“I’LL BE HANGED IF THIS IS NOT ONE OF YOUR AMERICAN JOKES!”
In 1773, I wrote two pieces in England for the Public Advertiser on American Affairs, designed to expose the conduct of the country toward the colonies in a short, comprehensive, and striking view, and stated in out-of-the-way forms, as most likely to take the general attention. The first was called Rules by which a great empire may be reduced to a small one; the second, An Edict of the King of Prussia.46 In my mind, I preferred the first, but I found that others generally preferred the second. I was not suspected as the author, except by one or two friends; and heard the latter spoken of in the highest terms as the keenest and severest piece that had appeared in a long time. What made it the more noticed in Britain was that people in reading it were, as the phrase is, taken in, till they had got half through it, and imagined it a real edict, to which mistake I suppose the king of Prussia’s character must have contributed. I was down at Lord Le Despencer’s when the post brought the day’s papers. Mr. Paul Whitehead (the author of Manners) was there too. He would always run early through all the papers, and tell the company what he found remarkable. He had them in another room, and we were chatting in the breakfast parlour when he came running in to us, out of breath, with the paper in his hand and said, “Here! Here’s news for ye! Here’s the king of Prussia claiming a right to this kingdom!” All stared, and I as much as any body; and he went on to read it. When he had read two or three paragraphs, a gentleman said, “Damn his impudence! I dare say, we shall hear by next post that he is upon his march with one hundred thousand men to back this.” Whitehead, who was very shrewd, soon after began to smoke it out, and looking in my face said, “I’ll be hanged if this is not some of your American jokes upon us.” The reading went on, and ended with abundance of laughing, and a general verdict that it was a fair hit: and the piece was cut out of the paper and preserved in my lord’s collection.
THE AFFAIR OF THE HUTCHINSON LETTERS47
Having been from my youth more or less engag’d in public affairs, it has often happened to me in the course of my life to be censured sharply for the part I took in them. Such censures I have generally passed over in silence, conceiving, when they were just, that I ought not to defend myself against them; and when they were undeserved, that a little time would justify me. Spots of dirt thrown upon my character I suffered, while fresh, to remain; I did not choose to spread them by endeavouring to remove them, but rely’d on the vulgar adage, that they would all rub off when they were dry. Much experience has confirm’d my opinion of the propriety of this conduct, for notwithstanding the frequent and sometimes virulent attacks which the jostling of party interests have drawn upon me, I have had the felicity of bringing down to a good old age, as fair a reputation (may I be permitted to say it) as most public men that I have known, and have never had reason to repent my neglecting to defend it.
I should therefore have taken no notice of the invective of the Solicitor General, nor of the abundant abuse of the [Hutchinson] papers, were I not urged by my friends to furnish the public with a knowledge of the facts.
Herein is the background: It has long appeared to me that the only true British politics were those which aim’d at the good of the whole British empire, not those who sought the advantage of one part thro’ the disadvantage of the others. Therefore all measures of procuring gain to the mother country arising from loss to her colonies, and all gain to the colonies arising from or occasioning loss to Britain; every abridgement of the power of the mother country where that power was not prejudicial to the liberties of the colonists; and ever diminution of the privileges of the colonists, where they were not prejudicial to the welfare of the mother country, I condemned as improper, partial, unjust, and mischievous, tending to create dissensions, and weakening that union, on which the strength, solidity, and duration of the empire greatly depended. And I opposed, as far as my little powers went, all measures either in Britain or in America, that had such tendency. Hence it often happened to me, that while I was thought in England to be too much of an American, I have in America been deemed too much of an Englishman.
EVERY AFFRONT IS NOT WORTH A DUEL
At the same time, I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil. In conformity with these principles, and as agent for the colonies, I opposed the Stamp Act, and endeavoured to obtain its repeal, as an infringement of the rights of the colonists, and of no real advantage to Britain, since she might ever be sure of greater aids from our voluntary grants than she could expect from arbitrary taxes. Moreover, by losing our respect and affection, on which much of her commerce with us had depended, she would lose more in that commerce than she could possibly gain by such taxes, as it was detrimental to the harmony which had till then so happily subsisted. To keep up a deference for the King, and a respect for the British nation, I industriously, on all occasions, in my letters to America, represented the measures that were grievous to the colonies as being neither Royal nor national measures, but the schemes of an administration which wished to recommend itself for its ingenuity in finance, or to avail itself of new revenues in creating, by places and pensions, new dependencies; I judged at the time that the King was a good and gracious prince, and the people of Britain our real friends. I represented the people of America as fond of Britain, concerned for its interest and glory, and without the least desire of a separation from it. I trusted the general prudence of our countrymen would realize that by our growing strength we advanced fast to a situation in which our claims must be allow’d; that by a premature struggle we might be crippled and kept down another age; that, as between friends every affront is not worth a duel, and between nations every injury is not worth a war, so between the governed and the governing, every mistake in government, every encroachment on rights, is not worth a rebellion.
