Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (31 page)

From his distance in London, Franklin was slow to join the frenzy. “The rashness of the Assembly in Virginia is amazing,” he wrote Hughes. “I hope, however, that ours will keep within the bounds of prudence and moderation.” For the time being, he was still more in sympathy with Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, later a great enemy. Both were reasonable men appalled by mob rule, and in this case threatened by it. “When you and I were at Albany ten years ago,” Hutchinson wrote him, “we did not propose a union for such purposes as these.”
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Franklin’s moderation was due in part to his temperament, his love of Britain, and his dreams of a harmonious empire. It was in his nature to be a smooth operator rather than a revolutionary. He liked witty discussion over Madeira, and he hated disorder and mob behavior. The fine wines and meals contributed not only to his gout, but also to his blurred vision about the animosity that was building back home. Perhaps more important, he was making one last attempt to turn Pennsylvania into a royal rather than Proprietary colony.

It was always an unlikely quest, now all the more so because of the turmoil over the Stamp Act, which made royal rule less popular in Pennsylvania and made colonial pleadings less popular in London. In November 1765, a year after Franklin’s arrival and just as he was absorbing the damage done to his reputation by his waffling over the Stamp Act, the Privy Council officially deferred action on the anti-Penn petition he had brought. Franklin initially believed (or at least publicly professed) that this was merely a temporary setback. But he soon came to realize that Thomas Penn was correct when he wrote to his nephew, Gov. John Penn, that the action meant the issue was dead “forever.”
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By the end of 1765, with his reputation as a defender of colonial rights in tatters because of his equivocation over the Stamp Act, Franklin faced one of the great challenges in the annals of political damage control. He began with a letter-writing campaign. To his partner David Hall and others, he strongly denied that he had ever supported the act. He also had prominent London Quakers write on his behalf. “I can safely aver that Benjamin Franklin did all in his power to prevent the Stamp Act from passing,” John Fothergill wrote a Philadelphia friend. “He asserted the rights and privileges of America with the utmost firmness.” Hall reprinted the letter in the
Pennsylvania Gazette.

Franklin felt the best way to force repeal, one that appealed to his Poor Richard penchant for frugality and self-reliance, was for Americans to boycott British imports and refrain from transactions that would require use of the stamps. This approach would also rally British tradesmen and manufacturers, hurt by the loss of exports, to the cause of repeal. Writing anonymously as “Homespun” in a British paper, he ridiculed the notion that Americans could not get by without such British imports as tea. If need be, they would make tea from corn. “Its green ears roasted are a delicacy beyond expression.”
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Franklin’s two sardonic essays signed Homespun were among at least thirteen attacks on the Stamp Act that he published in a three-month period. In one hoax, signed “A Traveler,” he claimed that America had no need of British wool because “the very tails of the American sheep are so laden with wool that each has a car or wagon on four little wheels to support and keep it from trailing on the ground.” Writing as “Pacificus Secundus,” he resorted to his old tactic of scathing satire by pretending to support the idea that military rule be imposed in the colonies. It would take only fifty thousand British soldiers at a cost of merely £12 million a year. “It may be objected that by ruining our colonies, killing one half the people, and driving the rest over the mountains, we may deprive ourselves of their custom for our manufacturers; but a moment’s consideration will satisfy us that since we have lost so much of our European trade, it can be only the demand in America that keeps up and has of late so greatly enhanced the price of those manufacturers, and therefore a stop put to that demand will be an advantage to all of us, as we may thereafter buy our own goods cheaper.” The only downside for England, he noted, was that “multitudes of our poor may starve for want of employment.”
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(As has been frequently noted, Franklin often wrote anonymously or using a pseudonym, beginning as a young teen when he wrote as Silence Dogood and then as the Busy-Body, Alice Addertongue, Poor Richard, Homespun, and others. Sometimes, he was trying to be truly anonymous; at other times, he was wearing only a thin mask. This practice was not unusual, indeed it was quite common, among writers of the eighteenth century, including such Franklin heroes as Addison, Steele, and Defoe. “Scarce one part in ten of the valuable books which are published are with the author’s name,” Addison once declared, with a bit of exaggeration. At the time, writing anonymously was considered cleverer, less vulgar, and less likely to lead to libel or sedition charges. Gentlemen sometimes thought it was beneath their stature to have their names on pamphlets and press pieces. The practice also assured that dissenting political and religious writings were rebutted on their merits rather than by personal attacks.)
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Franklin also produced a political cartoon, a counterpart to his “Join, or Die,” that showed a bloodied and dismembered British Empire, its limbs labeled with the names of colonies. The motto underneath, “Give a Penny to Belisarius,” referred to the Roman general who oppressed his provinces and died in poverty. He had the cartoon printed on note cards, hired a man to hand them out in front of Parliament, and sent one to his sister Jane Mecom. “The moral,” he told her, “is that the colonies may be ruined, but that Britain would thereby be maimed.” Enforcing the Stamp Act, he warned one British minister, would end up “creating a deep-rooted aversion between the two countries and laying the foundation of a future total separation.”
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Still a loyal Briton, Franklin was eager to prevent such a split. His preferred solution was colonial representation in Parliament. In a set of notes he prepared for his meetings with ministers, Franklin jotted down the argument: “Representation useful two ways. It brings information and knowledge to the great council. It conveys back to the remote parts of the empire the reasons of public conduct…It will forever preserve the union which otherwise may be various ways broken.”

