George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

‘He has left with bad designs,’ said Hutchinson; ‘had I been the master, his embarkation would have been prevented.’—‘With his superiority,’ said Garnier, ‘and with the confidence of the Americans, he will be able to cut out work for the ministers who have persecuted him.’ Vergennes felt assured he would spread the conviction that the British ministry had irrevocably chosen its part; and that America had no choice but independence. With personal friends, with merchants, with manufacturers, with the liberal statesmen of England, with supporters of the ministry, Franklin had labored on all occasions earnestly, disinterestedly, and long. With his disappearance from the scene, the last gleam of a compromise vanished. The administration and their followers called him insincere. They insisted on believing to the last, that he had private instructions which would have justified him in accepting the regulating act for Massachusetts, and they attributed his answers to an inflexible and subtle hostility to England. But nothing deceives like jealousy; he perseveringly endeavored to open the eyes of the king and his servants. At the bar of the house of commons he first revealed his conviction, that persistence in taxation would compel independence; it was for the use of the government, that once to Strahan and then to Lord Howe he explained the American question with frankness and precision. The British ministry overreached themselves by not believing him. ‘Speaking the truth to them in sincerity,’ said Franklin, ‘was my only finesse.’