HUTCHINSON: “THERE MUST BE AN ABRIDGMENT OF WHAT ARE CALLED ENGLISH LIBERTIES.”
In 1773, I opposed (without success) the tax on tea. The act passed in spite of me. The tea was burnt in Boston.48 Parliament, incensed, closed the port, and by various acts took away privileges, forbid fishing, &c. I could not but see with concern the sending of troops to Boston; their behaviour to the people there gave me infinite uneasiness as I apprehended the worst of consequences, a breach between the two countries, till I was, to my great surprise, assured by a gentleman of character and distinction (whom I shall not name49) that the measure and all other grievances we complain’d of took their rise not from government in Britain, but were proposed, solicited and obtained by some of the most respectable among the Americans themselves! As I could not readily assent to the probability of this, he undertook to convince me, and he hoped thro’ me (as their agent), my countrymen. Accordingly he call’d on me some days after, and produc’d to me these very letters, written by Lt. Govr. Hutchinson, Secry. Oliver, and others, which became since the subject of so much discussion, especially a letter by Govr. Hutchinson stating that the American crisis required “an abridgment of what are called English liberties.”
I sent the original letters to my particular correspondents in America; fearing to be known as the person who sent them, I insisted on their keeping the circumstance a secret, and engag’d them not to print them. I wrote, “I must hope that great care will be taken to keep the people quiet, lest violence provide an excuse for increasing armed coercion.” But my correspondent related to me how the Assembly having heard of them, oblig’d him to produce them, and that they afterwards did nevertheless print them. The effect of the governors’ letters on the minds of the people in New England, when they came to be read there, was precisely what had been expected and proposed by sending them over. It was seen that the grievances which had been so deeply resented as measures of the mother country were in fact the measures of two or three of their own people.
I KEPT SILENT TILL I HEAR
D OF A SECOND DUEL
The news being arriv’d in England of the divulging those letters in America, great inquiry was made as to who had transmitted them. Mr. John Temple, a gentleman of customs, was accus’d of it in the papers, but he vindicated himself. A public altercation ensu’d upon it between him and a Mr. William Whately, brother and executor to the person to whom it was supposed the letters had been originally written, and who was suspected of communicating them, on the supposition that by his brother’s death they might have fallen into his hands. I suffered that altercation to go on without interfering, supposing it would end, as other newspaper debates usually do, when the parties and the public should tire of them. But this debate unexpectedly produced a duel. The gentlemen were parted; Mr. Whately was hurt, but not dangerously. This, however, alarmed me, and made me wish I had prevented it. But imagining all now over between them, I still kept silence, till I heard that the duel was understood to be unfinish’d, as having been interrupted by persons accidentally near, and that it would probably be repeated as soon as Mr. Whately, who was mending daily, had recover’d his strength. I then thought it high time to interpose; and as the quarrel was for the public opinion, I took what I thought the shortest way to settle the opinion with regard to the parties, by publishing a letter to the printer. This declaration of mine was at first generally approv’d, except that some blam’d me for not having made it sooner, so as to prevent the duel; but I had not the gift of prophecy; I could not have foreseen that the gentlemen would fight; I did not even foresee that either of them could possibly take it ill of me. I imagin’d I was doing them a good office, in clearing both of them from suspicion, and removing the cause of their difference. I should have thought it natural for them both to have thank’d me; but I was mistaken as to one of them. The return this worthy gentleman made me was, without the smallest previous notice, warning, complaint or request whatsoever, to clap upon my back a chancery suit. His bill set forth that Whately was the administrator of the goods and chattels of his late Brother Thomas Whately; that some letters had been written to his said brother by the governors Hutchinson and Oliver; that by carrying on the trade of a printer I had by my agents printed and published the same letters in America, and that he had applied to me to deliver up to him the said letters and desist from printing and publishing the same, and account with him for the profits thereof; that he was in hopes I would have complied with such a request, but so it was that I had refused, &c, contrary to equity and good conscience and to the manifest injury and oppression of him the complainant. The gentleman himself must have known that every circumstance of this accusation toward me was totally false. Those as little acquainted with law as I was (who indeed never before had a suit of any kind) may wonder at this as much as I did. But I learned that in Chancery, tho’ the defendant must swear to the truth of every point in his answer, the plaintiff is not put to his oath, or obliged to have the least regard to truth in his bill, but was allowed to lie as much as he pleased. I did not understand this, unless it be for the encouragement of business.
My answer to the oath was that the letters in question had been given to my agents for the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; that when given to me I did not know to whom they had been addressed, no address appearing upon them; nor did I know before that any such letters had existed; that I had not been for many years concern’d in printing; that I did not cause the letters to be printed, nor direct the doing it; that I did not erase any address that was on the letters, nor did I know that any other person had made such erasure; that I did as agent to the province transmit (as I apprehended it my duty to do) the said letters to one of the committee with whom I had been directed to correspond, inasmuch as in my judgment they related to matters of great public importance to that province, and were put into my hands for that purpose; that I had never been applied to by the complainant as asserted in that bill, and had made no profit of the letters, nor intended to make any, &c.
