CHAP. had taken part in the defence, afterwards denied the XLV. propriety of the verdict. "The firmness of the Oct. judges" in delivering opinions on "principles of Gov 1770. ernment," was vaunted to obtain for them all much larger salaries, to be paid directly by the Crown. The Chief Justice, who was a manufacturer, wanted, moreover, money in the shape of pay for some refuse cannon balls which the Province had refused to buy.1 The trial of the soldiers, which followed a few weeks after, resulted in a verdict of manslaughter against each one of them who could be proved to have fired.2 The self-possession which had marked the conduct of the Town in regard to the trial of Preston, appeared in the measures of the Assembly for the redress of their grievances. In selecting an agent to bring them before the King, Samuel Adams and about one third of the House, following the advice of Joseph Reed of Philadelphia, gave their suffrages for Arthur Lee; but by the better influence of Bowdoin and of the Minister Cooper, Benjamin Franklin, the greatest of the sons of Boston, was elected agent of the House, with Arthur Lee as his substitute. Franklin held under the Crown the office of Depu 'Hutchinson to General Gage, If they had all been convicted, the Boston, 31 March, 1771. 2 Hutchinson to Sir Francis Ber- jury would certainly have found one guilty who was innocent, and they chose five guilty should escape rather than one innocent be convicted. These are pretty good distinctions for an American jury. 2 Samuel Adams to S. Sayre, 16 November, 1770. Hutchinson to Gov. Pownall, 11 Nov. 1770. 4 Samuel Cooper to B. Franklin, 6 November, 1770; in Franklin, vii. 489. Hutchinson to Gov. Pownall, 11 Nov. 1770. XLV. 1770. Oct. ty Postmaster General for America, and his son was a CHAP. royal Governor; but his mind had reasoned on politics with the same freedom from prejudice which marked his investigations into the laws of nature; and from questioning the right of Parliament to tax the Colonies externally, he had been led to the conviction, that the Colonies originally were constituted distinct States; that the legislative authority of Parliament over them was a usurpation; that Parliament was not supreme, nor the American Assemblies subordinate; that the American Assemblies with the King, had a true legislative authority,, which ought not to be limited by his Parliament in Great Britain; and that the keeping up a standing army in America, without the consent of the colonial Assemblies, had no sanction in the Constitution.1 From the knowledge that these were his principles, and from confidence in his integrity and ability, the House readily confided the redress of their grie vances to his care.2 At the time when Franklin was thus called by the people of Massachusetts to be their mediator with the mother country, he was sixty-four years of age. His large experience had ripened his judgment, without impairing the vigor of his mind; and he still retained the kindly benignity of manner, genial humor, and comprehensiveness of observation, which made him every where welcome. The difficult service demanded of him by the Colony of his nativity, 'Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Cooper, London, 8 June, 1770; in Franklin's Writings, vii. 475. Compare also Franklin, iv. 408, vii. 392, and vii. 487 and Cooper to Frank lin, 15 November, 1770, in Franklin, vii. 490. 2 See the letter of instructions to B. Franklin, 6 Nov. 1770, written by Samuel Adams. 1770. CHAP. was rendered with exemplary fidelity and disinterestXLV. edness, amidst embarrassment of all kinds. Hutchinson took care to negative all appropriations for his salary;1 and to remind Hillsborough not to recognise him as an Agent. Oct. 2 Compare Hutchinson to 17 Nov. 1770, and to 26 Nov. 1770. CHAPTER XLVI. THE ORIGIN OF TENNESSEE.-HILLSBOROUGH'S ADMINISTRATION OCTOBER, 1770-JUNE, 1771. XLVI. 1770. Oct. THE Colonization of the West was one of the CHAP. great objects ever promoted by Franklin. No one had more vividly discerned the capacity of the Mississippi valley not only to sustain Commonwealths, but to connect them with the world by commerce; and when the Ministers would have rejected the Fort Stanwix Treaty, which conveyed from the Six Nations an inchoate title to the immense territory southwest of the Ohio, his influence secured its ratification, by organizing a powerful company to plant a Province in that part of the country which lay back of Virginia, between the Alleghanies and a line drawn from the Cumberland Gap to the mouth of the Scioto.2 1 1 W. S. Johnson to Joseph Chew, Benjamin Franklin to Congress, 18 Feb. 1770. Passy, 20 Feb. 1780; not in his Works. 2 See the elaborate Petition of СНАР. Virginia resisted the proposed limitation of her XLVI. jurisdiction, as fatal to her interests;1 earnestly Oct. entreating an extension of her borders westward to 1770. 2 the Tennessee River. It would be tedious to rehearse the earnest pleas of the Colony; the hesitations of Hillsborough, who wished to pacify her people, and yet to confine her settlements; the entreaties of Botetourt; the adverse Representations of the Board of Trade; the meetings of Agents with the Beloved Men of the Cherokees. On the seventeenth of October, two days after the death of Botetourt, a treaty conforming to the decision of the British cabinet, was made at the Congress of Lochaber, confining the Ancient Dominion on the Northwest to the mouth of the Kenawha, while on the South it extended only to within six miles of the Holston River. The Cherokees would willingly have ceded more land; and when in the following year the line was run by Donelson for Virginia, their Chief consented that it should cross from the Holston to the Louisa, or Kentucky River, and follow it to the Ohio. But the change was disapproved in England, so that the great body of the West, unencumbered by valid titles, was happily reserved for the self-directed emigrant. 4 The people of Virginia and others were exploring and marking all the richest lands, not only on the Redstone and other waters of the Monongahela, but along the Ohio, as low as the little Kenawha; and 5 |