antechamber one Innis, a messenger of Philadelphia, who had come from
thence express with a packet from Governor Denny for the general. He
delivered to me some letters from my friends there, which occasioned
my inquiry when he was to return, and where he lodged, that I might
send some letters by him. He told me he was ordered to call to-morrow
at nine for the general's answer to the governor, and should set off
immediately. I put my letters into his hands the same day. A fortnight
after I met him again in the same place. "So, you are soon returned,
Innis?" "Returned! no, I am not gone yet." "How so?" "I have called
here by order every morning these two weeks past for his lordship's
letter, and it is not yet ready." "Is it possible, when he is so great
a writer? for I see him constantly at his escritoire." "Yes," says
Innis, "but he is like St. George on the signs, always on horseback,
and never rides on." This observation of the messenger was, it seems,
well founded; for, when in England, I understood that Mr. Pitt[193]
gave it as one reason for removing this general, and sending Generals
Amherst and Wolfe, that the minister never heard from him, and could
not know what he was doing.
This daily expectation of sailing, and all the three packets going
down to Sandy Hook, to join the fleet there, the passengers thought it
best to be on board, lest by a sudden order the ships should sail and
they be left behind. There, if I remember right, we were about six
weeks, consuming our sea stores, and obliged to procure more. At
length the fleet sailed, the general and all his army on board, bound
to Louisburg,[194] with intent to besiege and take that fortress; all
the packet boats in company ordered to attend the general's ship,
ready to receive his dispatches when they should be ready. We were out
five days before we got a letter with leave to part, and then our ship
quitted the fleet and steered for England. The other two packets he
still detained, carried them with him to Halifax, where he stayed some
time to exercise the men in sham attacks upon sham forts, then altered
his mind as to besieging Louisburg, and returned to New York with all
his troops, together with the two packets above mentioned, and all
their passengers! During his absence the French and savages had taken
Fort George, on the frontier of that province, and the savages had
massacred many of the garrison after capitulation.
I saw afterward in London Captain Bonnell, who commanded one of those
packets. He told me that, when he had been detained a month, he
acquainted his lordship that his ship was grown foul to a degree that
must necessarily hinder her fast sailing, a point of consequence for a
packet boat, and requested an allowance of time to heave her down and
clean her bottom. He was asked how long time that would require. He
answered, "Three days." The general replied: "If you can do it in one
day, I give leave; otherwise not; for you must certainly sail the day
after to-morrow." So he never obtained leave, though detained
afterward from day to day during full three months.
I saw also in London one of Bonnell's passengers, who was so enraged
against his lordship for deceiving and detaining him so long at New
York, and then carrying him to Halifax and back again, that he swore he
would sue him for damages. Whether he did or not, I never heard; but, as
he represented the injury to his affairs, it was very considerable.
On the whole, I wondered much how such a man came to be intrusted with
so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but, having
since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining and
motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished. General Shirley,
on whom the command of the army devolved upon the death of Braddock,
would, in my opinion, if continued in place, have made a much better
campaign than that of Loudoun in 1757, which was frivolous, expensive,
and disgraceful to our nation beyond conception; for, though Shirley
was not a bred soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and
attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious
plans, and quick and active in carrying them into execution. Loudoun,
instead of defending the colonies with his great army, left them
totally exposed, while he paraded idly at Halifax, by which means Fort
George was lost. Besides, he deranged all our mercantile operations,
and distressed our trade, by a long embargo[195] on the exportation of
provisions, on pretense of keeping supplies from being obtained by the
enemy, but in reality for beating down their price in favor of the
contractors, in whose profits, it was said, perhaps from suspicion
only, he had a share. And when at length the embargo was taken off by
neglecting to send notice of it to Charleston, the Carolina fleet was
detained near three months longer, whereby their bottoms were so much
damaged by the worm[196] that a great part of them foundered in their
passage home.