But he also warned that the time to seize that opportunity was passing. “The time has been when the colonies would have esteemed it a great advantage as well as honor to them to be permitted to send members to Parliament,” he wrote a friend in January 1766. “The time is now come when they are indifferent about it, and will probably not ask it, though they might accept it if offered them; and the time will come when they will certainly refuse it.”

Short of representation in Parliament, Franklin wrote, “the next best thing” would be the traditional method of requesting funds to be appropriated by each of the colonial legislatures. In the notes he wrote for his conversation with ministers, he suggested a third alternative that would be a step toward independence for the colonies: “empowering them to send delegates from each Assembly to a common council.” In other words, the American colonies would form their own federal legislature rather than be subject to the laws of Parliament. The only thing that would then unite the two parts of the British Empire would be loyalty to the king. It derived from the plan he had proposed more than a decade earlier; next to this idea in his notes he wrote the phrase “Albany Plan.”
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On February 13, 1766, Franklin got the chance to present his case directly to Parliament. His dramatic appearance was a masterpiece of both lobbying and theater, helpfully choreographed by his supporters in that body. In one afternoon of highly charged testimony, he would turn himself into the foremost spokesman for the American cause and brilliantly restore his reputation back home.

Many of the 174 questions directed at him were scripted in advance by leaders of the new Whig ministry of Lord Rockingham, which was sympathetic to the colonies and was looking for a way out of the Stamp Act debacle. Others were more hostile. Through it all, Franklin was cogent and calm. The questioning was begun by a member whose manufacturing business had been hurt by the breakdown in trade, who asked Franklin whether the Americans already paid taxes voluntarily to Britain. “Certainly many, and very heavy taxes,” he replied, and he went on to recount their history in detail (though leaving out some of the disputes over taxing of Proprietary lands).

An adversary broke in. “Are not the colonies,” he asked, “very able to pay the Stamp duty?” Replied Franklin: “There is not gold and silver enough in the colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year.”

Grenville, who had proposed the act, defended it by asking whether Franklin didn’t agree that the colonies should pay for the defense provided them by royal forces. The Americans, Franklin countered, had defended themselves, and by doing so had defended British interests as well. “The colonies raised, clothed and paid, during the last war, near 25,000 men and spent many millions,” he explained, adding that only a small portion had been reimbursed.

The larger issue, Franklin stressed, was how to promote harmony within the British Empire. Before the Stamp Act was imposed, asked a supporter named Grey Cooper, “What was the temper of America towards Great Britain?”

Franklin: The best in the world. They submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to the acts of Parliament…They cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons or armies to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the expense of only a little pen, ink and paper. They were led by a thread. They had not only a respect but an affection for Great Britain; for its laws, its customs and manners, and even a fondness for its fashions, which greatly increased the commerce.

Cooper: And what is their temper now?

Franklin: Oh, very much altered.

Cooper: In what light did the people of America used to consider the Parliament?

Franklin: They considered the Parliament as the great bulwark and security of their liberties.

Cooper: And have they not still the same respect?

Franklin: No, it is greatly lessened.

Once again, Franklin emphasized a distinction between external and internal taxes. “I have never heard any objection to the right of laying duties to regulate commerce. But a right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not represented there.”

Would America submit to a compromise? No, said Franklin, it was a matter of principle. So only military force could compel them to pay the Stamp Tax?

“I do not see how a military force could be applied to that purpose,” Franklin answered.

Question: Why may it not?

Franklin: Suppose a military force is sent into America. They will find nobody in arms. What are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.

The finale came when supporters of the Stamp Act tried to dismiss the distinction between external and internal taxes. If the colonies successfully opposed an internal tax, might they later start opposing tariffs and other external taxes?

“They never have hitherto,” replied Franklin. “Many arguments have lately been used here to show them that there is no difference…At present they do not reason so. But in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments.”

It was a dramatic ending, and a foreboding one. In making a distinction between internal taxes and external tariffs, Franklin was again taking a stance more moderate and pragmatic than some emerging American leaders, including most members of the Massachusetts Assembly, who rankled at the prospect of heavy import duties levied by London. But the Boston Tea Party was still almost eight years in the future. On both sides of the Atlantic, there was great rejoicing when Parliament promptly repealed the Stamp Act, even though it laid the ground for future conflict by adding a Declaratory Act stating that Parliament had the right “in all cases whatsoever” to enact laws for the colonies.
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Franklin had displayed, with steely words cloaked in velvet, both reason and resolve. For a generally reluctant public speaker, it was the longest sustained oratorical performance of his life. He made his case less through eloquence than through a persuasive persistence in focusing the debate on the realities that existed in America. Even one of his diehard opponents told him afterward, Franklin recorded, “that he liked me from that day for the spirit I showed in defense of my country.” Famed in Britain as a writer and scientist, he was now widely recognized as America’s most effective spokesman. He also became, in effect, the ambassador for America in general; besides representing Pennsylvania, he was soon named the agent for Georgia, and then New Jersey and Massachusetts.

In Philadelphia, his reputation was fully restored. His friend William Strahan helped assure that by sending a transcript of the testimony back to David Hall for publication there. “To this examination,” Strahan wrote, “more than to anything else, you are indebted to the speedy and total repeal of this odious law.” Salutes were fired from a barge christened
The Franklin,
and at the taverns there were free drinks and presents to all those who arrived with news of the triumph from England. “Your enemies at last began to be ashamed of their base insinuations and to acknowledge that the colonies are under obligation to you,” Charles Thomson wrote.
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