But it established a principle that England could tax the colonies without allowing those colonies any representation in Parliament. If the Court had a right thus to demand forty thousand pounds, they had a right to demand so many millions, should it seem expedient to king and cabinet so to do.
The great blunder which the court committed, was in not appreciating the wide-spread intelligence of the American people. In New England particularly, and throughout the colonies generally, there was scarcely a farmer who did not perceive the trick, and despise it. They deemed it an insult to their intelligence.
Instantly there arose, throughout all the provinces, the most determined opposition to the measure. It was in fact merely a renewal of the Stamp Act, under slightly modified forms. If they admitted the justice of this act, it was only declaring that they had acted with unpardonable folly, in opposing the tax under the previous form.
Dr. Franklin, with honest shrewdness, not with trickery or with cunning, but with a sincere and penetrating mind, eagerly scrutinized all the measures of the Court. George III. was a gentleman. He was irreproachable in all his domestic relations. He was, in a sense, conscientious; for certainly he was not disposed to do anything which he thought to be wrong. Conscientious men have burned their fellow-Christians at the stake. It is said that George the Third was a Christian. He certainly was a full believer in the religion of Jesus Christ; and earnestly advocated the support and extension of that religion. God makes great allowance for the frailties of his fallen children. It requires the wisdom of omniscience to decide how much wickedness there may be in the heart, consistently with piety. No man is perfect.
During the reign of George III., terrible wars were waged throughout all the world, mainly incited by the British Court. Millions perished. The moans of widows and orphans ascended from every hand. This wicked Christian king sent his navy and his army to burn down our cities and villages, and to shoot husbands, fathers, and sons, until he could compel America to submit to his despotism. The population of England being exhausted by those wide spread wars, he hired, of the petty princes of Europe, innocent peasantry, to abandon their homes in Germany, to burn and destroy the homes of Americans. Finding that not sufficient, he sent his agents through the wilderness to rouse, by bribes, savage men, who knew no better, to ravage our frontiers, to burn the cabins of lonely farmers, to tomahawk and scalp their wives and children.
Such a man may be a good Christian. God, who can read the secrets of the heart, and who is infinite in his love and charity, alone can decide. But if we imagine that man, George Guelph, at the bar of judgment, and thronging up as witnesses against him, the millions whose earthly homes he converted into abodes of misery and despair, it is difficult to imagine in our frail natures, how our Heavenly Father, who loves all his children alike, and who, as revealed in the person of Jesus, could weep over the woes of humanity, could look with a loving smile upon him and say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
Franklin of course continued in as determined an opposition to the new tax as to the old one. He wrote,
“I have some little property in America. I will freely spend nineteen shillings in the pound to defend my right of giving or refusing the other shilling. And after all, if I cannot defend that right, I can retire cheerfully with my little family into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence to any man who can bait a hook or pull a trigger.”
The ability which Franklin had displayed as the agent of Pennsylvania before the court of St. James, gave him, as we have said, a high reputation in all the colonies. In the spring of 1768 he was highly gratified by the intelligence that he was appointed, by the young colony of Georgia, its London agent. The next year New Jersey conferred the same honor upon him, and the year after, he was appointed agent of his native province of Massachusetts. These several appointments detained him ten years in England.
During all this time he did not visit home. The equanimity of his joyful spirit seems never to have been disturbed. His pen describes only pleasant scenes. No murmurs are recorded, no yearnings of home-sickness.