Volume Ii Part 5 (2/2)

We first find him high in favor with Governor Thomas and his Council at the time of the a.s.sociation because of his activity, when still only Clerk of the a.s.sembly, in providing for the defence of the Province and arousing a martial spirit in its people. This was the period when the Quaker found it necessary to help his conscience out a little with his wit, and when Franklin made good use of the principle that men will countenance many things with their backs that they will not countenance with their faces.

The Quaker majority in the a.s.sembly did not relish his intimacy at this time with the members of the Council who had so often trod on their punctilio about military expenditures, and it might have been pleased, he conjectured, if he had voluntarily resigned his clerks.h.i.+p; ”but,” he declares in the _Autobiography_, ”they did not care to displace me on account merely of my zeal for the a.s.sociation, and they could not well give another reason.”

Governor Hamilton became so sick of the broils, in which he was involved by the Proprietary instructions, that he resigned. His successor was the Governor Morris whose father loved disputation so much that he encouraged his children to practise it when he was digesting his dinner. Franklin met him at New York when he was on his way to Boston, and Morris was on his way to Philadelphia to enter upon his duties as Governor. So ready for a war of words was the new Governor that, when Franklin returned from Boston to Philadelphia, he and the House had already come to blows, and the conflict never ceased as long as he remained Governor. In the conflict, Franklin was his chief antagonist. Whenever a speech or message of the Governor was to be answered, he was made a member of the Committee appointed to answer it, and by such committees he was invariably selected to draft the answer.

”Our answers,” he says, ”as well as his messages, were often tart, and sometimes indecently abusive.” But the Governor was at heart an amiable man, and Franklin, resolute as he was, when his teeth were fairly set, had no black blood in his veins. Though one might have imagined, he says, that he and the Governor could not meet without cutting throats, so little personal ill-will arose between them that they even often dined together.

One afternoon [he tells us in the _Autobiography_] in the height of this public quarrel, we met in the street. ”Franklin,” says he, ”you must go home with me and spend the evening; I am to have some company that you will like”; and, taking me by the arm, he led me to his house. In gay conversation over our wine, after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir'd the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of _blacks_, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, ”Franklin, why do you continue to side with these d.a.m.n'd Quakers? Had you not better sell them? The Proprietor would give you a good price.” ”The Governor,” says I, ”has not yet _blacked_ them enough.”

He, indeed, had laboured hard to blacken the a.s.sembly in all his messages, but they wip'd off his colouring as fast as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tir'd of the contest, and quitted the Government.

All these disputes originated in the instructions given by the Proprietaries to their Governors not to approve any tax measure enacted by the a.s.sembly that did not expressly exempt their estates; conduct which Franklin justly terms in the _Autobiography_ ”incredible meanness.”

The ability of Governor Morris to keep on good terms with Franklin in spite of the perpetual wrangling between the a.s.sembly and himself Franklin sometimes thought was due to the fact that the Governor was bred a lawyer and regarded him as simply the advocate of the a.s.sembly and himself as simply the advocate of the Proprietaries. However this was, he sometimes called upon Franklin in a friendly way to advise with him on different points; and occasionally, though not often, Franklin tells us, took his advice. But when the miserable fugitives, who escaped from the _Aceldama_ on the Monongahela, brought back to the settlements their awful tale of carnage and horror, and Dunbar and his rout were cravenly seeking the protection of those whom they should have protected, Governor Morris was only too glad to consult, and take the advice of, the strongest man on the American Continent, except the gallant Virginian, young in years, but from early responsibilities and hards.h.i.+ps, as well as native wisdom and intrepidity, endowed with a calm judgment and tempered courage far beyond his years, whom Providence almost seemed to have taken under its direct guardians.h.i.+p for its future purposes on the day that Braddock fell. Later, when it appeared as if the Indians would carry desolation and death into the very bowels of Pennsylvania, the Governor was equally glad to place Franklin in charge of its Northwestern Frontier, and to thrust blank military commissions into his hands to be filled up by him as he pleased.

