AN ACCOUNT

OF THE

TRANSACTIONS RELATING TO GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON'S LETTERS.

The affair of Hutchinson's Letters made much noise at the time, by reason of the political consequences emanating from them, and subjected Dr. Franklin to unmerited obloquy. It seems, that while acting in London as agent for the colony of Massachusetts, certain original letters were put into his hands, which had been written in Boston by Governor Hutchinson, Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, Charles Paxton, Nathaniel Rogers, and G. Rome, and directed to Thomas Whately, a member of Parliament, and private secretary to Mr. Grenville, one of the ministers. After Mr. Whately's death the above letters were obtained by some unknown person, and communicated to Dr. Franklin, with permission that he might send them to his correspondents in Massachusetts. As the contents of the letters were of a very extraordinary character, and in their po- . litical tendency deeply interesting to the people of Massachusetts, and indeed to those of all the colonies, Dr. Franklin thought it his duty to transmit them without delay. He enclosed them to Thomas Cushing, Speaker of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts, and at length they were made public. Although this was done without the consent or knowledge of Dr. Franklin, he did not disapprove the act, considering it not only a proper but necessary step for exposing the insidious designs of eminent public men in America; whose secret counsels were hostile to the liberties of his country.

His. agency in the matter caused a loud clamor to be raised against him by the ministerial partisans in England. It was made the occasion of unmeasured abuse through the channel of the press, and particularly from Mr. Wedderburn, the King's solicitor-general, when the petition of the Massachusetts legislature for the removal of Governor Hutchinson, in consequence of these letters, was brought before the Council. Conscious of having acted

a part honorable in itself, and of the utmost importance to his country, Dr. Franklin suffered the tide of obloquy to pass by without attempting to oppose or divert its course. A short time before he returned to America, however, he wrote the following paper, which affords a triumphant vindication of his conduct, but which was not published during his lifetime, nor till it appeared in William Temple Franklin's edition of his works. - EDITOR.

HAVING been from my youth more or less engaged 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 rather to amend than defend; and, when they were undeserved, that a little time would justify me. Much experience has confirmed my opinion of the propriety of this conduct; for, notwithstanding the frequent, and sometimes the virulent attacks which the jostlings 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 (persisting, as old men ought to do, in old habits) have taken no notice of the late invective of the solicitor-general, nor of the abundant abuse in the papers, were I not urged to it by my friends, who say, that the first being delivered by a public officer of government before a high and most respectable court, the Privy Council, and countenanced by its report, and the latter having that for its foundation, it behoves me, more especially as I am about leaving this country, to furnish them with the knowledge of such facts as may enable them to justify to others their good opinion of

me. This compels me to the present undertaking; for otherwise, having for some time past been gradually losing all public connexions, declining my agencies, determined on retiring to my little family, that I might enjoy the remainder of life in private repose, indifferent to the opinion of courtiers, as having nothing to seek or wish among them, and being secure that time would soon lay the dust which prejudice and party have so lately raised, I should not think of giving myself the trouble of writing, and my friends of reading, an apology for my political conduct.

That this conduct may be better understood, and its consistency more apparent, it seems necessary that I should first explain the principles on which I have acted. It has long appeared to me, that the only true British policy was that, which aimed at the good of the whole British empire, not that which sought the advantage of one part in the disadvantage of the others; therefore all measures of procuring gain to the mother country arising from loss to her colonies, and all of gain to the colonies arising from or occasioning loss to Britain, especially where the gain was small and the loss great, every abridgment of the power of the mother. country, where that power was not prejudicial to the liberties of the colonists, and every diminution of the privileges of the colonists, where they were not prejudicial to the welfare of the mother country, I, in my own mind, condemned as improper, partial, unjust, and mischievous; tending to create dissensions, and weaken 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 proceedings, either here or in America, that in my opinion had such tendency. Hence it has often happened to me, that

while I have been thought here too much of an American, I have in America been deemed too much of an Englishman.

From a thorough inquiry (on occasion of the Stamp Act) into the nature of the connexion between Britain and the colonies, I became convinced, that the bond of their union is not the Parliament, but the King. That, in removing to America, a country out of the realm, they did not carry with them the statutes then existing; for, if they did, the Puritans must have been subject there to the same grievous act of conformity, tithes, spiritual courts, &c., which they meant to be free from by going thither; and in vain would they have left their native country, and all the conveniences and comforts of its improved state, to combat the hardships of a new settlement in a distant wilderness, if they had taken with them what they meant to fly from, or if they had left a power behind them capable of sending the same chains after them, to bind them in America. They took with them, however, by compact, their allegiance to the King, and a legislative power for the making a new body of laws with his assent, by which they were to be governed. Hence they became distinct states, under the same is to the crown, but not to the realm, of England, and governed each by its own laws, though with the same sovereign, and having each the right of granting its own money to that sovereign.

prince, united as Ireland

At the same time, I considered the King's supreme authority over all the colonies as of the greatest importance to them, affording a dernier resort for settling all their disputes, a means of preserving peace among them with each other, and a centre in which their common force might be united against a common enemy. This authority I therefore thought, when acting within its

due limits, should be ever as carefully supported by the colonists as by the inhabitants of Britain.*

In conformity with these principles, and as agent for 1 the colonies, I opposed the Stamp Act, and endeavoured to obtain its repeal, as an infringement of the

* This doctrine, respecting the relation between the King and the colonies, and the limited power of Parliament over the latter, was much insisted on by Dr. Franklin, as may be seen in several of the preceding papers in this volume. He was charged with being the author of a tract on this subject, however, which he did not write. In the year 1774, a pamphlet was published anonymously in Philadelphia, entitled "Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament." This was copied into Rivington's New York Gazette, October 30th, 1774, and there ascribed to Dr. Franklin. Deceived by this Gazette, Dean Tucker, in his FIFTH TRACT, quoted a passage, which he censured, and for which he made Dr. Franklin answerable. Lord Mansfield, deceived in his turn by the authority of Dean Tucker, alluding to the same performance in a speech on American affairs, February 7th, 1775, in the House of Lords, said, "One of the most able American writers, after the fullest and clearest investigation of the subject, at last confesses, that no medium can possibly be devised, which will exclude the inevitable consequence of either system absolutely prevailing; for, take it up on which ground you will, the supremacy of the British legislature must be complete, entire, and unconditional; or, on the other hand, the colonies must be free and independent." The person alluded to, as "one of the most able American writers," was Franklin. It is not likely, however, that he had any knowledge of the pamphlet before its publication. It was written by James Wilson, a distinguished lawyer of Philadelphia, afterwards one of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and, under Washington's administration, one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Another pamphlet was printed the same year in London, entitled, “ An Appeal to the Justice and Interests of the People of Great Britain, in the Present Dispute with America," to which Dr. Franklin is supposed to have contributed. On this subject the author of "Biographical, Literary, and Political Anecdotes of Several of the Most Eminent Persons of the Present Age,” (Vol. II. p. 325,) speaks as follows; "The tract was printed from the manuscript of Mr. Arthur Lee. But Dr. Franklin had a considerable share in the composition; and it might now, with no impropriety, be called Dr. Franklin's farewell address. It was the most sensible and judicious tract on that side of the question. Many thousands of it were circulated." By farewell address is meant, that it was published not long before Dr. Franklin left England to return to his own country. - EDITOR.