Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (34 page)

When reports of American anger reached him in London, Franklin remained rather moderate and wrote a series of essays calling for “civility and good manners” on both sides. To friends in Philadelphia, he expressed his disapproval of the radicalism growing in Boston; in articles published in England, he tried hard—indeed, too hard—to pull off an adroit feat of ambidexterity.

His juggling act was reflected in a long, anonymous essay he wrote in January 1768 for the London
Chronicle,
called “Causes of the American Discontents.” Written from the perspective of an Englishman, it explained the Americans’ belief that their own legislatures should control all revenue measures, and it added in a squirrelly manner, “I do not undertake here to support these opinions.” His goal, he averred, was to let people “know what ideas the Americans have.” In doing so, Franklin tried to have it both ways: he warned that America’s fury at being taxed by Parliament could tear apart the empire, then pretended to lament these “wild ravings” as something “I do not pretend to support.”
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His reaction was similar when he read a set of anonymous articles, published in Philadelphia, called “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” At the time, Franklin did not know that they were written by John Dickinson, his adversary in Philadelphia’s battles over the Proprietors. Dickinson’s letters conceded that Parliament had a right to regulate trade, but he argued that it could not use that right to raise revenues from the colonies without their consent. Franklin arranged to have the letters published as a pamphlet in London in May 1768 and wrote an introduction. But he refrained from fully endorsing their arguments. “How far these sentiments are right or wrong I do not pretend at present to judge.”

By then, Franklin had begun to realize that his distinction between external and internal taxes was probably unworkable. “The more I have thought and read on the subject,” he wrote William in March, “the more I find myself confirmed in my opinion that no middle doctrine can be well maintained.” There were only two alternatives: “that Parliament has a power to make
all
laws for us, or that it has the power to make
no laws
for us.” He was beginning to lean toward the latter, but he admitted that he was unsure.
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Franklin’s inelegant dance around the issue of parliamentary power during the first half of 1768 caused his contemporaries (as well as subsequent historians) to come to different conclusions about what he really believed or what games he was playing. In fact, there were many factors jangling in his mind: he sincerely hoped that moderation and reason would lead to a restoration of harmony between Britain and the colonies; he wanted to make one last attempt to wrest Pennsylvania from the Proprietors; and he was still pursuing land deals that required the favor of the British government. Above all, as he admitted in some letters, his views were in flux and he was still trying to make up his mind.

There was one other complicating factor. His desire to help resolve the disputes, combined with his ambition, led him to hope that he might be appointed an official in the British ministry overseeing colonial affairs. Lord Hillsborough had just been named secretary of state of that ministry, and Franklin thought (incorrectly) that he might turn out to be friendly to the colonies. “I do not think this nobleman in general an enemy to America,” he wrote a friend in January. In a letter to his son, Franklin admitted the more personal ambition. “I am told there is talk of getting me appointed undersecretary to Lord Hillsborough,” he said. His chances, he admitted, were slim: “It is a settled point here that I am too much of an American.”

That was the crux of Franklin’s dilemma. He had rendered himself suspect, he noted in a letter to a friend, “in England of being too much of an American, and in America of being too much of an Englishman.” With his dreams for a harmonious and growing British Empire, he still hoped that he could be both. “Being born and bred in one of the countries and having lived long and made many agreeable connections in the other, I wish all prosperity to both,” he proclaimed. Thus, he was intrigued, even hopeful, about securing a government job in which he could try to hold the two parts of the empire together.
⁴²

When Hillsborough consolidated his power by becoming the head of the board of trade as well as colonial secretary, Franklin won support from other British ministers who felt that giving him a government post would provide some balance. Most notable was Lord North, who had become chancellor of the exchequer after Townshend’s death. Franklin met with him in June and professed to have plans to return to America. He added, however, that “I should stay with pleasure if I could any ways be useful to government.” North took the hint, and he began trying to line up backing for his appointment.

It was not to be. Franklin’s hope of joining the British government ended abruptly when he had a long and contentious meeting with Lord Hillsborough in August 1768. Hillsborough declared that he had no intention of appointing Franklin and would instead choose as his deputy John Pownall, a loyal bureaucrat. Franklin was dismayed. Pownall “seems to have a strong bias against us,” he wrote Joseph Galloway, his ally in the Pennsylvania Assembly. Adding injury to insult, Hillsborough also rejected once and for all any further consideration of the petition to remove Pennsylvania from Proprietary rule. With two of his main goals dashed, Franklin was ready to abandon his moderation in the colonies’ battles with Parliament. The turning point had been reached.
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With the situation clarified in his own mind, Franklin took up his pen to wage an essay war against Hillsborough and the Townshend duties. Most of his articles were anonymous, but this time he did little to disguise his authorship. He even signed one of them, with clear frankness, “Francis Lynn.” Relations between Britain and America had been amicable, he argued, “until the idea of taxing us by the power of Parliament unfortunately entered the heads of your ministers.” He claimed that the colonies had no desire to rebel against the king, but misguided ministers were likely “to convert millions of the King’s loyal subjects into rebels for the sake of establishing a newly-claimed power in Parliament to tax a distant people.” Something must be done. “Is there not one wise and good man to be found in Britain who can propose some conciliating measure that may prevent this mischief?” In another piece, written as if from a concerned Englishman, he proposed seven “queries” to be considered “by those gentlemen who are for vigorous measures with the Americans.” Among them: “Why must they be stripped of their property without their consent?” As for Hillsborough personally, Franklin labeled him “our new Haman.”
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His opponents returned the fire. One article signed by “Machiavel” in the
Gazetteer
called it a “burlesque on patriotism” that so many Americans were “filling newspapers and consecrating trees to liberty” with lamentations about being taxed while at the same time surreptitiously recommending their friends for appointments and “trying to obtain offices” for themselves. Machiavel provided a list of fifteen such hypocrites, with Franklin the postmaster at the top. Franklin responded (anonymously) that the Americans were attacking Parliament, not the king. “Being loyal subjects to their sovereign, the Americans think they have as good a right to enjoy offices under him in America as a Scotchman has in Scotland or an Englishman in England.”

