appeared, representing the Devil whispering in Franklin's ear, "Thee shall be agent, Ben, for all my dominions," and bearing this stanza: "All his designs concenter in himself, Whom private property did ne'er maintain." At one time, the new house which Mrs. Franklin had built in her husband's absence, and into which she had just removed, was supposed to be in danger from the mob. Governor Franklin hurried from his province to Philadelphia, and entreated the inmates of his father's house to take refuge in his own at Burlington. The brave Mrs. Franklin would not budge, though she permitted her daughter to go. "I was for nine days," she wrote to her husband, "kept in a continual hurry by people to remove, and Sally was persuaded to go to Burlington for safety. Cousin Davenport came and told me that more than twenty people had told him it was his duty to be with me. I said I was pleased to receive civility from anybody, so he staid with me some time; towards night I said he should fetch a gun or two, as we had none. I sent to ask my brother to come and bring his gun also, so we turned one room into a magazine; I ordered some sort of defense up stairs, such as I could manage myself. I said, when I was advised to remove, that I was very sure you had done nothing to hurt anybody, nor had I given any offense to any person at all, nor would I be made uneasy by anybody, nor would I stir or show the least uneasiness, but if any one came to disturb me I would show a proper resentment. I was told that there were eight hundred men ready to assist any one that should be molested." 66 When the excitement subsided, "Cousin Davenport," it seems, gave a report of the tumult to Jane Mecom, which "amazed" that good lady "beyond measure." She had just received from her brother in England a box of clothing, containing a printed cotton gown, a quilted coat, a bonnet, a cap, and some ribbons," for herself and each of her daughters; a black and purple gown for herself, but light-colored ones for the girls. "I am amazed beyond measure,” she wrote to Mrs. Franklin, "that your house was threatened in the tumult. I thought there had been none among you would proceed to such a length to persecute a man merely for being the best of characters, and really deserving good from the hand and tongue of all his fellow-creatures. I knew there was a party that did not approve his prosecuting the business he is gone to England upon, and that some had used him with some scurrilous language in some printed papers, but I was in hopes it had so far subsided as not to give you any disturbance. When I think what you must have suffered at the time, how I pity you! but I think your indignation must have exceeded your fear. What a wretched world would this be if the vile of mankind had no laws to restrain them!"* By the first of November, the day on which the Stamp Act was to go into execution, it was known in England that the colonies, with one voice, had refused obedience to it. Orders for manufactured goods ceased to arrive from America, and all trades languished. The act passed so carelessly had become the dividing topic between the two political parties. The Grenville administra tion, to the joy of all America, had fallen, though the Stamp Act had had nothing to do with its fall. A more liberal ministry, with the Marquis of Rockingham at its head, and General Conway the leader of the House of Commons, had come in. In December, Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son: "The late imposed stamp duty our colonies absolutely refuse to pay. The administration are for some indulgence and forbearance to these froward children of their mother-country; the opposition are for taking vigorous, as they call them, but I call them violent measures; and to have the tax collected by the troops we have there. For my part, I never saw a froward child mended by whipping; and I would not have the mother-country become a step-mother." With this new ministry came into parliament a new member, Mr. Edmund Burke, private Secretary to Lord Rockingham. Mr. Burke was an old friend of Dr. Franklin, and peculiarly the friend of America. His first publication of importance was an account of the American colonies. The first letter he wrote in London (1750) spoke of the towers and turrets of the hospitals as piercing the skies "like so many electrical conductors, averting the wrath of Letters to Franklin from his Family, pp. 16, 20, 187. heaven;" a novel figure at a time when Dr. Franklin's discoveries in electricity were only known in England to the inquisitive few. For years he was only prevented from emigrating to America by the unconquerable opposition of his parents. Now, at the age of thirty-seven, he found himself in parliament, and the confidential factotum of the prime minister, with a subject before the nation upon which he was, probably, the best informed man in England, excepting only the agent for Pennsylvania. CHAPTER II. THE STAMP ACT REPEALED. ALL unsuspicious of the coming thunder, Dr. Franklin, in May of this memorable year, amused the London coffee-house gossips with one of his most humorous effusions. England, it appears, could then, as England can now, believe any thing of America if it were only absurd and disparaging enough. During the late session of parliament, the newspapers had abounded in the wildest fictions respecting the state of things in the colonies. A writer having taken to task the concoctors of these ridiculous paragraphs, Dr. Franklin wrote a very comical defense of them. * * "Englishmen," he wrote, "are too apt to be silent when they have nothing to say, and too apt to be sullen when they are silent; and, when