by H. W. Brands
I said when I was advised to remove that I was very sure you had done nothing to hurt any body, nor I had not given any offence to any person at all. Nor would I be made uneasy by any body nor would I stir or show the least uneasiness. But if any one came to disturb me I would show a proper resentment and I should be very much affronted with any body.
Deborah’s resolve encouraged Franklin’s friends to come to her and his defense. Years earlier he had taught them to mobilize for good causes; now they mobilized for his. Some of the more rambunctious, led by a group of artisans and mechanics calling themselves the White Oak Company, let it be known that if Franklin’s house came down, so would the houses of those responsible. This sobered the plotters long enough for the authorities of the city to bring matters under control.
Franklin obviously did not learn about the events until weeks later. When he did, he could not help admiring his wife. “I honour much the spirit and courage you showed,” he said, “and the prudent preparations you made in that time of danger. The woman deserves a good house that is determined to defend it.”
Although Franklin’s house survived the Stamp Act rioting, his reputation remained in jeopardy. It did so partly because his enemies in Pennsylvania crafted lurid tales of how he had conspired to foist stamps upon the unsuspecting populace. Franklin’s friends countered the slanders as best they could, but he and they realized there was only so much they could do. Of one critic, a leader of Philadelphia Presbyterians, who, not content with alleging stamp conspiracy, added other heinous actions, Franklin told Debbie, “I thank him he does not charge me (as they do their God) with having planned Adam’s fall, and the damnation of mankind. It might be affirmed with equal truth and modesty.”
Yet there was more to Franklin’s predicament than unjust accusations. With the response to the Stamp Act, American politics commenced a remarkable change—a change Franklin had not anticipated and to which he was slow to react. Ironically, however, it built on work Franklin himself had done a decade earlier. Then he had tried to forge a collective identity among the British colonies in North America, and failed. Now just such a collective identity was taking shape in the resistance to the Stamp Act. Upon the initiative of the Massachusetts assembly, a congress was held in New York in October 1765. Nine colonies were represented, including Pennsylvania; the delegates produced a series of resolutions denying the right of Parliament to tax the colonies and urging repeal of the noxious measure.
Such petitioning was entirely within the English constitutional tradition; no one in Parliament could have much quarrel with it. But the insurrectionary spirit that drove the riots was another matter. And as that spirit took hold throughout the American colonies, it made the events of 1765 distinctive and portentous. This was what Franklin misunderstood. He was not a violent man; he much preferred the politics of reason to the politics of passion.
So did Thomas Hutchinson, who felt the irony of the situation more immediately, and more painfully, than Franklin. Hutchinson wrote Franklin in November assessing the violence in the various colonies, and noting, from his own experience, that in Massachusetts all doubts of the legitimacy of the mob’s opinions had been forcibly suppressed. “It is not safe there to advance any thing contrary to any popular opinions whatsoever,” Hutchinson said. “Every body who used to have virtue enough to oppose them is now afraid of my fate.” Briefly the violence in Boston had diminished, only to revive from example elsewhere. “The riots at New York have given fresh spirits to the rioters here.” Pointing out that the opponents of the Stamp Act had seized Franklin’s motto from 1754, “Join or Die,” Hutchinson remarked, “When you and I were at Albany ten years ago we did not propose an union for such purposes as these.”
The riots gave bite to demands by the opponents of the Stamp Act for a coordinated rejection of the stamps. As few souls dared incur the wrath of the mobs, and as the stamps were necessary for the conduct of most legal and commercial transactions, daily life was thrown into confusion. Joseph Galloway, writing from Philadelphia in late November, three weeks after the date on which the Stamp Act had been scheduled to take effect, informed Franklin of the situation:
It is difficult to describe the distress to which these distracted and violent measures have subjected the people of this province and indeed all North America. Here are Stamp papers, but the mob will not suffer them to be used, and the public officers of justice and of trade, being under obligation of their oaths and liable to the penalties of the statute, will not proceed in their duties without them.
A stop is put to our commerce, and our Courts of Justice is shut up. Our harbours are filled with vessels, but none of them, save those cleared out before the 2d. of November dare to move, because neither the Governor or Collector will clear them out, and if they would, the men of war threaten to seize them as forfeited for want of papers agreeable to the laws of trade.
Our debtors are selling off their effects before our eyes, and removing to another country, with innumerable other mischiefs brought on us by this fatal conduct, from which I can see no relief but from an immediate repeal of the Act.
However emotionally satisfying, the rejection of the stamps had little effect on Parliament, as it inflicted most of its injury on the colonies, whose influence with Parliament on this subject was demonstrably nil. Another mass action, one that hit closer to the homes of the honorable members, appeared more promising. Upon the passage of the Sugar Act the previous year, calls for an embargo against British imports arose here and there among the American colonies. But not until the Stamp Act galvanized opposition to Parliamentary taxation—and the stamp riots suggested a formidable mechanism for enforcing an embargo—did concerted nonimportation take hold. Just as the Stamp Act was to go into effect, some two hundred New York merchants pledged to have nothing to do with British imports. Philadelphia merchants followed suit, as did those of Boston.
