home in the house at Passy placed

at his disposal by M. Donatien LeRay de Chaumont. For a time, he courted

retirement, but, as France was drawn more and more closely into concert

with the American rebels, his activity became more and more open, until the

surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga induced that country to abandon the

policy of connivance and secret assistance, which it had pursued behind the

screen, supplied by the commercial adventures of Caron de Beaumarchais,

even before Franklin landed in Europe, and to enter into the treaty of

alliance with the United States which made Adams, Lee and himself our fully

acknowledged representatives at the French Court. The circumstances, under

which the news of Burgoyne's capitulation was communicated to Franklin and

his colleagues, constitute one of the most thrilling moments in history.

The messenger, who conveyed it, was Jonathan Loring Austin, a young New

Englander, and the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of War; and he was

sent in a swift vessel for the very purpose by the State of Massachusetts.

"Whatever in thy wise providence thou seest best to do with the young man,

we beseech thee most fervently, at all events, to preserve the packet," is

the tactless petition that Dr. Cooper is said to have addressed to Heaven

on the Sunday before Austin sailed. The rumor of his coming preceded his

arrival at Passy, and, when his chaise was heard in the court of the Hotel

de Chaumont, Deane, Arthur and William Lee, Ralph Izard, Dr. Bancroft,

Beaumarchais and Franklin went out to meet him. "Sir," said Franklin, "_is_

Philadelphia taken?" "Yes, sir," replied Austin. At this Franklin clasped

his hands and turned as if to go back into the house. "But, sir," said

Austin, "I have greater news than that. General Burgoyne and his whole army

are prisoners of war!" The night of American adversity was now for the

first time lit up by a real augury of dawn, and the treaties of amity and

commerce and alliance between France and the United States, in the existing

state of French feeling, followed almost as a matter of course.

When, weak from his long voyage, Franklin started out on the journey from

the seashore to Paris, which led him at one point through the forest haunts

of a bloodthirsty gang of robbers, he was seventy years of age. "Yet," he

could truly declare some ten years later to George Whatley, "had I gone at

seventy, it would have cut off twelve of the most active years of my life,

employed too in matters of the greatest importance." These were indeed

years of precious service to his country and of a fame for himself as

resplendent as any in modern history which lacks the lustre of military

glory. What Washington was to America in the field, Franklin was to her in

the foreign relations upon which it may well be doubted whether the success

of her arms did not at times depend. To obtain material aid in the form of

money and munitions of war, soldiers and fleets from the one powerful

country in Europe, which manifested a disposition to side actively with

America, was the cardinal object of American policy after the outbreak of

the Revolution, and rarely has any man ever been more richly qualified for

the accomplishment of any object than was Franklin for the accomplishment

of this. In the first place, his liberal and sympathetic nature, with its

unrivalled capacity for assimilating foreign usages and habits of thought

and feeling, slid without the slightest friction into every recess of its

French environment. This was a fact of supreme importance in the case of a

people so distinctive in point of race and temperament, and so irredeemably

wedded to their own national prepossessions and prejudices as the French.

Doubtless, Franklin was too wise a man not to have courted French favor, in

a social sense, to some extent as a matter of political policy. Then, too,

there is every reason to know that he was sincerely grateful to France for

the benefits which she showered upon his country and himself. But it was

mainly the spell of La Belle France herself, with her cordial appeal to his

delight in existence, which finally produced the state of mutual affection

that enabled him to say with truth that he loved the French and that they

loved him. What this meant to our cause we can easily divine when we

remember how wholly some of the colleagues of Franklin failed to recommend

themselves to the good will of the people, whose good will it was of the

utmost concern to America that they should conciliate, or to abstain from

untimely dissensions. The exact reverse of what Franklin said of himself

might be said of them. They disliked the French People, and the French

People disliked them.[29] More than once it required all the management of

Franklin to placate feelings that they had aroused in Vergennes, the French

Minister, by lack of tact or good judgment. On one occasion, after being

lectured by Adams, on the subject of the American paper money, held by

citizens of France, Vergennes wrote to Franklin that nothing could be less

analogous than the language of Adams to the alliance subsisting between his

Majesty and the United States. In the same letter, he asked Franklin to lay

the whole correspondence between Adams and himself before Congress, adding

that his Majesty flattered himself that that Assembly, inspired with

principles different from those which Mr. Adams had discovered, would

convince his Majesty that they knew how to prize those marks of favor which

the King had constantly shown to the United States. No choice was left to

Franklin except to comply with the request and to do what he could to

satisfy Vergennes that the sentiments of Congress and of Americans

generally were very different from those of Adams. But unfortunately,

before the correspondence between Adams and Vergennes could reach Congress,

Adams had again, by his officious conduct in another particular, elicited a

sharp rebuke from Vergennes. This correspondence, too, Vergennes requested

Franklin to lay before Congress, which Franklin did with comments not more

severe than the occasion called for, but which the pride of Adams, already

deeply infected with the jealousy of Franklin, which he shared with Arthur

Lee, so far as his manlier and wholesomer nature allowed, never fully

forgave. "He," Vergennes said of Adams, in a letter to La Luzerne,

"possesses a rigidity, a pedantry, an arrogance and a vanity which render

him unfit to treat political questions."

