The True Benjamin Franklin

by Sydney George Fisher

The letters described the situation in Massachusetts in the year 1768; the riotous proceedings when John Hancock’s sloop was seized for violating the revenue laws; how the customs officers were insulted, beaten, the windows of their houses broken, and they obliged to take refuge on the “Romney” man-of-war. These and other proceedings the writers of the letters intimated were approved by the majority of the people, and they recommended that these turbulent colonists should, for their own good, be restrained by force, and the liberty they were misusing curtailed. “There must be an abridgment,” said one of Hutchinson’s letters, “of what are called English liberties.”

Hutchinson, as well as some of the other writers of the letters, were natives of New England; and Hutchinson, before he became governor, had had a long public career in Massachusetts in which he had distinguished himself as a most conservative, prudent, and able man who had conferred many benefits on the colony. The letters by him and the other officials had been handed about among prominent people in London, who regarded them as better evidence of the real situation in America than the benevolent talk of the colonial agent or his brilliant and anonymous sallies in the newspapers.

The condition which the member of Parliament annexed to his loan of the letters to Franklin was that they should not be printed or copied, and after having been read by the leaders of the patriot movement in Massachusetts, they were to be returned to London. He must have had very little knowledge of the world, and Franklin must have smiled at the condition. Of course, in transmitting the letters to Massachusetts Franklin mentioned the condition. This relieved him from responsibility, and John Adams and John Hancock could do what they thought right under the circumstances.

What might have been expected soon followed. The leaders in Boston read the letters and were furious. Here were their own governors and officials secretly furnishing the British government with information that would bring punishment on the colony, and actually recommending that the punishment should be inflicted. One of Hutchinson’s letters distinctly stated that the information furnished by him in a previous letter had brought the troops to Boston; and, as is well known, it was the collision of some of these troops with a mob which led to what has been called the “Boston massacre.”

John Adams showed the letters to his aunt; others showed them to relatives and friends, no doubt, with the most positive instructions that they were not to be copied or printed, and were to be exhibited only to certain people. The Assembly met, and John Hancock, with a mysterious air, announced that a most important matter would in a few days be submitted to that body for consideration; but most of the members knew about it already; and when the day arrived the public was refused admittance and the letters read to the Assembly in secret session. As for publishing them, they were soon in print in London as well as in the colonies; and when the originals could be of no further use, John Adams put them in an envelope and sent them back to London, as the condition required.

The Assembly resolved to ask the crown to remove both Hutchinson and Oliver, and prepared a petition to that effect, basing the request on the ground that these two men had plotted to encourage and intensify the quarrel of the colonies with the mother country. By their false representations they had caused a fleet and an army to be brought to Massachusetts, and were therefore the cause of the confusion and bloodshed which had resulted. This petition reached the king in the summer of 1773.

Franklin thought that the whole affair would have a good effect. The resentment of the colonies against the mother country would be transferred to Hutchinson and the other individuals who had caused it; the ministry would see that the colonists were sincerely desirous of a good understanding with the British government and that Hutchinson and Oliver were evil persons bent on fomenting trouble and responsible for all the recent difficulties in Massachusetts. This was a pleasant theory, but it turned out to be utterly unsound and useless. The effect of the letters was just the opposite of what was expected. Instead of modifying the feelings of the colonists and the ministry, they increased the resentment of both.

The king and his Privy Council were not inclined to pay any attention to the petition, and it might have slept harmlessly like other petitions from America at that time. But when the letters were printed in London, people began to wonder how they had reached the colonists. They were in a sense secret information, and had been intrusted to persons who were supposed to understand that they were for government circles alone. William Whately, to whom they had been written, was dead, and as it began to be suspected that his brother and executor, Thomas Whately, might have put them into circulation, he felt bound to defend himself.

As a matter of fact, they seem to have passed out of William Whately’s hands before his death, and were never in the possession of the executor. But the executor had given permission to John Temple to look over the deceased Whately’s papers and to take from them certain letters which Temple and his brother had written to him. Accordingly, Thomas Whately went to see Temple, who gave the most positive assurances that he had taken only his own and his brother’s letters, and he repeated these assurances twice afterwards. But the suspicion against him getting into the newspapers, he demanded from Whately a public statement exonerating him. Whately published a statement which merely gave the facts and exonerated him no more than to say that Temple had assured him he did not take the Hutchinson letters. Such a statement left an unpleasant implication against Temple, for the executor seemed studiously to avoid saying that he believed Temple’s assurances.

So Temple challenged Whately, and the challenge was carried by Ralph Izard, of South Carolina. They fought a queer sort of duel which would have amused Frenchmen, and half a century later would have amused Carolinians. Whately declined to be bothered with a second, so Temple could not have one. They met in Hyde Park at four in the morning, Whately with a sword and Temple with both sword and pistols. Seeing that Whately had only a sword, he supposed that he must be particularly expert with it, and he therefore suggested that they fight with pistols. They emptied their weapons without effect, and then took to their blades.