Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  “To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain.”

  “What is now their pride?”

  “To wear their old clothes over again, till they can make new ones.”

  A week later, the House of Commons voted to repeal the Stamp Act. Benjamin Gerrish, an American then in London, wrote home exultantly that the bill was on its way to the House of Lords. “A bitter pill it will be to them, but swallow they must, in spite of their teeth,” he chortled. Another American, Thomas Rushton, wrote in the same cheerful vein. “It was the impossibility of enforcing the Act that influenced the minds of most people, and when Dr. Franklin on his examination asked them, if it took six years to conquer Canada, defended only by five or six thousand men, with all the colonies to assist them, how would they conquer all the colonies united together, without that assistance, they stared and were strook silent.”

  In America, the news of repeal created a wave of euphoria. The chief beneficiary was Benjamin Franklin. His testimony was reprinted in almost every colony, and his popularity soared. The Proprietary Party in Pennsylvania had to eat the slander they had been spreading, that Franklin had aided and abetted the Stamp Act. In London, the man who made the victory possible was by no means so exultant. He noted wryly that Parliament had also passed a Declaratory Act, in which it insisted that it had the right to enact laws binding the British colonies “in all cases whatsoever.” To his friend Charles Thomson in Philadelphia, he wrote, “If I live to see you I will let you know . . .how much we were obliged to what the profane would call luck and the pious, Providence.”

  Parliament demonstrated, only a few days later, why Franklin was still on his guard. The lawmakers passed an act indemnifying stamp agents and others who had suffered substantial losses for their loyalty to the Crown. Grenville and his followers vehemently insisted that the Americans ought to pay for this damage, or at the very least they should pay for the government’s costs in printing the millions of stamps, which had now become worthless paper.

  In an anonymous letter to a London paper, Franklin ridiculed such peevish tactics. “Was the harmony and good understanding” achieved by “a generous total repeal” to be lost for “a pittance?” The idea, he said, put him in mind of a Frenchman who used to accost English and other strangers on one of the Seine’s bridges brandishing a red-hot iron. Making a complimentary bow, he would say, “Pray, Monsieur Anglais, do me the favour to let me have the honour of thrusting this hot iron into your backside?”

  “Zoons, what does the fellow mean!” the agitated Englishman would cry. “Begone with your iron or I’ll break your head!”

  “Nay, Monsieur,” replied the Frenchman, “if you do not chuse it, I do not insist upon it. But at least, you will in justice have the goodness to pay me something for the heating of my iron.”

  At the same time the zany story was an index of Franklin’s cockiness. His Stamp Act performance was a tremendous triumph, and Benjamin Franklin probably thought it would become the high point of his life.

  The words “If I live” in his letter to Thomson are significant. He was fifty-nine years old in an era when only a handful of men reached the biblical three score and ten. It was distinctly comforting to an elderly politician to learn that he was being toasted and hailed as a hero in taverns and coffee houses up and down the coastline of North America. In the fall of 1766, Benjamin Franklin was a contented man.

  In politics, Franklin was no more a prophet than other men. After the climax of the Stamp Act crisis, Anglo-American affairs seemed, for a while at least, to have reached a point of relatively peaceful equilibrium. Franklin’s mind inevitably gravitated from thinking large thoughts about the British Empire to thinking about Benjamin Franklin, William Franklin, and their future. The project, for which he had returned to England, driving the Penns out of Pennsylvania, was in limbo. No one in Pennsylvania could create any popular enthusiasm for the royal government after the Stamp Act upheaval. Franklin’s political party barely survived the debacle, and only then by jettisoning his friend John Hughes. He never again held political office in Pennsylvania. His friend Franklin, on the other hand, thanks to his magnificent performance before the House of Commons, was renominated as Pennsylvania’s agent in London. Who else, the Assembly reasoned, could do a better job of protecting their interests in the imperial capital?