After peace was restored between Great Britain and the United States, the

strictures of Adams upon Vergennes and France became so imprudent and

outspoken that Franklin wrote to Robert Morris:

I hope the ravings of a certain mischievous madman here

against France and its ministers, which I hear of every

day, will not be regarded in America, so as to diminish

in the least the happy union that has hitherto

subsisted between the two nations, and which is indeed

the solid foundation of our present importance in

Europe.

Four months later, Franklin, to use his own words, hazarded a mortal enmity

by making this communication to Robert R. Livingston:

I ought not, however, to conceal from you, that one of

my Colleagues is of a very different Opinion from me in

these Matters. He thinks the French Minister one of the

greatest Enemies of our Country, that he would have

straitned our Boundaries, to prevent the Growth of our

People; contracted our Fishery, to obstruct the

Increase of our Seamen; and retained the Royalists

among us, to keep us divided; that he privately opposes

all our Negociations with foreign Courts, and afforded

us, during the War, the Assistance we receiv'd, only to

keep it alive, that we might be so much the more

weaken'd by it; that to think of Gratitude to France is

the greatest of Follies, and that to be influenc'd by

it would ruin us. He makes no Secret of his having

these Opinions, expresses them publicly, sometimes in

presence of English Ministers, and speaks of hundreds

of Instances which he could produce in Proof of them.

All this Franklin believed to be

as imaginary as I know his Fancies to be, that Count de

V. and myself are continually plotting against him, and

employing the News-Writers of Europe to depreciate his

Character, &c. But as Shakespear says, "Trifles light

as Air, &c." I am persuaded, however, that he means

well for his Country, is always an honest Man, often a

wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely

out of his senses.

A clever and just flash of characterization but for the usual inability of

Franklin to refer abnormal conduct to anything short of dementia.[30] In

the latter part of the same year, Franklin again had occasion to write to

Robert Morris,

My Apprehension that the Union between France and our

States might be diminished by Accounts from hence, was

occasioned by the extravagant and violent Language held

here by a Public Person, in public Company, which had

that Tendency; and it was natural for me to think his

Letters might hold the same Language, in which I was

right; for I have since had Letters from Boston

informing me of it. Luckily here, and I hope there, it

is imputed to the true Cause, a Disorder in the Brain,

which, tho' not constant, has its Fits too frequent.

Apart from more general considerations, as Franklin was, at the very time

that Adams was holding this kind of discourse, soliciting more money from

Vergennes for the United States, it was natural enough that he should fear

the tendency of such ungrateful and provoking language to chill the

liberality of the French Minister. It is agreeable, however, to recollect

that in the succeeding year the able, upright and patriotic statesman, who

had to such a conspicuous degree the defects of his virtues, was so far

restored to reason, that Franklin could write to William Temple Franklin

that he had walked to Auteuil on Saturday to dine with Mr. A. &c., with

whom he went on comfortably.

As to how far Arthur Lee succeeded in ingratiating himself with Vergennes,

the correspondence of that Minister with the French Minister in America

enables us to judge without difficulty. In one letter, he wrote that he had

too good an opinion of the intelligence and wisdom of the members of

Congress and of all true patriots to suppose that they would allow

themselves to be led astray by the representations of a man (Lee) whose

character they ought to know.

As to Dr. Franklin [he continued], his conduct leaves

nothing for Congress to desire. It is as zealous and

patriotic, as it is wise and circumspect; and you may

affirm with assurance, on all occasions where you think

proper, that the method he pursues is much more

efficacious than it would be if he were to assume a

tone of importunity in multiplying his demands, and

above all in supporting them by menaces, to which we

should neither give credence nor value, and which would

only tend to render him personally disagreeable.

The writer might as well have added "as is Arthur Lee." In another letter,

Vergennes stated that the four millions more that France had decided to

grant Dr. Franklin would convince Congress that they had "no occasion to

employ the false policy of Mr. Izard and Mr. Lee to procure succors."[31]

For very different reasons, even Jay, with his admirable character, did not

achieve any success in dealing with the French people beyond the kind of

success which the French themselves damn with the phrase _succes d'estime_.

The complaint that M. Grand made of him, when he was in Spain, "that he

always appeared very much buttoned up," was hardly less applicable to him

when he was transferred to Paris as one of our Peace Commissioners. "Mr.

Jay," diarizes Adams, "likes Frenchmen as little as Mr. Lee and Mr. Izard

did. He says they are not a moral people; they know not what it is; he

don't like any Frenchman; the Marquis de Lafayette is clever, but he is a

Frenchman."