Shirley was, I believe, sincerely glad of being relieved from so
burdensome a charge as the conduct of an army must be to a man
unacquainted with military business. I was at the entertainment given
by the city of New York to Lord Loudoun, on his taking upon him the
command. Shirley, though thereby superseded, was present also. There
was a great company of officers, citizens, and strangers, and, some
chairs having been borrowed in the neighborhood, there was one among
them very low, which fell to the lot of Mr. Shirley. Perceiving it as
I sat by him, I said, "They have given you, sir, too low a seat." "No
matter," says he, "Mr. Franklin, I find a _low seat_ the easiest."
While I was, as afore mentioned, detained at New York, I received all
the accounts of the provisions, etc., that I had furnished to Braddock,
some of which accounts could not sooner be obtained from the different
persons I had employed to assist in the business. I presented them to
Lord Loudoun, desiring to be paid the balance. He caused them to be
regularly examined by the proper officer, who, after comparing every
article with its voucher, certified them to be right, and the balance
due, for which his lordship promised to give me an order on the
paymaster. This was, however, put off from time to time; and, though I
called often for it by appointment, I did not get it. At length, just
before my departure, he told me he had, on better consideration,
concluded not to mix his accounts with those of his predecessors. "And
you," says he, "when in England, have only to exhibit your accounts at
the treasury, and you will be paid immediately."
I mentioned, but without effect, the great and unexpected expense I
had been put to by being detained so long at New York, as a reason for
my desiring to be presently paid; and on my observing that it was not
right I should be put to any further trouble or delay in obtaining the
money I had advanced, as I charged no commission for my service, "O
sir," says he, "you must not think of persuading us that you are no
gainer; we understand better those affairs, and know that every one
concerned in supplying the army finds means, in the doing it, to fill
his own pockets." I assured him that was not my case, and that I had
not pocketed a farthing, but he appeared clearly not to believe me;
and, indeed, I have since learned that immense fortunes are often made
in such employments. As to my balance, I am not paid it to this day,
of which more hereafter.
Our captain of the packet had boasted much, before we sailed, of the
swiftness of his ship; unfortunately, when we came to sea, she proved
the dullest of ninety-six sail, to his no small mortification. After
many conjectures respecting the cause, when we were near another ship
almost as dull as ours, which, however, gained upon us, the captain
ordered all hands to come aft, and stand as near the ensign staff[197]
as possible. We were, passengers included, about forty persons. While
we stood there, the ship mended her pace, and soon left her neighbor
far behind, which proved clearly what our captain suspected, that she
was loaded too much by the head. The casks of water, it seems, had
been all placed forward; these he therefore ordered to be moved
farther aft, on which the ship recovered her character, and proved the
best sailer in the fleet.
The captain said she had once gone at the rate of thirteen knots,
which is accounted thirteen miles per hour. We had on board, as a
passenger, Captain Kennedy, of the navy, who contended that it was
impossible, that no ship ever sailed so fast, and that there must have
been some error in the division of the log line,[198] or some mistake
in heaving the log. A wager ensued between the two captains, to be
decided when there should be sufficient wind. Kennedy thereupon
examined rigorously the log line, and, being satisfied with that, he
determined to throw the log himself. Accordingly, some days after,
when the wind blew very fair and fresh, and the captain of the packet,
Lutwidge, said he believed she then went at the rate of thirteen
knots, Kennedy made the experiment, and owned his wager lost.
The above fact I give for the sake of the following observation. It
has been remarked, as an imperfection in the art of ship building,
that it can never be known, till she is tried, whether a new ship will
or will not be a good sailer; for that the model of a good sailing
ship has been exactly followed in a new one, which has proved, on the
contrary, remarkably dull. I apprehend that this may partly be
occasioned by the different opinions of seamen respecting the modes of
lading, rigging, and sailing of a ship. Each has his system; and the
same vessel, laden by the judgment and orders of one captain, shall
sail better or worse than when by the orders of another. Besides, it
scarce ever happens that a ship is formed, fitted for the sea, and
sailed by the same person. One man builds the hull, another rigs her,
a third lades and sails her. No one of these has the advantage of
knowing all the ideas and experience of the others, and therefore
cannot draw just conclusions from a combination of the whole.
