“What used to be the pride of the Americans?”
“To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.”
“What is now their pride?”
“To wear their old clothes over again till they can make new ones,” he said calmly.
The session ended with this verbal blow leaving them gasping.
He had never considered himself a public speaker, and never before or after spoken so long before such a large audience, but he had won his point. In less than a month, on March 8, the Stamp Act repeal had passed both houses of Parliament and received the reluctant assent of the King. Franklin’s “Examination” was published in London, and later that year in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Williamsburg, and elsewhere in the colonies. It was translated into French and German.
It was a wonderful victory. There was rejoicing throughout America. Philadelphia coffeehouses made gifts to the crew of the ship that brought the news. Taverns served punch and beer on the house. Benjamin Franklin was once more a hero. Even the Penn supporters had to admit he had done a fine job. At the Philadelphia State House, 300 guests of the governor and the mayor drank a toast to him.
Franklin’s own celebration was to go shopping. With Mrs. Stevenson to guide him, he bought more presents for his wife and Sally—fourteen yards of Pompadour satin for a new gown, a silk negligee, a petticoat of “brocaded lutestring,” a Turkish carpet, crimson mohair for curtains, three damask tablecloths, and a box of “three fine cheeses.”
“Perhaps a bit of them may be left when I come home,” he wrote hopefully to Debby.
He had asked the Pennsylvania Assembly to let him come home but instead they appointed him agent for another year.