Almost immediately nonimportation evoked the desired response. British merchants petitioned Parliament for repeal of the Stamp Act. For them the niceties of constitutionalism were irrelevant; what mattered were their vanishing sales. The point of empire was profit, and without sales there would be no profits.
Franklin had reckoned from the start that Parliament’s weakness would be the ledgers of the British merchant class. And he believed that this weakness might be exploited by the practice of one of the virtues—frugality—that Poor Richard had long extolled. In a letter written after the Stamp Act passed but before the rioting began, Franklin repeated his counsel of patience, with an economic and moral addendum:
We might as well have hindered the sun’s setting. That we could not do. But since ’tis down, my friend, and it may be long before it rises again, let us make as good a night of it as we can. We may still light candles. Frugality and industry will go a great way towards indemnifying us. Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and Parliaments. If we can get rid of the former we may easily bear the latter.
As a moralist, Franklin found the violence of the stamp riots appalling, in the same way that the terrorism of the French and Indian War and the murderous rampage of the Paxton Boys were appalling. In such violence the better angels of human nature were held hostage to its basest devils.
As a politician, Franklin found the violence counterproductive. Parliament already considered the tax issue a matter of principle; the riots simply stiffened Parliament’s resolve to impress its sovereignty on the people of the provinces.
Both aspects of Franklin’s thinking informed a letter to John Hughes, written before Hughes faced the full blast of popular wrath. Franklin explained that he was doing all he could to cause repeal of the Stamp Act, but success was uncertain.
If it continues, your undertaking to execute it may make you unpopular for a time, but your acting with coolness and steadiness, and with every circumstance in your power of favour to the people, will by degrees reconcile them. In the meantime, a firm loyalty to the Crown and faithful adherence to the government
of this nation, which it is the safety as well as the honour of the colonies to be connected with, will always be the wisest course for you and I to take, whatever may be the madness of the populace or their blind leaders, who can only bring themselves and country into trouble, and draw on greater burthens by acts of rebellious tendency.
As word of the riots reached London, Franklin shuddered at their effect. “The disturbances in the colonies give me great concern,” he wrote David Hall, “as I fear the event will be pernicious to America in general.”
His concern caused him to redouble his efforts toward a compromise solution. A compromise, of course, was precisely what both the street rioters in America and the Parliamentary supremacists in England did not want. Yet Franklin hoped that reason, combined with the interests of moderate elements on both sides of the Atlantic, might yet make a compromise possible. In the second week of November he called upon Rockingham and Lord Dartmouth, the president of the Board of Trade.
A practical man speaking to practical men, Franklin explained that enforcing the Stamp Act would occasion more mischief than it was worth. Americans would be utterly alienated from Britain and would simply stop buying British goods. He acknowledged that the riots in America had freighted the problem with political peril for the Rockingham ministry; to repeal in the face of violence might be unacceptable. But the act could be suspended for a time, till the heat on both sides had dissipated a bit. Then a pretense could be found for quietly dropping it, without ever bringing the constitutional question to a head.
Franklin elaborated on the difficulties of enforcing the act upon an unwilling American populace. London might send armies, but the Americans would take every opportunity to encourage the soldiers to desert, which, given the high wages commanded by laborers and the ease of vanishing into the frontier, would be very tempting. A naval blockade could interdict commerce but would ruin Britain’s trade.
Franklin recognized that suspension of the Stamp Act, even if followed by repeal, would be a stopgap. Eventually the question of Parliamentary sovereignty and colonial rights would have to be addressed. “I strongly recommended either a thorough union with America,” Franklin told William afterward, “or that government here would proceed in the old method of requisition, by which I was confident more would be obtained in the way of voluntary grant than could probably be got by compulsory taxes laid by Parliament.”
But to insist on a final decision at present could be disastrous. To do so would risk creating a deep-rooted aversion between the two countries and laying the foundation of “a future total separation.”
At the start of 1766, a total separation was the last thing Franklin wanted. On his previous visit he had found Britain more congenial in many respects than Pennsylvania; in light of the abuse and threats of violence to which he and his had been subjected of late in Pennsylvania, Britain seemed more congenial still. Had Debbie been willing, he almost certainly would have relocated to London by now. But it seemed clear that Debbie would never be willing; a woman who armed herself against an angry mob to defend her home would not be talked out of it even by one as persuasive as her husband. This being so, separation between America and Britain would force Franklin to choose between wife and friends. He loved his wife; he loved them. He did not wish to have to choose.
