Franklin

by Thomas Fleming

  But the final and most devastating blow, for Franklin personally, was yet to come. On May second, Lord Dartmouth presented to the House of Lords a bill “making more effectual provision for the government of the province of Quebec.” This was a measure which had been discussed in various cabinets for the better part of a decade. The problem of governing Canada, with its predominantly French-speaking Catholic population, had baffled successive administrations. The first portions of the Quebec Act, as the law came to be called, were reasonable enough. The British had learned something from their centuries of trouble in Ireland, and had decided not to ram their culture and religion down the throats of the French-Canadians, who outnumbered the English in Canada, 400 to 1. Lord North told the Commons that the bill gave the French-Canadians the right to live under French civil laws and practice the Roman Catholic religion. Rule by a governor and an appointed council, in the traditional French style, was to be preferred to the elected Assemblies of the English colonies. This was statesmanship, and at another time most Americans would have accepted such a policy amicably enough. Only the most vociferous and aggressive Protestant dissenters might have complained to see their old enemy, the Roman Catholic Church, established in the northern half of the continent. Certainly Benjamin Franklin, as an apostle of tolerance, would have warmly approved.

  The timing of the Quebec Act, however, made even these clauses subject to strong criticism, in both England and America. People were quick to point out that Lord North was granting French Catholics the right to live under laws of their own choosing, while he was denying Massachusetts that privilege. The contrast inspired one English observer to explode at North. “How it is possible for a man to derive strength even from the whole world if he will not know his own mind for a quarter of an hour together?” But it was the fourth clause of the Quebec Act which patently revealed the North ministry’s intention to use this long-overdue measure to punish its American enemies. The boundary of Quebec was suddenly extended southward to the Ohio River, and west to the Mississippi.

  A glance into the interior of the British government makes it clear that this was a blow aimed directly at Franklin and the Grand Ohio Company. The man who concocted this idea was William Knox, Dartmouth’s undersecretary of state. While Knox and his fellow undersecretary, John Pownall, were rushing to put together background material for the Quebec Act (and complaining mightily that “after so many years of neglect of the business of Quebec, everything is now to be done in a hurry”) Knox slipped a memorandum on the boundary in front of Lord Dartmouth. It described how his old political boss, the late George Grenville (dead now three years), had hoped to place this immense tract of wilderness “under one general control & regulation by act of Parliament.” It conveniently omitted the story of how Lord Hillsborough, who had taken up Grenville’s fallen mantle as chief anti-American in the government, had fought his losing battle with the Grand Ohio Company to keep English and American settlers out of this wilderness. Instead, Knox merely lamented that Grenville’s plan had proved “abortive” and talked at length about the numbers of French that were in this region, outside the protection and control of British civil government. On the basis of this single memorandum, without making the slightest investigation of its allegations, Dartmouth permitted Knox to add the boundary clause to the Quebec Act. It was typical of the haphazard, absentee way Dartmouth ran his office.

  In the debate on the bill in the House of Commons, the Opposition forced the North ministry to tell some brutal truths in public. Isaac Barré accused them of having “some secret purpose” in extending the boundaries of Quebec. Alexander Wedderburn arose to admit that the primary purpose was to give the British colonies “little temptation to stretch themselves” into the interior. It was, Wedderburn declared, “the ancient policy of the country” to keep the colonies along the lines of the sea and rivers. He insisted that this was the best and only way of maintaining control over them. Wedderburn, a dedicated proponent of rule by force, had no compunction about being so frank. Lord North, who like Dartmouth was torn between conciliation and repression, revealed a much more agitated state of mind about the bill. When one member of Parliament insinuated that the First Minister’s real aims were concealed, and his methods devious, Lord North rose and said he “cared not what the hon. gentleman thought of him; that he never paid any respect to what a passionate and prejudiced person said; that he knew the hon. gentleman had an ill opinion of him, and he was welcome to think so still.” Another member of the opposition wryly remarked that North was showing far more passion than his accuser.”

  As he watched these disheartening developments with the eyes of an insider, Franklin’s contempt for the government deepened steadily. He stopped urging Massachusetts to pay for the tea and applauded the decision of the Americans to meet in congress in Philadelphia in early September 1774, to discuss the crisis. To Thomas Cushing he wrote, “I rejoice to find that the whole continent have so wisely, justly and unanimously taken up our [Massachusetts] cause as their own. This is an unexpected blow to the Ministry, who relied on our being neglected by every other colony; this they depended on as another circumstance that must force our immediate submission.... They are now a little disconcerted.”

