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Chapter 51:
The
King in Council Insults the Great American plebeian.
December, 1773—February, 1774.
The just man covered with the opprobrium of
crime and meriting all the honors of virtue, is the sublimest spectacle that can appear on earth.
Against
Franklin were arrayed the
Court, the Ministry, the Parliament, and an all-pervading social influence; but he only assumed a firmer demeanor and a loftier tone.
On delivering to Lord Dartmouth the Address to the
King for the removal of
Hutchinson and
Oliver, he gave assurances, that the people of
Massachusetts aimed at no novelties; that ‘having lately discovered the authors of their grievances to be some of their own people, their resentment against Britain was thence much abated.’
The
Secretary promised at once to lay the Petition before the
King, and expressed his ‘pleasure’ at the communication as well as his ‘earnest hope’ for the restoration ‘of the most perfect tranquillity and happiness.’
It had been the unquestionable duty of the
Agent of the Province to communicate
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proof that
Hutchinson and
Oliver were conspir-
ing against its Constitution; to bring censure on the act, it was necessary to raise a belief that the evidence had been surreptitiously obtained.
To that end
Hutchinson was unwearied in his entreaties; but
William Whately the Banker, who was his brother's xecutor, was persuaded that the letters in question had never been in his hands, and refused to cast imputations on any one.
The newspaper Press was therefore employed to spread a rumor that they had been dishonestly obtained through John Temple.
The anonymous calumny which was attributed to
Bernard,
Knox, and
Mauduit, was denied by one calling himself ‘a Member of Parliament,’ who also truly affirmed, that the letters which were sent to
Boston, had never been in the executor's hands.
Again the Press declared, what was also true, that
Whately, the executor, had submitted files of his brother's letters to
Temple's examination, who, it was insinuated, had seized the opportunity to purloin them.
Temple repelled the charge instantly and successfully.
1 Whately, the executor, never made a suggestion that the letters had been taken away by
Temple, and always believed the contrary;
2 but swayed not so much by the solicitations of
Hutchinson and
Mauduit, as by his sudden appointment as a banker to the Treasury, he published an evasive card, in which he did not relieve
Temple from the implication.
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A duel followed between
Temple and
Whately,
without witnesses; then newspaper altercations on the incidents of the meeting; till another duel seemed likely to ensue.
Cushing, the timid Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, to whom the letters had been officially transmitted, begged that he might not be known as having received them, lest it should be ‘a damage’ to him; the Member of Parliament, who had had them in his possession, never permitted himself to be named;
Temple, who risked offices producing a thousand pounds a year, publicly denied ‘any concern in procuring or transmitting them.’
To prevent bloodshed,
Franklin assumed the undivided responsibility, from which every one else was disposed to shrink.
‘I,’ said he, ‘I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to
Boston the letters in question.’
3 His ingenuousness exposed him to ‘unmerited abuse’ in every company and in every newspaper, and gave his enemies an opening to reject publicly the Petition; which otherwise would have been dismissed without parade.
4
On Tuesday the eleventh of January,
Franklin for
Massachusetts, and
Mauduit, with
Wedderburn, for
Hutchinson and
Oliver, appeared before the Privy Council. ‘I thought,’ said
Franklin, ‘that this had been a matter of politics, and not of law, and have not brought any counsel.’
The hearing was, therefore, adjourned to Saturday the twenty-ninth.
Meantime the Ministry and the courtiers expressed their
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rage against him; and talked of his dismissal from
office, of his arrest,
5 and imprisonment at Newgate; of a search among his papers for proofs of Treason; while
Wedderburn openly professed the intention to inveigh personally against him. He was also harassed with a subpoena from the
Chancellor, to attend his Court at the suit of
William Whately, respecting the letters.
The public sentiment was, moreover, embittered by accounts that the
Americans would not suffer the landing of the tea. The zeal of the Colonists was unabated.
On New-Year's eve, a half chest of tea, picked up in
Roxbury, was burned on Boston Common; on the twentieth, three barrels of Bohea tea were burned in State Street. On the twenty-fifth
John Malcolm, a North Briton, who had been aid to
Governor Tryon in his war against the Regulators, and was now a preventive officer in the Customs, having indiscreetly provoked the populace, was seized, tarred and feathered, and paraded under the gallows.
The General Court also assembled, full of a determination to compel the
Judges to refuse the salaries proffered by the
King.
Enough of the prevalence of this spirit was known in
England, to raise a greater clamor against the
Americans, than had ever before existed.
Hypocrites, traitors, rebels and villains were the softest epithets applied to them;
6 and some menaced war, and would have given full scope to sanguinary rancor.
On the twenty-seventh, the
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Government received official information,
7 that the
people of
Boston had thrown the tea overboard, and this event swelled the anger against the
Americans.
In this state of public feeling,
Franklin on the twenty-ninth, assisted by
Dunning and
John Lee, came before the Privy Council, to advocate the removal of
Hutchinson and
Oliver, in whose behalf appeared
Israel Mauduit, the old adviser of She Stamp Tax; and
Wedderburn the
Solicitor General.
It was a day of great expectation.
