CHAP. Government received official information,1 that the LI. people of Boston had thrown the tea overboard, and this event swelled the anger against the Americans. 1774. Jan. In this state of public feeling, Franklin on the twenty-ninth, assisted by Dunning and John Lee, came before the Privy Council, to advocate the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, in whose behalf appeared Israel Mauduit, the old adviser of the Stamp Tax; and Wedderburn the Solicitor General. It was a day of great expectation. Thirty-five Lords of the Council were present; a larger number than had ever attended a hearing; and the room was filled with a crowded audience, among whom were Priestly, and Edmund Burke. The Petition and accompanying papers having been read, Dunning asked on the part of his clients the reason of his being ordered to attend. "No cause," said he, "is instituted; nor do we think advocates necessary; nor are they demanded on the part of the Colony. The Petition is not in the nature of accusation, but of advice and request. It is an Address to the King's wisdom, not an application for criminal justice; when referred to the Council, it is a matter for political prudence, not for judicial determination. The matter, therefore, rests wholly in your Lordships' opinion of the propriety or impropriety of continuing persons in authority, who are represented by legal bodies, competent to such representation, as having (whether on sufficient or insufficient grounds) entirely forfeited the confidence of the Assemblies Hutchinson to Dartmouth, 17 2 Shelburne to Chatham, 3 Feb. Dec. 1773, received 27 January, 1774. LI. whom they were to act with, and of the people CHAP. whom they were to govern. The resolutions on which that representation is founded, lie before your Lord- Jan. ships, together with the letters from which they arose. "If your Lordships should think that these actions which appear to the Colony Representative to be faulty, ought in other places to appear meritorious, the Petition has not desired that the parties should be punished as criminals for these actions of supposed merit; nor even that they may not be rewarded. It only requests that these gentlemen may be removed to places where such merits are better understood, and such rewards may be more approved." He spoke well, and was seconded by Lee." 1 The question as presented by Dunning, was already decided in favor of the Petitioners; it was the universal opinion that Hutchinson ought to be superseded. Wedderburn changed the issue, as if Franklin were on trial; and in a speech which was a continued tissue of falsehood and ribaldry, turned his invective against the Petitioners and their Messenger. Of all men, Franklin was the most important in any attempt at conciliation. He was the Agent of the two great Colonies of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and also of New Jersey and Georgia; was the friend of Edmund Burke, who was Agent for New-York. All the troubles in British colonial policy had grown out of the neglect of his advice, and there was no one who could have medi 1774. 1 Report of the speech of the Counsel of the Province, in a letter from Edmund Burke, the Agent of the Colony of New-York, to the Committee of Correspondence of 2 Burke to Rockingham, 1 or 2 LI. 1774. Jan. CHAP. ated like him between the Metropolis and the Americans. He was now thrice venerable, from genius, fame in the world of science, and age, being already nearly threescore years and ten. This man Wedderburn, turning from the real question, employed all the cunning powers of distortion and misrepresentation to abuse. With an absurdity of application which the Lords of the Privy Council were too much prejudiced to observe, he drew a parallel between Boston and Capri, Hutchinson and Sejanus, the humble Petition of the Massachusetts Assembly, and a verbose and grand epistle of the Emperor Tiberius. Franklin, whose character was most benign, and who from obvious motives of mercy had assumed the sole responsibility of obtaining the letters, he described as a person of the most deliberate malevolence, realizing in life what poetic fiction only had penned for the breast of a bloody African. The speech of Hutchinson, challenging a discussion of the Supremacy of Parliament, had been not only condemned by public opinion in England, but disapproved by the Secretary of State; Wedderburn pronounced it "a masterly one,' which had "stunned the faction." Franklin, for twenty years had exerted his wonderful powers as the great conciliator, had never once employed the American press to alarm the American people, but had sought to prevent the Parliamentary taxation of America, by private and successful remonstrance during the time of the Pelhams; by seasonable remonstrance with Grenville against the Stamp Act; by honest and true answers to the inquiries of the House of Commons; by the best of advice to Shelburne. When sycophants sought by flattery to mislead the Minister for America, he had given correct information and safe counsel to the Ministry of CHAP. LI. Grafton, and repeated it emphatically, and in writing 1774. to the Ministry of North; but Wedderburn stigma- Jan. tized this wise and hearty lover of both countries as "a true incendiary." The letters which had been written by public men in public offices on public affairs, to one who formed an integral part of the body that had been declared to possess absolute power over America, and which had been written for the purpose of producing a tyrannical exercise of that absolute power, he called private. Hutchinson had solicited the place held by Franklin, from which Franklin was to be dismissed; this fact was suppressed, and the wanton falsehood substituted, that Franklin had desired the Governor's office, and had basely planned "his rival's overthrow." Franklin had inclosed the letters officially to the Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly, without a single injunction of secrecy with regard to the sender; Wedderburn maintained that they were sent anonymously and secretly; and by an argument founded on a misstatement, but which he put forward as irrefragable, he pretended to convict Franklin of having obtained the letters by fraudu lent and corrupt means, or of having stolen them from the person who stole them.1 The Lords of Council as he spoke, cheered him on by their laughter; and the cry of "Hear him, Hear him," burst repeatedly from a body, which professed to be sitting in judgment as the highest Court of Ap peal for the Colonies, and yet encouraged the advocate of one of the parties to insult a public envoy, 1 Wm. Temple's, Franklin, ii. 401. CHAP. present only as the person delivering the Petition of LI. a great and loyal Colony. Meantime the gray-haired Jan. Franklin, whom Kant, the noblest philosopher of that 1774. age, had called the modern Prometheus, stood conspicuously erect, confronting his vilifier and the Privy Council, compelled to listen while calumny, in the service of lawless force, aimed a death-blow at his honor, and his virtues called on God and man to see how unjustly he suffered. The reply of Dunning, who was very ill and was fatigued by standing so long,1 could scarcely be heard; and that of Lee produced no impression. There was but one place in England where fit reparation could be made; and there was but one man who had the eloquence and the courage and the weight of character to effect the atonement. For the present, Franklin must rely on the approval of the monitor within his own breast. "I have never been so sensible of the power of a good conscience," said he to Priestly; "for if I had not considered the thing for which I have been so much insulted, as one of the best actions of my life, and what I should certainly do again in the same circumstances, I could not have supported it." But it was not to him, it was to the people of Massachusetts, and to New England, and to all America, that the insult was offered through their Agent. Franklin and Wedderburn parted; the one to spread the celestial fire of freedom among men; to On this hearing, besides the newspaper reports of the day, the accounts by witnesses are: The pamphlet of Mauduit and Wedderburn; Franklin's Report as Agent to his Constituents; Account left by Franklin; Edmund Burke as Agent of New-York to his Consti tuents, Feb. 1774; Same to Rockingham; Same to Charles Lee; Dartmouth to Hutchinson; Arthur Lee to Samuel Adams, 31 January, 1774; Letter of Priestly, 10 Nov. 1802; Observations of Edward Bancroft. |