Franklin spent January and February 1766 striving to mend the breach between Britain and America. It was a demanding business, in that the loudest voices on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to shout him down. Joseph Galloway wrote from Philadelphia describing “the violent temper of the Americans, which has been so worked up as to be ready even for rebellion itself.” Galloway wanted to urge moderation by composing a pamphlet to that effect. “But the difficulty will be in getting it published, the printers on the [American] continent having combined together to print every thing inflammatory and nothing that is rational and cool…. The people are taught to believe the greatest absurdities, and their passions are excited to a degree of resentment against the Mother Country beyond all description.”
On the other side of the water, the insisters on respect for the rule of law issued dire warnings to the Rockingham ministry against retreating in the face of illegal and unwarranted violence. “Can it be supposed that the colonists will ever submit to bear any share in those grievous burdens and taxes, with which we are loaded, when they find that the Government will not or dare not assert its own authority and power?” demanded one regular contributor to the published debate. “Have we not reason to expect that they will shake off all dependence and subjection, and neither suffer a limitation of their trade nor any duty to be imposed upon their commodities? Is not this want of spirit and resolution a direct encouragement of the mob to redress every imaginary grievance by force and violence?”
Franklin entered the fray in print and in person. He wrote several pieces for London journals defending American moderates against charges of guilt by association with the rioters, countering imputations of American niggardliness in matters touching imperial defense, pointing out that much of the tax burden Britons complained of got passed on to the Americans in the form of higher prices, and generally reminding readers of the essential unity of interest between colonies and mother country.
He also produced and circulated a political cartoon depicting to what end the Stamp Act and other such measures might lead. The picture was a bloody one, showing Britannia dismembered, her legs and arms lying about her as she leaned disconsolately against a globe. The lost limbs were labeled Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England; the motto declared “Date Obolum Bellisario,” or “Give a penny to Belisarius,” referring to a Roman general who reduced the provinces to Rome’s rule but was reduced himself to poverty in old age. Franklin had the cartoon printed on cards “on which I have lately wrote all my messages,” he explained to David Hall. His sister Jane Mecom got one, along with a note: “The moral is, that the colonies might be ruined, but that Britain would thereby be maimed.”
His most telling testimony, however, came in an appearance before the House of Commons. For three days the House convened as a committee of the whole to examine evidence relating to the Stamp Act, its unfavorable reception in America, and the demands of both the colonists and British merchants to have the measure repealed. The leading witness was Franklin.
As is often the case in such hearings, Franklin’s appearance was not entirely unorchestrated. The Rockingham ministry was looking for a way to distance itself from what it considered the shortsighted, if not downright stupid, legacy of its predecessor. But it needed better reason than the riots in Boston and New York and Philadelphia. Franklin—the august doctor, the celebrated philosopher and scientist, the astute observer of politics and human character, the deft writer and discussant; in short, the epitome of reason—fit the ministry’s need admirably. Many of the questions put to Franklin gave the impression of having been scripted—an impression confirmed by Franklin’s later remarks and writings.
Yet his appearance at Westminster was hardly a love-fest. By mid-February 1766 the wailing of the British merchants made repeal of the Stamp Act almost certain, but the terms of repeal—in particular, whether it would be accompanied by a reaffirmation of Parliament’s sovereignty over the American colonies, and what form such reaffirmation might take—remained to be determined. Several of Franklin’s questioners sought to undermine his answers by reading either more or less into them than he intended.
A friend opened the questioning by asking what taxes the Americans paid, of their own levying. “Many, and very heavy taxes,” Franklin replied. Asked to specify regarding Pennsylvania, Franklin continued, “There are taxes on all estates real and personal; a poll tax; a tax on all offices, professions, trades, and businesses, according to their profits; an excise on all wine, rum, and other spirits; and a duty of ten pounds per head on all Negroes imported, with some other duties.”
A second friend inquired of the feasibility of distributing the stamps in the American colonies.
Deputy Postmaster Franklin, speaking with knowledge unexcelled of transport and communications in North America, described grave difficulties. “The posts go only along the sea coasts; they do not, except in a few instances, go back into the country; and if they did, sending for stamps by post would occasion an expense of postage amounting, in many cases, to much more than that of the stamps themselves.”
An adversary, a member of the late Grenville ministry, broke in to ask bluntly whether the colonies could afford to pay the stamp duty.
Franklin replied equally bluntly. “In my opinion, there is not gold and silver enough in the colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year.”
George Grenville himself queried whether Franklin thought that the Americans, protected by the British army and navy, should pay no part of the expense of maintaining those forces.
Franklin rejected the premise. The colonies, he said, had essentially defended themselves during the last war, raising 25,000 soldiers and spending millions of pounds.
Quite so, Grenville continued, but had not Parliament reimbursed the colonies for their expenses?
Franklin parried this as well. “We were only reimbursed what, in your opinion, we had advanced beyond our proportion, or beyond what might reasonably be expected from us; and it was a very small part of what we spent.”
Franklin’s friends put questions that allowed him to state his argument most succinctly. What was the temper of the Americans toward Great Britain before 1763?
“The best in the world,” he answered. “They submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies, to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper. They were led by a thread.”