they are sullen, to hang themselves. But, by these we hears, we are supplied with abundant funds for discourse. And here, give me leave to instance the various accounts the newswriters have given us, with so much honest zeal for the welfare of Poor Old England, of the establishing manufactures in the colonies to the prejudice of those of the kingdom. It is objected by superficial readers, who yet pretend to some knowledge of those countries, that such establishments are not only improbable, but impossible, for that their sheep have but little wool, not in the whole sufficient for a pair of stockings a year to each inhabitant; that, from the universal dearness of labor among them, the working of iron and other materials, except in a few coarse instances, is impractica ble to any advantage. "Dear sir, do not let us suffer ourselves to be amused with such groundless objections. The very tails of the American sheep are so laden with wool, that each has a little car or wagon on four little wheels, to support and keep it from trailing on the ground.* Would they calk their ships, would they even litter their horses with wool, if it were not both plenty and cheap? And what signi fies the dearness of labor, when an English shilling passes for five and twenty? Their engaging three hundred silk throwsters here in one week for New York was treated as a fable, because, forsooth, they have no silk there to throw.' Those who make this objection, perhaps do not know, that, at the same time the agents from the king of Spain were at Quebec to contract for one thousand pieces of cannon to be made there for the fortification of Mexico, and at New York engaging the usual supply of woolen floor-carpets for their West India houses, other agents from the emperor of China were at Boston treating about an exchange of raw silk for wool, to be carried in Chinese junks through the Straits of Magellan. "And yet all this is as certainly true as the account said to be from Quebec, in all the papers of last week, that the inhabitants of Canada are making preparations for a cod and whale fishery this summer in the upper lakes.' Ignorant people may object, that the upper lakes are fresh, and that cod and whales are salt water fish; but let them know, sir, that cod, like other fish, when attacked by their enemies fly into any water where they can be safest; that whales, when they have a mind to eat cod, pursue them wherever they fly; and that the grand leap of the whale in the chase up the Falls of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature. Really, sir, the world is grown too incredulous. * * * "Thus much I thought it necessary to say in favor of an honest This joke is borrowed from Herodotus, who, however, states it as a fact. "The Arabians," says Herodotus (see Thalia, 113), "have two kinds of sheep worthy of admiration, which are seen nowhere else. One kind has large tails, not less than three cubits in length, which, if suffered to trail, would ulcerate by the tails rubbing on the ground. But every shepherd knows enough of the carpenter's art to prevent this, for they make little carts, and fasten them under the tails, binding the tail of each separate sheep to a separate cart. The other kind of sheep have broad tails even to a cubit in breadth." set of writers, whose comfortable living depends on collecting and supplying the printers with news at the small price of sixpence an article, and who always show their regard to truth, by contradicting in a subsequent article such as are wrong, for another sixpence, to the great satisfaction and improvement of us coffee-house students in history and politics, and all future Livys, Rapins, Robertsons, Humes, and Macaulays, who may be sincerely inclined to furnish the world with that rara avis, a true history." This is excellent "fooling," better for its purpose than ponderous refutation. The muttering storm from America soon changed his note. From midsummer until Parliament met in December, and during the spring, Franklin was chiefly occupied in effecting one object, the repeal of the Stamp Act. "I was extremely busy," he wrote to Lord Kames, "attending members of both houses, informing, explaining, consulting, disputing, in a continual hurry from morning till night." Mr. Burke was the Intelligence of the Administration, and Dr. Franklin was the intimate, I may say the revered, friend of Mr. Burke. "Ignorance of American affairs," said Mr. Burke in reviewing this period, "had misled parlinment. Knowledge alone could bring it into the right road." Accordingly, six weeks of the session were employed in hearing testimony at the bar in Committee of the Whole House. "Every denomination of men," continues Mr. Burke, "either of America, or connected with it by office, by residence, by commerce, by interest, even by injury; men of civil and military capacity, officers of the revenue, merchants, manufacturers of every species, and from every town in England, attended at the bar. Such, evidence was never laid before Parliament.' One of these witnesses, as every reader knows, was Dr. Franklin. His examination, and the magnificent début of Mr. Burke as a parliamentary orator, are the events of this session which have most interested posterity. Mr. Burke's two speeches for the repeal, Dr. Johnson said, "filled the town with wonder." Dr. Franklin's examination instructed England, and thrilled America. This celebrated Examination was by no means the impromptu affair which it seemed to be. Among the liberal members of Parliament Dr. Franklin had a large number of friends, with whom, * Works and correspondence of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, iii., 87. |