Even in the simple operation of sailing when at sea, I have often
observed different judgments in the officers who commanded the
successive watches,[199] the wind being the same. One would have the
sails trimmed sharper or flatter than another, so that they seemed to
have no certain rule to govern by. Yet I think a set of experiments
might be instituted, first, to determine the most proper form of the
hull for swift sailing; next, the best dimensions and properest place
for the masts; then the form and quantity of sails, and their
position, as the wind may be; and, lastly, the disposition of the
lading. This is an age of experiments, and I think a set accurately
made and combined would be of great use. I am persuaded, therefore,
that ere long some ingenious philosopher will undertake it, to whom I
wish success.
We were several times chased[200] in our passage, but outsailed
everything, and in thirty days had soundings.[201] We had a good
observation,[202] and the captain judged himself so near our port,
Falmouth, that, if we made a good run in the night, we might be off
the mouth of that harbor in the morning, and by running in the night
might escape the notice of the enemy's privateers,[203] who often
cruised near the entrance of the channel. Accordingly, all the sail
was set that we could possibly make, and the wind being very fresh and
fair, we went right before it, and made great way. The captain, after
his observation, shaped his course, as he thought, so as to pass wide
of the Scilly Isles; but it seems there is sometimes a strong
indraught[204] setting up St. George's Channel, which deceives seamen
and caused the loss of Sir Cloudesley Shovel's squadron. This
indraught was probably the cause of what happened to us.
We had a watchman placed in the bow, to whom they often called, "Look
well out before there," and he as often answered, "Ay, ay;" but
perhaps he had his eyes shut, and was half asleep at the time, they
sometimes answering, as is said, mechanically; for he did not see a
light just before us, which had been hid by the studding sails[205]
from the man at the helm, and from the rest of the watch, but by an
accidental yaw of the ship was discovered and occasioned a great
alarm, we being very near it, the light appearing to me as big as a
cart wheel. It was midnight, and our captain fast asleep; but Captain
Kennedy, jumping upon deck, and seeing the danger, ordered the ship to
wear round, all sails standing--an operation dangerous to the masts;
but it carried us clear, and we escaped shipwreck, for we were
running right upon the rocks on which the lighthouse was erected. This
deliverance impressed me strongly with the utility of lighthouses, and
made me resolve to encourage the building of more of them in America,
if I should live to return there.
In the morning it was found by the soundings, etc., that we were near
our port, but a thick fog hid the land from our sight. About nine
o'clock the fog began to rise, and seemed to be lifted up from the
water like the curtain at a playhouse, discovering underneath the town
of Falmouth, the vessels in its harbor, and the fields that surrounded
it. This was a most pleasing spectacle to those who had been so long
without any other prospects than the uniform view of a vacant ocean,
and it gave us the more pleasure as we were now free from the
anxieties which the state of war occasioned.
I set out immediately, with my son, for London, and we only stopped a
little by the way to view Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, and Lord
Pembroke's house and gardens, with his very curious antiquities at
Wilton. We arrived in London the 27th of July, 1757.[206]
As soon as I was settled in a lodging Mr. Charles had provided for me, I
went to visit Dr. Fothergill, to whom I was strongly recommended, and
whose counsel respecting my proceedings I was advised to obtain. He was
against an immediate complaint to government, and thought the
proprietaries should first be personally applied to, who might possibly
be induced by the interposition and persuasion of some private friends,
to accommodate matters amicably. I then waited on my old friend and
correspondent, Mr. Peter Collinson, who told me that John Hanbury, the
great Virginia merchant, had requested to be informed when I should
arrive, that he might carry me to Lord Granville's, who was then
President of the Council, and wished to see me as soon as possible. I
agreed to go with him the next morning. Accordingly, Mr. Hanbury called
for me and took me in his carriage to that nobleman's, who received me
with great civility; and after some questions respecting the present
state of affairs in America and discourse thereupon, he said to me: "You
Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your Constitution; you
contend that the king's instructions to his governors are not laws, and
think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own
discretion. But those instructions are not like the pocket instructions
given to a minister going abroad, for regulating his conduct in some
trifling point of ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in
the laws; they are then considered, debated, and perhaps amended in
Council, after which they are signed by the king. They are then, so far
as they relate to you, the law of the land, for the king is the
legislator of the colonies."
