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manner of their having been obtained by Dr Franklin, which he contended could not have been "by fair means." "The writers did not give them to him," said he," nor yet did the deceased correspondent, who, from our intimacy, would otherwise have told me of it; nothing then will acquit Dr Franklin of the charge of obtaining them by fraudulent or corrupt means, for the most malignant of purposes, unless he stole them from the person who stole them. This argument is irrefragable."

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I hope, my lords," he continued, " you will mark and brand the man, for the honour of this country, of Europe, and of mankind. Private correspondence has hitherto been held sacred in times of the greatest party rage, not only in politics, but in religion." "He has forfeited all the respect of societies and of men. Into what companies will he hereafter go with an unembarrassed face, or the honest intrepidity of virtue? Men will watch him with a jealous eye, they will hide their papers from him, and lock up their escrutoires. He will henceforth esteem it a libel to be called a man of letters, homo TRIUM iterarum!

"But he not only took away the letters from one brother, but kept himself concealed till he nearly occasioned the murder of the other. It is impossible to read his account, expressive of the coolest and mots deliberate malice, without horror. (Here he read a letter of Dr Franklin to the Public Advertiser.) Amidst those tragical events, of one person nearly murdered; of another answerable for the issue; of a worthy governor hurt in his dearest interests; the fate of America is in suspense: here is a man, who, with the utmost insensibility of remorse, stands up and avows himself the author of all.-I can compare it only to Zanga in Dr Young's Revenge.

Know then 'twas- -I

I forged the letter,- -I disposed the picture ;-
I hated, I despised,—and I destroy.'

I ask, my lords, whether the revengeful temper, attributed by poetic fiction only to the bloody Afri

can, is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of the wily American."

Franklin is said to have stood during the time of the delivery of this long speech at the council-table, immovably erect, and with not a feature disturbed by the attack. The council, February 7th, voted the petition of the Massachusetts Assembly "groundless, vexatious, and scandalous," and Dr Franklin within a few days was dismissed from his office of postmastergeneral.

The next morning Franklin told Dr Priestley he had never before been so sensible of the power of a good conscience; for that if he had not considered the thing for which be had been so much insulted as one of the best actions of his life, and what he should certainly do again in the same circumstances, he could not have supported it.

It is remarkable however that Dr Franklin retained to a very late period a lively recollection of this insult. He wore on this occasion a full dress suit of spotted Manchester velvet, and it is observed by Dr Bancroft, that he had on the same dress when he signed the treaties of commerce and alliance with France; which led him to suspect, that he was influenced in that transaction by the remembrance of his former treatment before the council.

While this unhappy affair was exasperating the quarrel in England, an event of a different kind at Boston, was bringing on actual hostilities. Lord North, to avoid directly taxing the colonies, and at the same time to relieve the East India Company of a heavy stock of tea which had accumulated in their warehouses, had carried a bill through parliament, allowing the company to export it duty free; or more correctly the directors were to satisfy the treasury for the duties on tea sold in America, and to indemnify themselves by charging an extra threepence per pound for it. Three vessels laden with tea arrived under these circumstances at Boston. It was immediately voted at an immense assembly of the inhabit

ants, that the tea should not be landed. The vessels were ordered to haul up to Griffin's wharf, and after a few days, a strong party disguised as Mohawk Indians, headed by John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and some other respectable inhabitants, deliberately boarded them, started the tea chests from the holds, to the number of three hundred and forty-two, and poured their contents into the sea.

Intelligence of these outrages reached England early in 1774, and was submitted to both houses of parliament, by a message from the king. Ministers contended that the town of Boston had proceeded to actual rebellion, and moved for leave to bring in bills, depriving it of the privilege of being a port; appointing that the council of Massachusetts should in future be nominated by the crown; that the power of the governor should be enlarged; and that he should have the option of sending state and other criminals to England for trial.

the crown.

To enforce these measures of the ministry, another increase of military force was despatched to general Gage at Boston, and partly for the purpose of modifying their apparent severity, a bill was also passed in this session, putting Canada on the same footing, by establishing at Quebec a legislative council under But the arrival of the Boston Port bill in America was productive of very different consequences to those anticipated by the minister. Meetings of the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood were called, and sat from day to day. Copies of the obnoxious bill were circulated throughout the neighbouring continent, and the public mind seemed to be given up to consternation and rage. Far from suffering it to be carried into effect, the most violent retaliatory measures were projected, and the neighbouring states were called upon to make common cause with their oppressed brethren. The governor of Boston having received a list of thirty-six new counselfors appointed by the crown in pursuance of the late act, twenty-four of them only accepted the office,

and most of these renounced the office in consequence of the threats of the populace. Some of general Gage's regiments having encamped on the plains in the neighbourhood of Boston, and placed a guard upon the neck of the peninsula, the inhabitants of Worcester county affected to suppose that this was intended to starve the town into a compliance with the British measures, and sent to inform the inhabitants that there were ten thousand men ready to march to their assistance. General Gage now fortified BostonNeck, and seized upon the ammunition and stores: prior to the approaching annual muster of the pro-vincial militia.

Franklin's life and conduct as a statesman is essentially connected with these events, but the general dignity and influence of his character were happily preserved by his present detention in England, whencehis genius could direct the storm, without his being disturbed too much by it personally. The first meeting of a General Congress was in fact a suggestion of his, not only in his original plan of a union of the colonies, suggested at Albany, but more particularly in a letter addressed from England, in July, 1773, to his friend Thomas Cushing, Esq.

"As the strength of an empire," says he in this masterly paper, "depends not only on the union of its parts, but on their readiness for united exertion of their common force; and as the discussion of rights may seem unseasonable in the commencement of actual war, and the delay it might occasion be prejudicial to the common welfare; as, likewise, the refusal of one or a few colonies would not be so much regarded, if the others granted liberally, which. perhaps, by various artifices and motives they might be prevailed on to do; and as this want of concert would defeat the expectation of general redress that otherwise might be justly formed; perhaps it would be best and fairest for the colonies, in a General Congress, now in peace to be assembled (or by means of the correspondence lately proposed), after a full

and solemn assertion and declaration of their rights, to engage firmly with each other, that they will never grant aids to the crown in any general war, till those rights are recognised by the king and both houses of parliament; communicating to the crown this their resolution. Such a step, I imagine, will bring the dispute to a crisis; and whether our demands are immediately complied with, or compulsory measures thought of to make us rescind them, our ends will finally be obtained; for even the odium accompanying such compulsory attempts will contribute to unite and strengthen us; and, in the meantime, all the world will allow that our proceeding has been honourable."

This Congress met at Philadelphia, Sept. 17th, 1774. The first act of Congress declared their determined resolution to oppose the measures of the British parliament relative to Massachusetts Bay; after which they wrote to general Gage, commander of the king's troops in that province, declaring their resolution to unite for the preservation of their common rights, in opposition to the oppressions of parliament, and lamenting that his Excellency should have proceeded in a manner that bore so hostile an appearance, calculated to force them into open warfare with the parent state.

They professed a desire for peace, and a full knowledge of the horrors to which all the peaceable inhabitants of the colonies would be exposed by the termination of those disputes in civil war.

They also published a Declaration of Rights derived to them as English colonists, from the laws of nature, the principles of the British constitution, and the respective provincial charters.

And drew up a Petition to the King, a Memorial to their Fellow Subjects of Great Britain, an Address to the Colonies in general, and another to the Inhabitants of the New Quebec Province.

The energy, ability, and wisdom of these public papers were such, that lord Chatham, no ordinary judge, told Dr Franklin before he left England, that

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