APPENDIX I

FIRST PROCEEDINGS AGAINST JAMES FRANKLIN.

MR. EDWARD EVERETT appends to his well-known Address upon the Boyhood and Youth of Franklin, a valuable note in relation to the prosecution of James Franklin. He derived his information from the manuscript records of the General Court of Massachusetts for June, 1722. "In the month of May, 1722," says Mr. Everett, a piratical vessel appeared off Block Island, and made some captures. Information of this event was sent by the governor of Rhode Island to Governor Shute at Boston, and by him communicated to the Council on the 7th of June. The report was that a pirate brigantine of two great guns and four swivel guns, and of fifty men, was off the coast, and had captured several vessels. In the defenseless state of the American coasts and waters, this was an event well calculated to cause alarm, though not one of infrequent occurrence.

"The news from Rhode Island was immediately referred to a joint committee of the Council and House of Representatives, who reported on the same day, that it would be of service to the government, and of security to trade, that a large sloop of seventy or eighty tons, or some other suitable vessel, should be immediately impressed and manned with one hundred men, and suitable officers to command the same, to be equipped with six great guns, and a sufficient quantity of all warlike stores, offensive and defensive, with provisions suitable for the said number of men for one month, cruise between the capes or elsewhere, where the captain-general shall see cause to go in quest of a pirate brigantine expected to be on our coast, or any other vessel that they shall suspicion of.'

"This report was forthwith adopted; the same committee was instructed to carry its recommendations into effect; and the treasurer was ordered to furnish the necessary supplies.

"No time seems to have been lost in executing these measures, for we find from the records of the court, that on the next day (8th June, 1722) the House of Representatives passed the following resolve:

"Whereas this Court has resolved that a suitable vessel manned with a hundred men, to be well furnished and equipped with all warlike stores, offensive and defensive, shall be dispatched and sent out with all possible

expedition to reduce and suppress a piratical brigantine now infesting our coast, for the encouragement of that expedition under Peter Papillon, "Voted, That the captors shall be entitled to the piratical vessel they shall take, and all the goods, wares, and merchandises that shall be found on board, belonging to the pirates, so far as is consistent with the acts of Parliament in such case made and provided.

"And for further encouragement, that they be paid out of the public treasury the sum of ten pounds per head for every pirate killed, or that shall be taken, by them, convicted of piracy, and shall also be entitled to the common wages of the port; and in case any man on board shall be maimed or wounded in engaging, fighting, or repelling the pirates, he shall be entitled to a bounty suitable to the wounds he or they shall receive, to be allowed and paid out of the public treasury of this province.'

"It seems from these resolutions that a certain Captain Peter Papillon, at that time outward bound for Barbadoes, had been immediately engaged to command the vessel sent out against the pirates, which was named, as appears from subsequent proceedings, the 'Flying Horse.'

"On the 9th of June the sum of one hundred pounds was ordered to be advanced to Captain Papillon, to be paid to his men on account of their wages. On the same day a petition was presented to the General Court by Philip Bunker and others, praying 'that they may be allowed to proceed on their fishing, and call at Nantucket as they go along, to give intelligence of the pirate; notwithstanding the embargo.'

"As it does not appear from the records of the court that any embargo was laid; as no notice of any embargo appears in the Courant for this week, but, on the contrary, vessels appear to have cleared out as usual at the custom-house, this petition of Philip Bunker needs further explanation. "On Monday, June 11th, in the Courant which appeared that day, there was an article dated Newport, Rhode Island, June 7th, containing an account of the appearance of the pirate off Block Island, and of the prompt steps taken at Newport to send out two vessels to cruise against him. The article then concludes with this remark:

"We are advised from Boston, that the government of Massachusetts are fitting out a ship to go after the pirates, to be commanded by Captain Peter Papillon, and it is thought he will sail sometime this month, wind and weather permitting.'

"The same paper, under the Boston head, announced that above a hundred men had been enlisted, and that the vessel would probably sail that day.

"But the insinuation of tardiness in the conclusion of the pretended article from Rhode Island, seems to have been taken in very ill part. On the 12th of June the following singular proceedings were had in the General Court:

"Tuesday, 12th June, 1772.

"Present in Council, His Excellency SAMUEL SHUTE, Esq., Governor.

"In Council, the Board having before them a paper called the New England Courant, of the date of June 11th, 1772, and apprehending that a paragraph therein, said to be written from Rhode Island, contains matter of reflection on this Government,

"Ordered, That the publisher of said paper be forthwith sent for to answer for the same, and accordingly James Franklyn, of Boston, Printer, was sent for, examined, and owned he had published the said paper.

"In Council, the Board having had consideration of a paragraph in a paper called the New England Courant, published on Monday last, relating to the fitting out a ship here to proceed against the pyrates, and having examined James Franklyn, printer, who acknowledged himself the publisher thereof, and finding the said paragraph to be founded on a letter, pretended by the said Franklyn to be received from Rhode Island,

"Resolved, That the said paragraph is a high affront to this govern

ment.

"In the House of Representatives, read and concurred, and

"Resolved, That the Sheriff of the county of Suffolk do forthwith commit to the goal in Boston the body of James Franklyn, printer, for the gross affront offered to this government in the Courant of Monday last.

“In Council, read and concurred; consented to [by the governor.]' "In virtue of this resolution James Franklyn was arrested under a speaker's warrant, and confined in the stone jail.

"This summary power of punishing persons deemed guilty of contempts, though perhaps now exercised for the first time in America in a matter pertaining to the liberty of the press, was borrowed from the parliamentary law of England, where it is not obsolete. Pending these proceedings against Franklin, three 'Bridgewater men' were imprisoned in the same way, for obstructing the surveyors appointed to run a boundary line under an order of the General Court.

"The records of the General Court contain the following entry the next week:

"In Council, 20th June, 1772, a petition of James Franklyn, printer, humbly shewing, that he is truly sensible and heartily sorry for the offence he has given to this court in the late Courant, relating to the fitting out of a ship by the government, and truly acknowledges his inadvertency and folly therein in affronting the government, as also his indiscretion and indecency when before the court, for all which he intreats the court's forgiveness, and praying a discharge from the stone prison where he is confined by order of the court, and that he may have the liberty of the yard, he being much indisposed and suffering in his health by the said confinement, a certificate of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston being offered with the said petition. "In the House of Representatives, read, and

"Voted, That James Franklyn, now a prisoner in the stone goal, may have the liberty of the prison house and yard, upon his giving security for his abiding there.

“In Council, read and concurred, consented to,

"SAMUEL SHUTE."

"An attempt was made in the Council to follow up their blow by an order which passed that body, providing that 'no such weekly paper [as the Courant] be hereafter printed or published, without the same be first perused and allowed by the Secretary, as has been usual.' This order, however, was not at this time concurred in by the House."

A few months later, as the reader is aware, an order of this nature was issued; but as it was limited in its operation to James Franklin, he contrived, with the assistance of his apprentice, to evade it.

APPENDIX II.

FRANKLIN'S PAMPHLET.

THE following is a copy of the pamphlet written and printed by Benjamin Franklin, in his nineteenth year, when he was a journeyman printer, in London. The original (of which a fac simile has been placed by me in the library of the New York Historical Society) is an excellent specimen of the printing of that day. The reader will, perhaps, conclude that, at nineteen, Franklin was a better printer than philosopher.

* Orations and Speeches, ii., p. 43.