"If the Stamp Act is enforced, will ill-humor induce the Americans to give as much for the worse manufactures of their own, and use them in preference to our better ones?"
"Yes. People will pay as freely to gratify one passion as another,—their resentment as their pride."
"Would the people of Boston discontinue their trade?"
"The merchants of Boston are a very small number, and must discontinue their trade, if nobody will buy their goods."
"What are the body of the people in the Colonies?"
"They are farmers, husbandmen, or planters."
"Would they suffer the produce of their lands to rot?"
"No; but they would not raise so much. They would manufacture more and plow less. I do not know a single article imported into the Northern Colonies that they can not do without, or make themselves."
To Lord Kames he said, "America must become a great country, populous and mighty; and will, in a less time than is generally conceived, be able to shake off any shackles that may be imposed upon her, and perhaps place them on the imposers."
But his labors availed nothing, although Chatham, Pitt, Burke, Fox, and others, espoused the cause of the Colonies. Affairs hastened to the crisis of 1775, and Franklin returned to Philadelphia, reaching that city soon after the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought, in 1776.