no justification. The simple statement of the facts justifies him. The remark of Mr. Bancroft upon this subject is fine and sufficient: "Had the conspiracy which was thus laid bare, aimed at the life of a minister or the king, any honest man must have immediately communicated the discovery to the Secretary of State; to conspire to introduce into America a military government, and abridge American liberty, was a more heinous crime, of which irrefragable evidence had now come to light."* History will record, in due time, one event similar in character, in motive, and in consequences, to the outrage upon Dr. Franklin and his constituents, in the Privy Council of King George III. I refer to the assault upon Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber of the United States, by the South Carolinian Brooks, with the frantic applause of the slavery-debauched portion of his fellow-citizens. Southern boys called their favorite dogs by the name of Brooks; I have heard them doing it in South Carolina. He was received at home as a conqueror coming from a campaign which had saved his country. A costly monument covers his remains. Charles Sumner, when he became the victim of this man's drunken fury, was the representative of principles which alone were capable of preventing the barbarizing or the disruption of his country. He was a pure and honest patriot, in accord with his country's best instincts and convictions, which he was accustomed to express with dignity and moderation. Different as the two characters are in themselves, it is nevertheless true that Charles Sumner, in some important particular, was to the United States, in 1857, what Benjamin Franklin was to the British empire of 1774; both being radical in re, but constitutional in modo; Franklin too loyal for Samuel Adams; Sumner too moderate for Wendell Philips. A like outrage having fallen upon both these representative men, we see all that was bigoted and mercenary in England applauding the insult to Franklin, and all that was brutal and savage in America exulting over the assault upon Sumner. Let the world, then, take note of what befalls those nations which assign to their Socrates hemlock, to their Jeremiahs miry pits, to their Franklins a Wedderburn, to their Sumners a bludgeon, to their Turgots dismission and obscurity. Such nations may * History of the United States, vi., 486. escape destruction, escape dismemberment, escape revolution, because there may be in the people a vast sum of renovating virtue; but they escape only by means of disasters the most prodigious and humiliating. The American revolution followed quick upon this scene in the Privy Council; quicker even than the slaveholders' rebellion upon that of the Senate Chamber. At this time, April, 1862, it is not yet decided whether the United States is to be saved by being dismembered, or saved without it. Horace Walpole's epigram upon Wedderburn and Franklin, wellknown as it is, may serve to conclude this chapter: "Sarcastic Sawney, swol'n with spite and prate, On silent Franklin poured his venal hate. 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 resoived 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 |