I told his lordship this was new doctrine to me. I had always understood
from our charters that our laws were to be made by our Assemblies, to be
presented indeed to the king for his royal assent, but that being once
given, the king could not repeal or alter them; and as the Assemblies
could not make permanent laws without his assent, so neither could he
make a law for them without theirs. He assured me I was totally
mistaken. I did not think so, however, and his lordship's conversation
having a little alarmed me as to what might be the sentiments of the
court concerning us, I wrote it down as soon as I returned to my
lodgings. I recollected that about twenty years before, a clause in a
bill brought into Parliament by the ministry had proposed to make the
king's instructions laws in the colonies, but the clause was thrown out
by the Commons, for which we adored them as our friends and friends of
liberty, till by their conduct toward us in 1765 it seemed that they had
refused that point of sovereignty to the king only that they might
reserve it for themselves.
After some days, Dr. Fothergill having spoken to the proprietaries,
they agreed to a meeting with me at Mr. T. Penn's house in Spring
Garden. The conversation at first consisted of mutual declarations of
disposition to reasonable accommodations, but I suppose each party had
its own ideas of what should be meant by "reasonable." We then went
into consideration of our several points of complaint, which I
enumerated. The proprietaries justified their conduct as well as they
could, and I the Assembly's. We now appeared very wide, and so far
from each other in our opinions as to discourage all hope of
agreement. However, it was concluded that I should give them the heads
of our complaints in writing, and they promised then to consider them.
I did so soon after, but they put the paper into the hands of their
solicitor, Ferdinand John Paris, who managed for them all their law
business in their great suit with the neighboring proprietary of
Maryland, Lord Baltimore, which had subsisted seventy years, and who
wrote for them all their papers and messages in their dispute with the
Assembly. He was a proud, angry man, and as I had occasionally in the
answers of the Assembly treated his papers with some severity, they
being really weak in point of argument and haughty in expression, he
had conceived a mortal enmity to me, which discovering itself whenever
we met, I declined the proprietaries' proposal that he and I should
discuss the heads of complaint between our two selves, and refused
treating with any one but them. They then by his advice put the paper
into the hands of the attorney and solicitor-general, for their
opinion and counsel upon it, where it lay unanswered a year wanting
eight days, during which time I made frequent demands of an answer
from the proprietaries, but without obtaining any other than that
they had not yet received the opinion of the attorney and
solicitor-general. What it was when they did receive it I never
learned, for they did not communicate it to me, but sent a long
message to the Assembly, drawn and signed by Paris, reciting my paper,
complaining of its want of formality as a rudeness on my part, and
giving a flimsy justification of their conduct, adding that they
should be willing to accommodate matters if the Assembly would send
out "some person of candor" to treat with them for that purpose,
intimating thereby that I was not such.
The want of formality, or rudeness, was, probably, my not having
addressed the paper to them with their assumed titles of "True and
Absolute Proprietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania," which I
omitted as not thinking it necessary in a paper the intention of which
was only to reduce to a certainty by writing what in conversation I
had delivered _viva voce_.[207]
But during this delay, the Assembly having prevailed with Governor
Denny to pass an act taxing the proprietary estate in common with the
estates of the people, which was the grand point in dispute, they
omitted answering the message.
When this act, however, came over, the proprietaries, counseled by
Paris, determined to oppose its receiving the royal assent.