And later still, when the desire of the Governor to consult with Franklin about the proper measures for preventing the desertion of the back counties of Pennsylvania had brought the latter home from the Northwestern Frontier, the Governor did not hesitate, in planning an expedition against Fort Duquesne, to offer Franklin a commission as general. If Franklin had accepted the offer, we are justified, we think, in a.s.suming that he would have won at least as high a degree of credit as that which he accorded to s.h.i.+rley. ”For tho' s.h.i.+rley,” he tells us in the _Autobiography_, ”was not a bred soldier, he was sensible and sagacious in himself, and attentive to good advice from others, capable of forming judicious plans, and quick and active in carrying them into execution.” No mean summary of the military virtues of Franklin himself as a citizen soldier. But Franklin knew the limitations of his training too well to be allured by such a deceitful honor. There were few civil tasks to which he was not equal, but, when it came to being a military commander, he had the good sense to make an admission like that which s.h.i.+rley made to him. When a banquet was given to Lord Loudon by the city of New York, s.h.i.+rley was present, though the occasion was due to the fact that the command previously held by him had just been transferred to Loudon. Franklin noticed that he was sitting in a very low seat. ”They have given you, sir, too low a seat,” he said. ”No matter, Mr. Franklin,” replied s.h.i.+rley, ”I find _a low seat_ the easiest.”

When Governor Morris saw that, disputatious as he was, he was no match in that respect for the a.s.sembly, he was succeeded by Governor Denny, who brought over with him from England the gold medal awarded by the Royal Society to Franklin for his electrical discoveries. This honor as well as the political experience of his predecessors was calculated to impress upon the Governor the importance of being on good terms with Franklin. At all events, when the medal was delivered by him to Franklin at a public dinner given to himself, after his arrival at Philadelphia, he added to the gift some very polite expressions of his esteem, and a.s.sured Franklin that he had long known him by reputation. After dinner, he left the diners with their wine, and took Franklin aside into another room, and told him that he had been advised by his friends in England to cultivate a friends.h.i.+p with him as the man who was best able to give him good advice, and to make his task easy. Much also was said by the Governor about the good disposition of the Proprietary towards the Province and the advantage that it would be to everyone and to Franklin particularly if the long opposition to the Proprietary was abandoned, and harmony between him and the people restored.

No one, said the Governor, could be more serviceable in bringing this about than Franklin himself, who might depend upon his services being duly acknowledged and recompensed. ”The drinkers,” the _Autobiography_ goes on, ”finding we did not return immediately to the table, sent us a decanter of Madeira, which the Governor made liberal use of, and in proportion became more profuse of his solicitations and promises.”

To these overtures Franklin replied in a proper strain of mingled independence and good feeling, and concluded by expressing the hope that the Governor had not brought with him the same unfortunate instructions as his predecessors. The only answer that the Governor ever gave to this inquiry was given when he settled down to the duties of his office. It then became plain enough that he was under exactly the same instructions as his predecessors; the old ulcer broke out afresh, and Franklin's pen was soon again prodding Proprietary selfishness. But through it all he contrived to maintain the same relations of personal amity with Governor Denny that he had maintained with Governor Morris. ”Between us personally,” he says, ”no enmity arose; we were often together; he was a man of letters, had seen much of the world, and was very entertaining and pleasing in conversation.”

But the situation, so far as the Province was concerned, was too grievous to be longer borne without an appeal for relief to the Crown. The a.s.sembly had enacted a bill, appropriating the sum of sixty thousand pounds for the King's use, ten thousand pounds of which were to be expended on Lord Loudon's orders, and the Governor, in compliance with his instructions, had refused to give it his approval. This brought things to a head, the House resolved to pet.i.tion the King to override the instructions and Franklin was appointed its agent to go over to England and present the pet.i.tion. His pa.s.sage was engaged, his sea-stores were actually all on board, when Lord Loudon himself came over to Philadelphia for the express purpose of bringing about an accommodation between the jarring interests. The Governor and Franklin met him at his request, and opened their minds fully to him; Franklin revamping all the old popular arguments, so often urged by him, and the Governor pleading his instructions, the bond that he had given and the ruin that awaited him if he disregarded it. ”Yet,” says Franklin, ”seemed not unwilling to hazard himself if Lord Loudon would advise it.”

This his Lords.h.i.+p did not choose to do, though Franklin once thought that he had nearly prevailed on him to do it; and finally he entreated Franklin to use his influence with the a.s.sembly to induce it to yield, promising, if it did, to employ unsparingly the King's troops for the defence of the frontiers of Pennsylvania, but stating that, if it did not, those frontiers must remain exposed to hostile incursion. The result was that the packet, in which Franklin engaged pa.s.sage, sailed off with his sea-stores, while the parties were palavering, and the a.s.sembly, after entering a formal protest against the duress, under which it gave way, abandoned its bill, and enacted another with the hateful exemption in it which was promptly approved by the Governor.