THIS THEY CALL GOVERNMENT!
It had about this time become evident that all thought of reconciliation with the colony of the Massachusetts Bay had been laid aside; that severity was resolv’d; and that decrying and vilifying the people of that country, and me their agent among the rest, was quite a court measure. It was the tone with all the ministerial folks to abuse them and me in every company and in every newspaper; and it was intimated to me as a thing settled, long before it happened, that the Assembly’s petition for removal of the governors was to be rejected, the Assembly censur’d, and myself, who had presented it, to be punished by the loss of my place in the post office. For all this I was therefore prepar’d: But the attack from Mr. Whately was, I own, a surprise to me. Without the slightest provocation, I could not have imagined any man base enough to commence of his own motion such a vexatious suit against me. My finances were not sufficient to cope at law with the Treasury, especially when administration had taken care to prevent my constituents of New England from paying me any salary, or reimbursing me any expenses, by a special instruction to their governor, nor to sign any warrant for that purpose on the Treasury there. The injustice of thus depriving the people in New England of the use of their money to pay an agent acting in their defense, while the governor with a large salary out of the money extorted from them by Act of Parliament was enabled to pay plentifully solicitors Mauduit and Wedderburn to abuse and defame them and their agent, is so evident as to need no comment. And this they call Government.
MEETING IN THE COCKPIT
I heard from all quarters that the ministry and all the courtiers were highly enraged against me for transmitting those letters. I was called an incendiary, and the papers were filled with invectives against me. Hints were given me that there were some thoughts of apprehending me, seizing my papers, and sending me to Newgate prison. I was well informed that a resolution had been taken to deprive me of my place; it was only thought best to defer it till after the hearing. My situation was a little hazardous, for if by some accident the troops and people of New England had come to blows, I would probably have been taken up to prison. I was frequently caution’d to secure my papers, and, by some, advis’d to withdraw. But I ventured to stay in compliance with the wish of others; and I confided, in my innocence, that the worst which could happen to me would be an imprisonment on suspicion, tho’ that was a thing I would much desire to avoid, as it would be expensive and vexatious, as well as dangerous to my health.
On the 29th of January 1774 a hearing on the matter began in the Cockpit.50 The council for the petition opened the matter with great strength of argument as well as propriety and decency. The solicitorgeneral Mr. Wedderburn then went into what he called “a history of the province for the last ten years,” and bestowed plenty of abuse upon it, mingled with encomium on the governors. But the favorite part of his discourse was leveled at me, and I stood the butt of his invective and ribaldry for near an hour. Not a single lord checked and recalled this orator to the business before them; but on the contrary (a very few excepted) they seemed to enjoy highly the entertainment, and frequently burst out into loud applause. This part of his speech was thought so good, that they later printed it in order to defame me everywhere, and particularly to destroy my reputation in America. But I did not find that I lost a single friend on the occasion. All visited me repeatedly with affectionate assurances of unaltered respect. The day following I received a written notice from the Secretary of the General Post Office, that his majesty’s Postmaster General found it necessary to dismiss me from my office of Deputy Postmaster General in North America. Thus I was depriv’d in the post office of £300 sterling a year. I was obliged to resign as agent of the colonies of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia, in the whole £1500 sterling per annum, and orders were sent to the King’s governors not to sign any warrants on the Treasury for the arrears of my salaries.
MY SON SAW EVERYTHING WITH GOVERNMENT EYES
I wrote my son William in New Jersey to acquaint h
im that my office of Deputy Postmaster had been taken from me, that there was no prospect of his being ever promoted to a better government, and that he would be better if he were well settled in his farm. I wrote, “ ’tis an honester and more honourable and more independent employment.” However, he continued in office, which did no favour to me or him. I knew he would execute his office with fidelity, but I thought independence more honourable than any service, and that in the arbitrary state of American affairs, he would find himself in no comfortable situation, and would be better if he disengaged himself. But I knew his sentiments differed from mine on these subjects. He was a thorough courtier, a government man who saw everything with government eyes.
JOURNAL OF NEGOTIATIONS IN LONDON51
During the whole of my time in England I was otherwise much taken up by friends calling on me continually to inquire news from America ; members of both houses of Parliament to inform me what passed in the houses, and discourse with me on the debates, and on motions made or to be made; merchants of London and of the manufacturing and port towns on their petitions; the Quakers upon theirs, &c. &c., so that I had no time to take notes of almost anything. I write this account therefore chiefly from recollection, in which doubtless much must have been omitted, from deficiency of memory; but what there is, I believe to be pretty exact; except that discoursing with so many different persons about the same time on the same subject, I may possibly have put down some things as said by or to one person, which passed in conversation with another.
The Compleated Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1757-1790) Page 10