Throughout 1769, Franklin became increasingly worried that the situation would lead to a rupture. America could not be subjugated by British troops, he argued, and it soon would be strong enough to win its own independence. If that happened, Britain would be sorry that it missed the opportunity to create a system of imperial harmony. To make his point, he published a parable in January 1770 about a young lion cub and a large English dog traveling together on a ship. The dog picked on the lion cub and “frequently took its food by force.” But the lion grew and eventually became stronger than the dog. One day, in response to all the insults, it smashed the dog with “a stunning blow,” leaving the dog “regretting that he had not rather secured its friendship than provoked its enmity.” The parable was “humbly inscribed” to Lord Hillsborough.
⁴⁵

Many in Parliament were seeking a compromise. One proposal was to remove most of the Townshend duties, leaving only the one on tea as a way to assert the principle that Parliament retained the right to regulate trade and tariffs. It was the type of pragmatic solution that in earlier days would have appealed to Franklin. But he was now in no mood for moderation. “It is not the sum paid in that duty on tea that is complained of as a burden, but the principle of the act,” he wrote Strahan. A partial repeal “may inflame matters still more” and lead to “some mad action” and an escalation that “will thus go on to complete the separation.”
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Separatist sentiments were, in fact, already being inflamed, especially in Boston. On March 5, 1770, a young apprentice insulted one of the redcoats sent to enforce the Townshend duties, a fight broke out, bells rang, and a swarm of armed and angry Bostonians came out in force. “Fire and be damned,” the crowd taunted. The British soldiers did. Five Americans ended up dead in what soon became known as the Boston Massacre.

Parliament went ahead with the partial repeal of the Townshend duties that month, leaving a duty on tea. In a letter to his Philadelphia friend Charles Thomson, which was promptly published throughout the colonies, Franklin urged a continued boycott of all British manufactured goods. America, he argued, must be “steady and persevere in our resolutions.”

Franklin had finally caught up with the more ardent patriotism spreading through the colonies, most notably Massachusetts. Writing to Samuel Cooper, a Boston minister, he declared that Parliament had no authority to tax the colonies or order British troops there: “In truth they have no such right, and their claim is founded only on usurpation.”

Still, like many Americans, he was not yet willing to advocate a total break with Britain. The solution, he felt, was a new arrangement in which the colonial assemblies would remain loyal to the king but no longer be subservient to Britain’s Parliament. As he told Cooper, “Let us therefore hold fast our loyalty to our King (who has the best disposition toward us, and has a family interest in our prosperity) as that steady loyalty is the most probable means of securing us from the arbitrary power of a corrupt Parliament that does not like us and conceives itself to have an interest in keeping us down and fleecing us.” It was an elegant formula for commonwealth governance. Alas, it was based on the unproven assumption that the king would be more sympathetic to colonial rights than was Parliament.
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Franklin’s letter to Cooper, widely published, helped to secure him an appointment by the Massachusetts lower house to be its agent in London as well. In January 1771, he paid a call on Lord Hillsborough to present those new credentials. Although the minister was dressing for court, he cheerfully had Franklin admitted to his chambers. But when Franklin mentioned his new appointment, Hillsborough sneered. “I must set you right there, Mr. Franklin. You are not agent.”

“I do not understand your lordship,” replied Franklin. “I have the appointment in my pocket.”

Hillsborough maintained that Massachusetts governor Hutchinson had vetoed the bill appointing Franklin.

“There was no such bill,” said Franklin. “It is a vote of the House.”

“The House of Representatives has no right to appoint an agent,” Hillsborough angrily retorted. “We shall take no notice of agents but such as are appointed by Acts of Assembly to which the governor gives his assent.”

Hillsborough’s argument was clearly specious. Franklin had, of course, been appointed as the agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly without the consent of the Penn family’s governors there. The minister was trying to eliminate the right of the people to choose their own agents in London, and Franklin was appalled. “I cannot conceive, my lord, why the consent of the
governor
should be thought necessary to the appointment of an agent for the
people.”

The discussion went downhill from there. Hillsborough, turning pale, launched into a tirade about how his “firmness” was necessary to bring order to the rebellious colonials. To which Franklin added a personal insult: “It is, I believe, of no great importance whether the appointment is acknowledged or not, for I have not the least conception that an agent
at present
can be of any use to any of the colonies. I shall therefore give your lordship no farther trouble.” At that point, Franklin abruptly departed and went home to write down a transcript of the discussion.
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Hillsborough “took great offense at some of my last words, which he calls extremely rude and abusive,” Franklin reported to Samuel Cooper in Boston. “I find that he did not mistake me.”

Initially, Franklin pretended to be unconcerned about Hillsborough’s enmity. “He is not a whit better liked by his colleagues in the ministry than he is by me,” Franklin claimed in his letter to Cooper. In another letter, he described Hillsborough as “proud, supercilious, extremely conceited of his political knowledge and abilities (such as they are), fond of everyone that can stoop to flatter him, and inimical to all that dare tell him disagreeable truths.” The only reason he remained in power, Franklin surmised, was that the other ministers had “difficulty of knowing how to dispose of or what to do with a man of his wrong-headed bustling energy.”