Thirty-five
Lords of the Council were present; a larger number than had ever attended a hearing; and the room was filled with a crowded audience, among whom were
Priestley,
Jeremy Bentham and
Edmund Burke.
The Petition and accompanying papers having been read,
Dunning asked on the part of his clients the reason of his being ordered to attend.
8 ‘No cause,’ said he,
is instituted; nor do we think advocates necessary; nor are they demanded on the part of the Colony.
The Petition is not in the nature of accusation, but of advice and request.
It is an Address to the King's wisdom, not an application for criminal justice; when referred to the Council, it is a matter for political prudence, not for judicial determination.
The matter, therefore, rests wholly in your Lordships' opinion of the propriety or impropriety of continuing persons in authority, who are represented by legal bodies, competent to such representation, as having (whether on sufficient or insufficient grounds) entirely forfeited the confidence of the Assemblies
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whom they were to act with, and of the people
whom they were to govern.
The resolutions on which that representation is founded, lie before your Lordships, together with the letters from which they arose.
If your Lordships should think that these actions which appear to the Colony Representative to be faulty, ought in other places to appear meritorious, the Petition has not desired that the parties should be punished as criminals for these actions of supposed merit; nor even that they may not be rewarded.
It only requests that these gentlemen may be removed to places where such merits are better understood, and such rewards may be more approved. Report of the speech of the Counsel of the Province, in a letter from Edmund Burke, the Agent of the Colony of New-York to the Committee of Correspondence of the New-York Assembly.
He spoke well, and was seconded by
Lee.
9
The question as presented by
Dunning, was already decided in favor of the Petitioners; it was the universal opinion that
Hutchinson ought to be superseded.
Wedderburn changed the issue, as if
Franklin were on trial; and in a speech which was a continued tissue of falsehood and ribaldry, turned his invective against the Petitioners and their Messenger.
Of all men,
Franklin was the most important in any attempt at conciliation.
He was the
Agent of the two great Colonies of
Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania, and also of
New Jersey and
Georgia; was the friend of
Edmund Burke, who was Agent for
New-York.
All the troubles in British colonial policy had grown out of the neglect of his advice, and there was no one who could have mediated
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like him between the
Metropolis and the Ame-
He was now thrice venerable, from genius, fame in the world of science, and age, being already nearly threescore years and ten.
This man
Wedderburn, turning from the real question, employed all the cunning powers of distortion and misrepresentation to abuse.
With an absurdity of application which the
Lords of the Privy Council were too much prejudiced to observe, he drew a parallel between
Boston and
Capri,
Hutchinson and
Sejanus, the humble Petition of the Massachusetts Assembly, and a verbose and grand epistle of the Emperor Tiberius.
Franklin, whose character was most benign, and who from obvious motives of mercy had assumed the sole responsibility of obtaining the letters, he described as a person of the most deliberate malevolence, realizing in life what poetic fiction only had penned for the breast of a bloody
African.
The speech of
Hutchinson, challenging a discussion of the Supremacy of Parliament, had been not only condemned by public opinion in
England, but disapproved by the
Secretary of State;
Wedderburn pronounced it ‘a masterly one,’ which had ‘stunned the faction.’
Franklin, for twenty years had exerted his wonderful powers as the great conciliator, had never once employed the
American press to alarm the
American people, but had sought to prevent the Parliamentary taxation of
America, by private and successful remonstrance during the time of the Pelhams; by seasonable remonstrance with
Grenville against the Stamp Act; by honest and true answers to the inquiries of the House of Commons; by the best of advice to Shelburne.
When sycophants sought by flattery to mislead the
Minister for
America, he had given
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correct information and safe counsel to the Ministry of
Grafton, and repeated it emphatically, and in writing to the Ministry of North; but
Wedderburn stigmatized this wise and hearty lover of both countries as ‘a true incendiary.’
The letters which had been written by public men in public offices on public affairs, to one who formed an integral part of the body that had been declared to possess absolute power over
America, and which had been written for the purpose of producing a tyrannical exercise of that absolute power, he called private.
Hutchinson had solicited the place held by
Franklin, from which
Franklin was to be dismissed; this fact was suppressed, and the wanton falsehood substituted, that
Franklin had desired the
Governor's office, and had basely planned ‘his rival's overthrow.’
Franklin had inclosed the letters officially to the
Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, without a single injunction of secrecy with regard to the sender;
Wedderburn maintained that they were sent anonymously and secretly; and by an argument founded on a misstatement, but which he put forward as irrefragable, he pretended to convict
Franklin of having obtained the letters by fraudulent and corrupt means, or of having stolen them from the person who stole them.
10
The Lords of Council as he spoke, cheered him on by their laughter; and the cry of ‘Hear him, Hear him,’ burst repeatedly from a body, which professed to be sitting in judgment as the highest Court of Appeal for the Colonies, and yet encouraged the advocate of one of the parties to insult a public envoy,
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present only as the person delivering the Petition of
a great and loyal Colony.
Meantime the gray-haired
Franklin, whom
Kant, the noblest philosopher of that age, had called the modern
Prometheus, stood conspicuously erect, confronting his vilifier and the Privy Council, compelled to listen while calumny, in the service of lawless force, aimed a death-blow at his honor, and his virtues called on God and man to see how unjustly he suffered.