  Franklin was far less encouraged -- in fact he was deeply distressed -- by the way politics intruded on his relationship with his son. The governor had written to Franklin telling him that many people wished he was a delegate to the Congress. William had in the meantime made an independent move to create a body that might negotiate reconciliation. He called for a Congress of Royal Governors and some members of their councils and Assemblies who might meet with “some gentlemen of abilities, moderation, and candour from Great Britain commissioned by His Majesty for the purpose.” He told his father he had sent this suggestion to Lord Dartmouth. Then, turning to the situation in Boston, he told his father he thought it was “very extraordinary that neither the Assembly of Mass. Bay nor the town of Boston have so much as intimated any intention or desire of making satisfaction to the E. India Company and the officers of the customs, when by doing these two things which are consistent with strict justice, and by declaring that they will not hereafter attempt to hinder the landing at Boston any goods legally imported, they might get their port opened in a few months.... they ought first to do justice before they ask it of others.”

  Franklin’s reply to this comment, which was little more than he himself had recommended earlier in the year, showed how far the spirit of moderation had dwindled in his breast. He began by abruptly telling William that “no person . . . in America has given me the least intimation” that his presence was wished for at the Congress. “It is thought by the great friends of the Colonies here, that I ought to stay till the result of the Congress arrives, when ray presence here may be of Use.” He dismissed William’s idea for a governors’ congress with a single line. “I hear nothing of the proposal you have made for a congress of governors, etc.” Then he tore into William’s sentiments on Boston. “I do not so much as you do wonder that the Massachusetts have not offered payment for the tea: one, because of the uncertainty of the act, which gives them no surety that the port shall be opened on their making that payment. Two, no specific sum is demanded. Three, no one knows what will satisfy the custom-house officers.... As to ‘doing justice before they ask it,’ that should have been thought of by the legislature here, before they demanded it of the Bostonians. They have extorted many thousand pounds from America unconstitutionally, under colour of Acts of Parliament, and with an armed force. Of this money they ought to make restitution. They might first have taken out payment for the tea, &c., and return’d the rest. But you, who are a thorough courtier, see everything with government eyes.”

  Franklin ended his letter with a brief comment on the current state of the Grand Ohio Company. Thomas Walpole had presented another memorial to the Privy Council in August and still professed optimism that “sooner or later it must succeed.” But William had already come close t
o abandoning his hopes of rivaling the Penns in a western province. On May 25, 1774, six weeks before he wrote to his father, he had told Sir William Johnson that his last letters from England mentioned “that the Ohio affair stands still, the present rage against America making it improper to be moved.... As I see no prospect of that rage being lessened, for some years at least, I think the matter may, if it depends on that circumstance, be almost as well given up.”

  Thus one of the strongest links by which Franklin attempted to maintain his role as paternal dispenser of gifts and power to his son was already broken. He did not realize it, but an even more fundamental bond was being severely strained. On May 31, 1774, William had written to Lord Dartmouth a report on the political situation in New Jersey. He ended it with words that were to have anguished significance in a few more months. “His Majesty may be assured that I shall omit nothing in my power to keep this province quiet, and that, let the event be what it may, no attachments or connections shall ever make me swerve from the duty of my station.”

  There was one strong bond which still linked the two Franklins: William Temple Franklin. The boy was now fifteen, and was spending more and more time with his grandfather at Craven Street. He had grown up as William Temple, without the right to use the name Franklin. But now, as Benjamin’s thoughts turned more and more toward home, he decided it was time to bring Temple boldly into the family, and give him the full recognition which he deserved. He wrote to William informing him of this decision. It was also time to think of a profession for the boy, “. . . that the remainder of his education may have some relation to it. I have thought he may make an expert lawyer, as he has good memory, quick parts, and ready elocution. He would certainly make an excellent painter, having a vast fondness for drawing, which he pursues with unwearied industry, and has made great proficiency. But I do not find that he thinks of it as a business. The only hint of inclination he has given is that of being a surgeon; but it was slightly mentioned.” Franklin then added some words that came close to saying William’s whole career was a mistake. “It is indeed my wish that he might learn some art by which he could at any time procure subsistence; and after that, if anything better could be done for him [politically], well and good. But posts and places are precarious dependencies. I would have him a free man. Upon the whole, in my opinion we should turn him to the law....”

  For the time being, Franklin declined to take his son’s advice about coming home immediately. He stubbornly maintained his outpost in Craven Street, in spite of a new swirl of ministerial threats. In the middle of the spring, he had told Thomas Cushing, “It is given out that copies of several letters of mine to you are sent over here to the ministers, and that their contents are treasonable, for which I should be prosecuted if copies could be made evidence.” It was possible, Franklin said, although he was not conscious of any treasonable intentions. He had already been condemned by “high authority” for actions he considered good, so he was not inclined “to wonder if less than a small lump in my forehead is voted a horn.” Although he had decided not to publish a defense of his use of the Hutchinson letters in England, he made sure that a long account of the affair and its lurid aftermath in the Cockpit was published in the Boston papers. He also wrote a devastating third person account of his ordeal in the Cockpit for The Pennsylvania Gazette. It was published as “Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman in London” and described how Franklin was abused “to the great entertainment of 35 Lords of the Privy-Council, who had been purposely invited as to a bull-baiting.”