  Since there was very little Pennsylvania interest to protect, in the diplomatic hiatus, Franklin’s thoughts about the future centered more and more around that other dream which he had told his friend George Whitefield he hoped to make the final bright point of his life, the founding of a western colony. More and more it became the logical last step of his career, the one thing he was best fitted to create out of (what seemed to him) the odd twists and turns of his life. What other American could match his fame and influence in England, especially his contacts with all the branches and factions of the British power structure? Moreover, it was a project in which William Franklin was now deeply involved.

  William had remained in close touch with trader George Croghan, the man who had introduced him to the West in 1748. After the Peace of Paris in 1763, Croghan was named Deputy Superintendent for Indian Affairs under Sir William Johnson, who lived on a vast estate in upper New York and, thanks to his marriage to an Indian woman, had tremendous influence with the Iroquois and other tribes. Croghan played a vital role in settling the Pontiac Indian war, personally negotiating a treaty of peace with Pontiac and other chiefs. The Pennsylvania trader had the backing of a number of Philadelphia merchants, notably the wealthy Wharton family. Samuel Wharton, an ambitious younger member of this clan, was a good friend of William Franklin, and he and Croghan stopped at the governor’s residence in Burlington, New Jersey, on Croghan’s return from his peace mission to Pontiac. Croghan showed Franklin a journal he had kept of the trip, describing in detail meadows growing wild grass and hemp ten or twelve feet high. Hemp alone would pay a speculator a profit on these lands. But how to get at them, that was the problem.

  Croghan had already made one fruitless trip to London in the hope of obtaining confirmation of a grant of 200,000 acres he had wangled from tribes in the Pittsburgh area. The problem was a proclamation which the British government had issued in 1763, in which the Crown had forbidden further colonization beyond the Alleghenies, reserving the Ohio Valley lands for the Indians. The speculators asked William if the man who had persuaded Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act could persuade them to adjust this invisible boundary. Perhaps, said William Franklin. But the argument had to be something more effective than the hopes of a group of private individuals for personal gain. Far better, suggested Governor Franklin, dusting off his father’s idea, was a proposal to found an entire colony, in which they would be the proprietors. The speculators seized on the idea as a creation of pure genius, which to a considerable extent it was. Governor Franklin was commissioned to draw up a plan which he called “Reasons and Proposals for Establishing a British Colony at the Illinois.” The colony was to occupy an immense tract of land between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. Each of the partners was to bear two-sixteenths of the cost, and share two-sixteenths of the profits. Junior partners, in on a one-sixteenth basis, included Franklin’s old friend John Hughes and his political lieutenant, Joseph Galloway. It was agreed that room should be left for adding some influential members in England. First on that list was, of course, Benjamin Franklin.

  In London, the agent for Pennsylvania responded with enthusiasm. “I like the project of a colony . . . and will forward it to my utmost here,” he told William. But he warned the speculators that they were making a mistake in allowing room for only a few British partners. He pointed out some problems. Although his good friend, William Petty, Lord Shelburne, had become secretary of state for the Southern Department, an equally potent figure was Wills Hill, Lord Hillsborough, a nobleman with immense estates in Ireland, who was head of the powerful Board of Trade. Hillsborough was against western colonization for a very practical
reason. He was afraid it would attract too many tenants from his estates in Ireland and reduce his rents. Franklin pointed out to his son that there was an estimated 63,000,000 acres of land in the proposed colony, more than enough to provide for additional partners, who would “increase the weight of interest here.”

  A few weeks later, Franklin was reporting to William that he had discussed the proposed colony with Shelburne. Unfortunately for the Franklins and their friends, they were dealing with a man who invariably went through torments of indecision before making up his mind. Shelburne proceeded to point out to Franklin arguments he had heard from many people against the founding of such a colony. It was too far inland to be governed easily. It might become a power unto itself, and lure other colonies away from their allegiance to England. There was a shortage of labor in England and in the settled colonies. Shelburne himself said he did not think these arguments had “much weight.” Franklin assured William that he had tried hard “to invalidate them entirely.” But the meeting ended with his Lordship in his usual state of mind: undecided. To nudge him in the right direction, Franklin loaded him with the plan William had drawn up, George Croghan’s western journal and a map of the projected colony.

