Benjamin Franklin

by Jr. John T. Morse

The proceedings at the Cockpit took place on a Saturday. On the following Monday morning Franklin got a "written notice from the secretary of the general post-office, that his majesty's postmaster-general found it necessary to dismiss me from my office of deputy postmaster-general in North America." In other ways, too, the mischief done him by this public assault could not be concealed. It published to all the world the feeling of the court and the ministry toward him, and told Englishmen that it was no longer worth while to keep up appearances of courtesy and good will.

It put upon him a judicial stigma, which was ample excuse for the enemies of America henceforth to treat him as both dishonored and dishonorable. Hitherto his tact and his high character had preserved him in a great measure from the social annoyances and curtailments which he would naturally have suffered as the prominent representative of an unpopular cause. But it seemed now as if his judgment had once and fatally played him false, and certainly his good name and his prestige were given over to his enemies, who dealt cruelly with them. He felt that it was the end of his usefulness, also that his own self-respect and dignity must be carefully preserved; and he wrote to the Assembly of Massachusetts to say that it would be impossible for him longer to act as its agent. From that time he never attended the levee of a minister. The portcullis had dropped; the days of his service in England were over.

The conclusion had come painfully, yet it was not without satisfaction that he saw himself free to return home. His affairs had suffered in his absence, and needed his attention now more than ever, since he was deprived of his income from the post-office. Moreover his efforts could no longer be cheered with hopes of success or even of achieving any substantial advantage for his countrymen. He was obliged to admit that the good disposition of Lord Dartmouth had had no practical results. "No single measure of his predecessor has since been even attempted to be changed, and, on the contrary, new ones have been continually added, further to exasperate these people, render them desperate, and drive them, if possible, into open rebellion." It had been a vexatious circumstance, too, that not long before this time he had received a rebuke from the Massachusetts Assembly for having been lax, as they fancied, in notifying them of some legislation of an injurious character, which was in preparation. "This censure," he said, "though grievous, does not so much surprise me, as I apprehended all along from the beginning that between the friends of an old agent, my predecessor, who thought himself hardly used in his dismission, and those of a young man impatient for the succession, my situation was not likely to be a very comfortable one, as my faults could scarce pass unobserved." This reference to the malicious and untrustworthy back-biter, Arthur Lee, might have been much more severe, and still amply deserved. The most important acts of his ignoble life, by which alone his memory is preserved, were the slanders which he set in circulation concerning Franklin. Yet Franklin, little suspicious and very magnanimous, praised him as a "gentleman of parts and ability," likely to serve the province with zeal and activity. Probably from this impure Lee fount, but possibly from some other source, there now came a renewal of the rumors that Franklin was to be gained over to the ministerial side by promotion to some office superior to that which he had held. The injurious story was told in Boston, where perhaps a few persons believed it to be true of a man who in fact could hardly have set upon his fealty a price so high that the British government would not gladly have paid it, and who heretofore had been, and at this very time again was, tempted by repeated solicitations and the intimations of grand rewards, only to change his mind—a matter so very easy in politics.

Furthermore, beyond these assaults upon his fidelity, these insults of the privy council, Franklin had to contemplate the possibility of personal danger. He was a man of abundant courage, but courage does not make a prison or a gallows an agreeable object in one's horizon. The newspapers alleged that in his correspondence "treason" had been discovered. The ministry, as he was directly informed, thought no better of him than did the editors, regarding him as "the great fomenter of the opposition in America," the "great adversary to any accommodation." "It is given out," he wrote, "that copies of several letters of mine to you are sent over here to the ministers, and that their contents are treasonable, for which I should be prosecuted if copies could be made evidence." He was not conscious of any treasonable intention, but treason was a word to make a man anxious in those days, when uttered by the ministry and echoed by the court. Franklin was quite aware that, though ministers might offer him a tempting place by way of bribe, they would far rather give him "a place in a cart to Tyburn." His friends warned him that his situation was hazardous; that, "if by some accident the troops and the people of New England should come to blows," he would doubtless be seized; and they advised him to withdraw while yet he could do so. Hutchinson frankly avowed that, if his advice were taken, the withdrawal would not be permitted. "But," said Franklin, "I venture to stay," upon the chance of still being of use, "and I confide on my innocence that the worst which can happen to me will be an imprisonment upon suspicion; though that is a thing I should much desire to avoid, as it may be expensive and vexatious, as well as dangerous to my health." So spoke this imperturbable man, and calmly stayed at his post.

He was still consulted by both sides in England. In the August following the scene in the privy council chamber, he called upon Lord Chatham and had a long and interesting interview. He then said that he attributed the late "wrong politics" to the departure from the old and true British principle, "whereby every province was well governed, being trusted in a great measure with the government of itself." When it was sought to take this privilege from the colonies, grave blunders had inevitably ensued; because, as he admirably expressed it, Parliament insisted upon being omnipotent when it was not omniscient. In other words, the affairs of the unrepresented colonies were mismanaged through sheer ignorance. It is noteworthy that England has since recognized the necessity of precisely the principle indicated by Franklin for colonial government; all her great colonies are now "trusted in a great measure with the government" of themselves, and are consequently "well governed." Franklin further assured his lordship that in all his travels in the provinces he had never once heard independence hinted at as a desirable thing. This gave Chatham much pleasure; but perhaps neither of them at the moment reflected how many eventful years had elapsed since Franklin was last journeying in America. He further declared that the colonists were "even not against regulations of the general commerce by Parliament, provided such regulations were bona fide for the benefit of the whole empire, not to the small advantage of one part to the great injury of another." This, by the way, was a good point, which he found very serviceable when people talked to him about the unity of the empire. A genuine unity was just the gospel which he liked to preach. "An equal dispensation," he said, "of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy, it being a matter of no moment to the state whether a subject grows rich and flourishing on the Thames or the Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin." But no living Englishman could accept this broad and liberal doctrine. The notion that the colonies were a dependency and should be tributary to the greater power was universal. It was admitted that they should not be oppressed; but it was believed that between oppression and that perfect unity which involved entire equality there was certainly a middle ground whereon the colonies might properly be established.