  How deeply Franklin still felt the humiliation of the Cockpit, and his resentment of more recent slanders by the ministry, was vividly visible when he wrote to his sister, Jane Mecom, in the summer of 1774. She had heard a report that Franklin had offered to desert the American cause if the government gave him back his post mastership. Since he was getting only about 300 pounds a year as postmaster, while he was being paid 1000 to 1200 a year as agent for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Massachusetts, this added stupidity to the malice of the rumor, and he made it clear that he resented both aspects, in this blazing letter.

  Dear Sister.... The report you mention that I offered to desert my constituents, and banish myself if I might continue in place, is an infamous falsehood, as you supposed. And as ridiculous as false, since it implies that I have not arithmetic enough to calculate the difference between 300 & 1000. They are every now & then reporting here that I am using means to get again into office. Perhaps they wish I would. But they may expect it till doomsday. For God knows my heart, I would not accept the best office the King has to bestow, while such tyrannic measures are taken against my country. Be assured I shall do nothing that will prejudice me in your opinion, or be inconsistent with the honest public character I have hitherto maintained. I kept my former past indeed till it was taken from me, because I did not receive it as a favour from Government, but rose to it in the course of office from seniority join’d with merit. I therefore thought I had a right to it, and I did not chuse to compliment them with a resignation, rather liking that they should take upon themselves the shame of depriving me. They have done me honour by turning me out, and I will take care they shall not disgrace me by putting me in again.

  Franklin also continued to skirmish briskly in the newspapers with government writers and speakers. In one letter he called for the reprinting of “The Rules by which a Great Empire may be Reduced to a Small One” because, “I apprehend that this plan is at present under the consideration of the House of Commons.” But his favorite theme during these months was British military arrogance. Both in and out of Parliament, the British were telling themselves that Americans were poltroons who could not possibly resist Britain’s professional army. One night, visiting at Sir John Pringle’s, Franklin heard Colonel Thomas Clarke, aide-decamp to the King, blandly declare that with a thousand British grenadiers he would undertake to go from one end of America to the other, and geld all the males “partly by force and partly by a little coaxing.” This remark inspired Franklin to write one of his most savage satires, “On Humbling Our Rebellious Vassals,” in which he recommended attaching a corps of sow gelders to the British Army and marching them throughout America, to perform the task Clarke had suggested. “The advantages arising from this scheme . . . are obvious,” Franklin wrote. “In the course of fifty years it is probable we shall not have one rebellious subject in North America. This will be laying the axe to the root of the tree.”

  When Colonel James Grant assured Parliament that Americans were hopeless soldiers, useful only as beasts of burden, Franklin published an imaginary speech to him, in which be recalled that during the French and Indian War, Grant had commanded a mixed body of British and American troops who were ambushed by the enemy. The British had fled, leaving the Americans to cover their retreat. Equally scalding was an open letter be wrote to Lord North, giving him advice on setting up a military government in America. After they had squeezed the colonists for their last shilling, and made them complete slaves, he advised the King’s First Minister to sell them to “the best bidder.” He recommended Spain, “as their power hath more of the ready than France.” With a little luck, the ministry could probably get 2,000,000 pounds for the soil and the people upon it. This could then be applied “toward the payment of one-hundredth part of the national debt,” and bring down on North “the blessing of the poor” by enabling him “to take off the halfpenny duty on porter.”

  At the same time, Franklin wrote tough advice to the Continental Congress and arranged for this too to be published in American newspapers, from Massachusetts to Georgia. He told them to “specify every oppressive act of Parliament” since 1764 so that the English friends of America could have a ready supply of arguments. But he warned them not to rely on any support “on this side of the water.” America’s main hope must be “in your own virtue, unanimity and steadiness; temper and resolution must be joined.” He warned Boston “not to enter into any violent measures” without the strict
est concert with the other colonies, particularly Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, because only a total refusal to trade with Britain would have the impact needed to bring the British government to its senses.

  But grim proof that neither the government nor the people of Great Britain were inclined to listen to reason came in the fall of 1774, when Lord North dissolved Parliament and the country plunged into a frenzy of electioneering. This took on a personal dimension for Franklin, when he learned that his old friend Strahan had decided to insure his job as King’s printer, and run for Parliament as a ministry man. As the holder of a post that increased his income by two or three thousand pounds a year, he was naturally expected to purchase his seat and he did so without demur, being elected as a member for Malmesbury. With such intimate knowledge of how the system worked, Franklin was hardly optimistic that the new Parliament would swing to the American side. The prestige, power, and cash of George III were the crucial factors in the British power structure. As Franklin explained it to Thomas Cushing, “most of the members are bribing or purchasing to get in.” This meant “that there was little doubt of selling their votes to the Minister for the time being, to reimburse themselves. Luxury introduces necessity even among those that make the most splendid figures here; this brings most of the Commons as well as Lords to market.” He added sardonically, “If America would save for 3 or 4 years the money she spends in fashions & fineries & fopperies of this country, she might buy the whole Parliament minister and all.”