  Franklin pursued Shelburne relentlessly throughout the fall and winter of 1766-67. On October 11, 1766, he was reporting that Shelburne “was pleased to say he really approved” William’s plan, but there was that old bugaboo which had caused the Stamp Act uproar, a shortage of money. To lend further weight to his arguments, Franklin brought Richard Jackson into the scheme as a partner. Nothing illustrates the web of persuasion Franklin was weaving around Lord Shelburne better than this letter of November 8, 1766, to William. “Mr. Jackson has now come to town. The Ministry have asked his opinion and advice on your plan of a colony in the Illinois, and he has just sent me to peruse his answer in writing, in which he warmly recommends it, and enforces it by strong reasons; which gives me great pleasure, as it corroborates what I have been saying on the same topic, and from him appears less to be suspected of some American bias.”

  About the same time, Sir William Johnson forwarded a letter favoring the colony to the Secretary of State, and a copy to Benjamin Franklin. This seemed a very sound move to Franklin, who assured William that Johnson was “much relied on in all affairs that may have any relation to the Indians.” But the year 1766 trickled away, and 1767 began to follow it, with no action forthcoming from Lord Shelburne, or any other member of the government.”

  The problem lay in the disorganized state of English politics, and the still-festering wounds of the Stamp Act crisis. Young Lord Rockingham had demonstrated considerable political ability in managing the repeal of the Stamp Act. But thereafter he relapsed into lackadaisical incompetence, displaying little or no energy in leading and disciplining Parliament His government was soon being described by Parliament’s reigning wit, Charles Townshend, as “a lute-string administration, fit only for summer wear.” In desperation, the King was forced to ask William Pitt to form a government. Aging and unwell, Pitt nevertheless agreed, but he was scarcely in office when a combination of crippling gout and melancholia assailed him. He absented himself from London for weeks at a time, and the government blundered forward, with no real leader.

  Into this vacuum stepped Charles Townshend. As lightheaded as he was witty, Townshend was an artist at talking on both sides of any question. He had voted for the Stamp Act, and for its repeal. But he was an astute politician in his own flighty way and had a shrewd sense of the mood of Parliament. In the first months of 1767, this mood was alarmingly anti-American. The Quartering Act, one of the acts passed by George Grenville’s ministry, required local colonial Assemblies to provide money for the support of British troops stationed within their borders. The Assembly of New York resented the fact that the Crown had stationed a heavy proportion of these regiments within its boundaries, simply because the colony was strategically convenient. They declined to vote a money bill for their support. Parliament, egged on by the still-smarting Grenville and his supporters, simmered with righteous indignation. There was talk of sending additional regiments and a battle fleet to extract the Assembly’s vote at the point of a gun. The leaderless Chatham Ministry, as it was now called, swayed and almost collapsed underneath this first wave of petulance. There was talk of an imminent reorganization, and Franklin dolefully wrote William, “Great changes being expected keeps men’s minds in suspense, and obstructs public affairs of every kind. It is therefore not to be wondered at that so little progress is made in our American schemes. . ..”

  Charles Townshend, sensing a propitious moment, stepped forward to announce that he had a plan to raise money in America. He would take the Americans at their word, when they declared they only resented internal taxes, but had no objection to external ones. He therefore proposed to lay extra import duties on glass, lead, paints, paper, tea, and a long list of other items imported by the Americans. To guarantee that the duties would be collected, Townshend added to them a bill which created a new system of vice, admiralty courts, whose judges had the power to issue “writs of assistance” which gave treasury agents the right to invade a man’s house, warehouse, or ship without a search warrant. Parliament voted resoundingly for the Townshend Acts, and they became law on June 29, 1767.

  Franklin could only shudder at this folly. To his chief political lieutenant in Pennsylvania, stolid Joseph Galloway, he commented, “One of the distinctions of party here” was to be an adversary to America. “Those who have in the last two sessions shown a disposition to favor us, being called by way of reproach, Americans. While the others. . . value themselves on being true to the interests of Britain and zealous for maintaining its dignity and sovereignty over the colonies.”

