That year young Christian VII of Denmark visited England, and insisted that Franklin dine with him at St. James. He would not have been human had he not recalled the proverb of Solomon which his father had so frequently quoted in his childhood. Now he had not only stood before one king, Louis XV, he had sat down with a second. There would be others.
The English tried for two more years to make the colonists pay duties they did not want to pay. At last, on March 5, 1770, Parliament voted unanimously to repeal all of them but the tax on tea. Franklin commented dryly that repealing only part of the duties was as bad surgery as to leave splinters in a wound “which must prevent its healing.” In Boston on that same day a squad of British soldiers fired into a crowd which had been pelting them with snowballs—killing five and wounding six. The “Boston Massacre” became a cause célèbre. Bloodshed had been added to the other colony grievances.
The next summer Franklin visited Ireland. In Dublin, he attended two sessions of the Irish Parliament. The Speaker introduced him as “an American gentleman of distinguished character and merit,” and he was given a place of honor. He noted that the Irish Parliamentarians were more cordial than their English counterparts, but was too astute not to realize they did not really represent their own people. Ireland, like America, had suffered under British oppressive measures, but more intensely and longer. The appalling misery of the Irish people was a moral lesson to him. He foresaw that if the colonists did not continue to insist on their rights, they would suffer the same wretched fate.
Sally’s husband, Richard Bache, came to England that fall to meet his famous father-in-law. Bache had set his heart on getting a political appointment and had brought a thousand pounds in case he would have to pay for it. Even members of the House of Commons bought their posts, a practice which was responsible for much of the corruption and inefficiency of the government. Franklin advised his son-in-law to stay clear of politics.
“Invest your money in merchandise. Start a store in Philadelphia. You will be independent and less subject to the caprices of superiors.”
Bache followed this advice and within a few years was one of Pennsylvania’s most respected merchants.
That year Lord Hillsborough, with whom Franklin’s relations had been only outwardly civil, was succeeded by Lord Dartmouth, whom he liked. Again his hopes were raised for a cessation of hostilities. In truth, the ministry and Parliament had never treated him more cordially.
“As to my situation here,” he wrote his son on August 19, 1772, “nothing can be more agreeable ... a general respect paid me by the learned, a number of friends and acquaintances among them with whom I have a pleasing intercourse ... my company so much desired that I seldom dine at home in winter and could spend the whole summer in the country houses of inviting friends if I chose it.... The king too has lately been heard to speak of me with great regard.” In a postscript he mentioned that the French Royal Academy had chosen him a foreign member, of which there were only eight.
His Craven Street family was now enlarged to include his grandson William Temple Franklin, and a distant English cousin named Sally Franklin who was, like his daughter, an eager young girl “nimble-footed and willing to run errands and wait upon me.” Mrs. Stevenson continued to pamper him and nurse him during his spells of gout. Polly, for whom he always had great affection, was married to a young doctor, William Hewson. The young couple had been living with their mother since 1770.
There were several weeks when Mrs. Stevenson was away, leaving Polly in charge. To amuse them, Franklin composed a newspaper, the Craven Street Gazette, reporting the daily household happenings as though they were world events. In this sheet, Mrs. Stevenson was “Queen Margaret,” Sally was “first maid of honor,” Polly and her husband were “Lord and Lady Hewson,” while he referred to himself as the “Great Person”—“so called from his enormous size.”