Lord Chatham expressed in courteous compliments the gratification which this visit afforded him. Not long afterward he came gallantly to the defense of Franklin in the House of Lords. It was one day in February, 1775; Franklin was standing in full view, leaning on a rail; Lord Sandwich was speaking against a measure of conciliation or agreement just introduced by Chatham. He said that it deserved "only contempt," and "ought to be immediately rejected. I can never believe it to be the production of any British peer. It appears to me rather the work of some American. I fancy I have in my eye the person who drew it up, one of the bitterest and most mischievous enemies this country has ever known." Speaking thus, he looked full at Franklin, and drew upon him the general attention. But Chatham hastened to defend the defenseless one. "The plan is entirely my own," he said; "but if I were the first minister, and had the care of settling this momentous business, I should not be ashamed of calling to my assistance a person so perfectly acquainted with the whole of American affairs, one whom all Europe ranks with our Boyles and Newtons, as an honor not to the English nation only but to human nature." This was spirited and friendly; Franklin had a way of making warm and loyal friends. Most men would have rejoiced to be so abused by Sandwich in order to be so complimented by Chatham.[35]

Yet, in spite of the high esteem in which so many Englishmen still held Franklin, an incident occurred at this time which showed very plainly that the term of his full usefulness was indeed over, though not altogether for the reasons which had led him to think so. The fact was that the proverbial last feather which breaks the back had been laid upon him. His endurance had been over-taxed, and he was at last in that temper and frame of mind in which the wisest men are liable to make grave mistakes. He was one day present at a debate in the House of Commons, and found himself, as he says, "much disgusted, from the ministerial side, by many base reflections on American courage, religion, understanding, etc., in which we were treated with the utmost contempt, as the lowest of mankind, and almost of a different species from the English of Britain; but particularly the American honesty was abused by some of the lords, who asserted that we were all knaves, etc." Franklin went home "somewhat irritated and heated," and before he had cooled he wrote a paper which he hastened to show to his friend Mr. Thomas Walpole, a member of the House of Commons. Mr. Walpole "looked at it and at me several times alternately, as if he apprehended me a little out of my senses." Nor would Mr. Walpole have been altogether without reason, if in fact he entertained such a suspicion. The paper was the memorial of Benjamin Franklin to the Earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state. In its first clause it demanded "reparation" for the injury done by the blockade of the port of Boston. Conventional forms of speech were observed, yet there was an atmosphere almost of injurious insolence, entirely foreign to all other productions of Franklin's brain and pen. Its second paragraph recited that the conquests made in the northeast from France, which included all those extensive fisheries which still survive as a bone of contention between the two countries, had been jointly won by England and the American colonies, at their common cost, and by an army in which the provincial troops were nearly equal in numbers to the British. "It follows," the audacious memorialist said, "that the colonies have an equitable and just right to participate in the advantage of those fisheries," and the present English attempt to deprive the Massachusetts people of sharing in them was "an act highly unjust and injurious." He concluded: "I give notice that satisfaction will probably one day be demanded for all the injury that may be done and suffered in the execution of such act; and that the injustice of the proceeding is likely to give such umbrage to all the colonies that in no future war, wherein other conquests may be meditated, either a man or a shilling will be obtained from any of them to aid such conquests, till full satisfaction be made as aforesaid."

Here was indeed a fulmination to strike an Englishman breathless and dumb with amazement. It put the colonies in the position of a coequal or allied power, entitled to share with Britain the spoils of victory; even in the position of an independent power which could refuse the military allegiance of subjects. English judges would have found abundant treason in this insubordinate document. It may soothe common men to see the wise, the serene, the self-contained Dr. Franklin, the philosopher and diplomatist, for once lose his head in a gust of uncontrollable passion. Walpole, though a loyal Englishman, was fortunately his true friend, and wrote him, with a brevity more impressive than argument, that the memorial "might be attended with dangerous consequences to your person and contribute to exasperate the nation." He closed with the significant sentence: "I heartily wish you a prosperous voyage and long health." The significant words remind one of the woodcock's feather with which Wildrake warned the disguised monarch that no time was to be lost in fleeing from Woodstock. But if the hint was curt, it was no less wise. There was no doubt that it was full time for the sage to be exchanging his farewells, when such a point had been reached. The next day, as Franklin relates, Walpole called and said that "it was thought my having no instructions directing me to deliver such a protest would make it appear still more unjustifiable, and be deemed a national affront. I had no desire to make matters worse, and, being grown cooler, took the advice so kindly given me."

The last business which Franklin had to transact on the eve of his departure came in the shape of one of those mysterious and obscure bits of negotiation which are at times undertaken by private persons who are very "near" to ministers, and who conduct their affairs with impressive secrecy. Just how much this approach amounted to it is difficult to say; no less a person than Lord Howe was concerned in it, and he was undoubtedly in direct communication with Lord North. But whether that potentate really anticipated any substantial good result may be doubted. Franklin himself has told the story with much particularity, and since it will neither bear curtailment nor admit of being related at length, and since the whole palaver accomplished absolutely nothing, the relation will be omitted here. In the course of it the efforts to bribe Franklin were renewed, and briefly rejected by him. Also he met, and established a very friendly personal relation with, Lord Howe, who afterward commanded the British fleet in American waters.