  The bad temper was not all on the British side. Franklin soon realized he was moving into the same position he had attempted to occupy in Pennsylvania politics, a moderate who talked sense to both sides. But now, because he had played that role in vain in Pennsylvania, there was a certain note of hopelessness in his remonstrations, especially when they were addressed to the Americans. In another letter to Galloway, he noted that the British merchants who had fought for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and had even chartered a vessel to carry the “joyful news” to North America, had spent 1500 pounds. “For all this, except from the little colony of Rhode Island, they had not received as much as a thank ye.” Moreover, circular letters which they had written “with the best intentions” to the merchants of several colonies containing “their best and most friendly advice” (to say and do as little as possible to arouse Parliament) either went unanswered or got contemptuous and insulting replies. The captain of their messenger ship was “everywhere treated with neglect and contempt instead of civility and hospitality; and nowhere more than at Philadelphia,” Franklin wrote, adding, “I own I was ashamed to hear all this.”

  More and more he lamented the instability of the ministry and especially the recklessness of Charles Townshend. He gave Galloway another example of Townshend’s circus-rider’s approach to politics. One day George Grenville began ridiculing the new duties as trifles. Far better, Grenville declared, to issue paper money for the colonies and collect interest on it for the Crown. “Mr. Townshend, finding the House listened to this and seemed to like it, stood up again and said, ‘That was a proposition of his own, which he had intended to make with the rest, but it had slipt his memory, and the gentleman, who must have heard of it, now unfairly would take advantage of that slip and make a merit to himself of a proposition that was another’s,’ and as proof of it, assured the House a bill was prepared for the purpose, and would be laid before them.”

  There was, of course, no such bill, and Townshend’s fellow ministers were left gasping once more. His statement ruined months of careful work by Franklin and Richard Jackson in favor of a paper money act based on a completely different approach. Grenville’s accountant’s mind could see nothing wrong with interest-bearing bills, but, as Franklin pointed out in
a paper he wrote on the subject, after a few months, the interest would become worth computing, and calculating it on every trilling bill would cause infuriating delays in transacting business in shops and taverns. Moreover, as the interest rose, the paper would be hoarded, and the result would be less business, not more. Franklin’s idea, to make paper money “general legal tender” (with the loan offices that issued it paying interest on the total sum to the Crown), was destroyed by Townshend’s idiocy. “I fear that imprudencies on both sides may, step by step, bring on the most mischievous consequences,” he told Galloway.

  To Lord Karnes, in another letter about the same time, Franklin re-turned to the lofty view he had taken in the Albany Congress. Knowing that he was talking to a kindred spirit, he urged him to throw his influence into the dispute. “You may thereby be the happy instrument of great good to the nation, and of preventing much mischief and bloodshed. I am fully persuaded with you, that a consolidating union by a fair and equal representation of all parts of this empire in Parliament is the only firm basis on which its political grandeur and prosperity can be founded.” There was once a time, he said, when the colonies would have been delighted to accept such a proposition. “They are now indifferent about it; and if it is delayed much longer . . . will refuse it.”

  Mournfully, Franklin admitted that it was almost a certainty that the offer would be delayed because “the pride in this people cannot bear the thought of it.” Then came a most significant line, revealing how much the controversy was affecting Franklin emotionally, “Every man in England seems to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over America; seems to jostle himself into the throne with the King, and talks of our subjects in the colonies.”

  This attitude, in Franklin’s opinion, flowed from a fundamental misconception. “It is a common, but mistaken notion here, that the colonies were planted at the expence of Parliament, and that therefore the Parliament has a right to tax them &c. The truth is, they were planted at the expence of private adventurers, who went over there to settle, with leave of the King, given by charter. On receiving this leave, and those charters, the adventurers voluntarily engaged to remain the King’s subjects, though in a foreign country; a country which had not been conquered by either King or Parliament, but was possessed by a free people.”