The reply of
Dunning, who was very ill and was fatigued by standing so long,
11 could scarcely be heard; and that of
Lee produced no impression.
There was but one place in
England where fit reparation could be made; and there was but one man who had the eloquence and the courage and the weight of character to effect the atonement.
For the present,
Franklin must rely on the approval of the monitor within his own breast.
‘I have never been so sensible of the power of a good conscience,’ said he to
Priestley; ‘for if I had not considered the thing for which I have been so much insulted, as one of the best actions of my life, and what I should certainly do again in the same circumstances, I could not have supported it.’
But it was not to him, it was to the people of
Massachusetts, and to
New England, and to all
America, that the insult was offered through their Agent.
Franklin and
Wedderburn parted; the one to spread the celestial fire of freedom among men; to
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make his name a cherished household word in every
nation of
Europe; and in the beautiful language of
Washington, ‘to be venerated for benevolence, to be admired for talents, to be esteemed for patriotism, to be beloved for philanthropy;’ the other childless, though twice wedded, unbeloved, wrangling with the patron who had impeached his veracity, busy only in ‘getting every thing he could’
12 in the way of titles and riches, as the wages of corruption
Franklin when he died, had nations for his mourners, and the great and the good throughout the world as his eulogists; when
Wedderburn died, there was no man to mourn; no senate spoke his praise; no poet embalmed his memory; and his
King, hearing that he was certainly dead, said only, ‘He has not left a greater knave behind him in my dominions.’
13 The report of the
Lords which had been prepared beforehand, was immediately signed; and ‘they went away, almost ready to throw up their hats for joy, as if by the vehement Philippic against the hoary-headed
Franklin, they had obtained a triumph.’
14
And who were the
Lords of the Council, that thus thought to mark and brand the noblest representative of free labor who for many a year had earned his daily bread as apprentice, journeyman, or mechanic, and ‘knew the heart of the working man,’
15 and felt for the people of whom he remained one?
If they who upon that occasion pretended to sit in judgment had never come into being, whom among them all would humanity have missed?
But how would it have suffered if
Franklin had not lived!
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The men in power who on that day sought to rob
Franklin of his good name, wounded him on the next in his fortunes,
16 by turning him out of his place in the
British American Post Office.
That institution had yielded no revenue till he organized it, and yielded none after his dismissal.
On Tuesday the first of February, the
Earl of
Buckinghamshire, who had attended the Privy Council, went to the House of Lords, ‘to put the Ministry in mind that he was to be bought by private contract.’
17 Moving for the
Boston Correspondence, he said, ‘The question is no longer about the liberty of
North America, but whether we are to be free or slaves to our Colonies.
Franklin is here, not as the
Agent of a Province, but as an Ambassador from the States of
America.
His embassy to us is like nothing but that sent by Louis XIV.
to the
Republic of
Genoa, commanding the doge to come and appease the
Grand Monarch, by prostrating himself at
Versailles.’—‘Such language is wild,’ replied the
Earl of Stair.
‘Humanity, commercial policy, and the public necessities dictate a very contrary one.’—‘I would not throw cold water on the noble
Lord's zeal,’ said the good Lord Dartmouth; as he made the request that further despatches might be waited for.
Superior to injury,
Franklin, or as
Rockingham called him, the ‘magnanimous’ ‘old man,’
18 still sought for conciliation, and seizing the moment when he was sure of all sympathies, he wrote to his constituents to begin the work, by making compensation to
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the East India Company before any compulsive mea-
sures were thought of.
19 But events were to proceed as they had been ordered.
Various measures were talked of for altering the
Constitution of the
Government in
Massachusetts, and for prosecuting individuals.
The opinion in town was very general, that
America would submit; that Government was taken by surprise when they repealed the Stamp Act, and that all might be recovered.
20
The
King was obstinate, had no one near him to explain the true state of things in
America, and admitted no misgivings except for not having sooner enforced the claims of authority.
On the fourth day of February, he consulted the
American Commander-in-Chief who had recently returned from
New-York.
‘I am willing to go back at a day's notice,’ said
Gage, ‘if coercive measures are adopted.
They will be lions, while we are lambs; but if we take the resolute part, they will undoubtedly prove very meek.
Four regiments sent to
Boston will be sufficient to prevent any disturbance.’
The
King received these opinions as certainly true; and wished their adoption.
He would enforce the claim of authority at all hazards.
21 ‘All men,’ said he, ‘now feel, that the fatal compliance in 1766 has increased the pretensions of the
Americans to absolute independence.’
22 In the letters of
Hutchinson, he saw nothing to which the least exception could be taken;
23 and condemned the Address of
Massachusetts, of
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which every word was true, as the production of
‘falsehood and malevolence.’
Accordingly on the seventh day of February, in the
Court at
St. James's, the report of the Privy Council was read, embodying the vile insinuations of
Wedderburn; and the Petition which
Franklin had presented, and which expressed the exact truth, was described as formed on false allegations, and was dismissed by the
King as ‘groundless, vexatious and scandalous.’