Accordingly they petitioned the king in Council, and a hearing was
appointed in which two lawyers were employed by them against the act,
and two by me in support of it. They alleged that the act was intended
to load the proprietary estate in order to spare those of the people,
and that if it were suffered to continue in force, and the
proprietaries, who were in odium with the people, left to their mercy
in proportioning the taxes, they would inevitably be ruined. We
replied that the act had no such intention, and would have no such
effect; that the assessors were honest and discreet men under an oath
to assess fairly and equitably, and that any advantage each of them
might expect in lessening his own tax by augmenting that of the
proprietaries was too trifling to induce them to perjure themselves.
This is the purport of what I remember as urged by both sides, except
that we insisted strongly on the mischievous consequences that must
attend a repeal, for that the money, one hundred thousand pounds,
being printed and given to the king's use, expended in his service,
and now spread among the people, the repeal would strike it dead in
their hands to the ruin of many, and the total discouragement of
future grants; and the selfishness of the proprietors in soliciting
such a general catastrophe, merely from a groundless fear of their
estate being taxed too highly, was insisted on in the strongest terms.
On this, Lord Mansfield, one of the counsel, rose, and beckoning me,
took me into the clerk's chamber, while the lawyers were pleading, and
asked me if I was really of opinion that no injury would be done the
proprietary estate in the execution of the act. I said, "Certainly."
"Then," says he, "you can have little objection to enter into an
engagement to assure that point." I answered, "None at all." He then
called in Paris, and after some discourse, his lordship's proposition
was accepted on both sides; a paper to the purpose was drawn up by the
clerk of the Council, which I signed with Mr. Charles, who was also an
agent of the province for their ordinary affairs, when Lord Mansfield
returned to the council chamber, where finally the law was allowed to
pass. Some changes were, however, recommended, and we also engaged
they should be made by a subsequent law, but the Assembly did not
think them necessary; for one year's tax having been levied by the act
before the order of Council arrived, they appointed a committee to
examine the proceedings of the assessors, and on this committee they
put several particular friends of the proprietaries. After a full
inquiry, they unanimously signed a report that they found the tax had
been assessed with perfect equity.
The Assembly looked upon my entering into the first part of the
engagement as an essential service to the province, since it secured
the credit of the paper money then spread over all the country. They
gave me their thanks in form when I returned. But the proprietaries
were enraged at Governor Denny for having passed the act, and turned
him out with threats of suing him for breach of instructions which he
had given bond to observe. He, however, having done it at the instance
of the general, and for his Majesty's service, and having some
powerful interest at court, despised the threats, and they were never
put in execution.
[Footnote 191: A vessel starting at some set time and conveying
letters and passengers from country to country.]
[Footnote 192: Between ourselves.]
[Footnote 193: William Pitt (1708-78). See Macaulay's Essay on the
Earl of Chatham (Eclectic English Classics, American Book Company).]
[Footnote 194: A possession of the French in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
It was taken by the English in 1758.]
[Footnote 195: A prohibition to prevent ships leaving port.]
[Footnote 196: The worm which eats into the wood bottoms of ships.]
[Footnote 197: "Ensign staff," i.e., flagstaff.]
[Footnote 198: The log line is a line fastened to the log-chip, by
which, when it is thrown over the side of a vessel, the rate of speed
is found.]
[Footnote 199: A watch is a certain part of a vessel's officers and
crew who have the care and working of her for a period of time,
commonly for four hours.]
[Footnote 200: By French vessels.]
[Footnote 201: Measurements of the depth of the water with a plummet
and line.]
[Footnote 202: Of the sun's altitude in order to calculate the
latitude (see Note 2, p. 77).]
[Footnote 203: Vessels armed and officered by private persons, but
acting under a commission from government.]
[Footnote 204: An inward current.]
[Footnote 205: Studding sails are sails set between the edges of the
chief square sails during a fair wind.]
[Footnote 206: "Here terminates the Autobiography, as published by
William Temple Franklin and his successors. What follows was written
the last year of Dr. Franklin's life, and was never before printed in
English."--BIGELOW'S _Autobiography of Franklin_, 1868, p. 350, note.]
[Footnote 207: By word of mouth.]
LETTERS REFERRED TO ON PAGE 89.
FROM MR. ABEL JAMES (RECEIVED IN PARIS).