Franklin was now free to embark upon his voyage, whenever he could find a s.h.i.+p ready to sail, but, unfortunately for him, all the packets by which he could sail were at the beck of Lord Loudon, who was the most vacillating of human beings. When Franklin, before leaving Philadelphia, inquired of him the precise time at which a packet boat, that he said would be off soon, would sail, he replied: ”I have given out that she is to sail on Sat.u.r.day next; but I may let you know, _entre nous_, that if you are there by Monday morning, you will be in time, but do not delay longer.” Because of detention at a ferry, Franklin did not reach New York before noon on Monday, but he was relieved, when he arrived, to be told that the packet would not sail until the next day. This was about the beginning of April.

In point of fact, it was near the end of June when it got off. At the time of Franklin's arrival in New York, it was one of the two packets, that were being kept waiting in port for the dispatches, upon which his Lords.h.i.+p appeared to be always engaged. While thus held up, another packet arrived only to be placed under the same embargo. Each had a list of impatient pa.s.sengers, and many letters and orders for insurance against war risks from American merchants, but, day after day, his Lords.h.i.+p, entirely unmindful of the impatience and anxiety that he was creating, sat continually at his desk, writing his interminable dispatches. Calling one morning to pay his respects, Franklin found in his ante-chamber Innis, a Philadelphia messenger, who had brought on a batch of letters to his Lords.h.i.+p from Governor Denny, and who told Franklin that he was to call the next day for his Lords.h.i.+p's answer to the Governor, and would then set off for Philadelphia at once. On the strength of this a.s.surance, Franklin the same day placed some letters of his own for delivery in that city in Innis'

hands. A fortnight afterwards, he met the messenger in the same ante-chamber. ”So, you are soon return'd, Innis” he said. ”_Return'd!_”

replied Innis, ”No, I am not _gone_ yet.” ”How so?” ”I have called here by order every morning these two weeks past for his lords.h.i.+p's letter, and it is not yet ready.” ”Is it possible, when he is so great a writer? for I see him constantly at his escritoire.” ”Yes,” says Innis, ”but he is like St.

George on the signs, _always on horseback, and never rides on_.” Indeed, so purely rotatory was all his Lords.h.i.+p's epistolary energy, unremitting as it seemed to be, that one of the reasons given by William Pitt for subsequently removing him was that ”_the minister never heard from him, and could not know what he was doing_.” Finally, the three packets dropped down to Sandy Hook to join the British fleet there. Not knowing but that they might make off any day, their pa.s.sengers thought it safest to board them before they dropped down. The consequence was that they found themselves anch.o.r.ed at Sandy Hook for about six weeks, ”as idle as a painted s.h.i.+p upon a painted ocean,” and driven to the necessity of consuming all their sea-stores and buying more. At length, when the fleet did weigh anchor, with his Lords.h.i.+p and all his army on board, bound for the reduction of Louisburg, the three packets were ordered to attend it in readiness to receive the dispatches which the General was still scribbling upon the element that was not more mutable than his own purposes. When Franklin had been five days out, his packet was finally released, and stood off beyond the reach of his Lords.h.i.+p's indefatigable pen, but the other two packets were still kept in tow by him all the way to Halifax, where, after exercising his men for some time in sham attacks on sham forts, he changed his mind about besieging Louisburg, and returned to New York with all his troops and the two packets and their pa.s.sengers. In the meantime, the French and their savage friends had captured Fort George, and butchered many of the garrison after its capitulation. The captain of one of the two packets, that were brought back to New York, afterwards told Franklin in London that, when he had been detained a month by his Lords.h.i.+p, he requested his permission to heave his s.h.i.+p down and clear her bottom. He was asked how long that would require. He answered three days. His Lords.h.i.+p replied, ”If you can do it in one day, I give leave; otherwise not; for you must certainly sail the day after tomorrow.” So he never obtained leave, though detained afterwards, from day to day, during full three months. No wonder that an irate pa.s.senger, who represented himself as having suffered considerable pecuniary loss, swore after he finally reached London in Franklin's presence, that he would sue Lord Loudon for damages.

As Oxenstiern's son was enjoined by his father to do, Franklin had gone out into the world and seen with what little wisdom it is ruled. ”On the whole,” he says in the _Autobiography_, ”I wonder'd much how such a man came to be intrusted with so important a business as the conduct of a great army; but, having since seen more of the great world, and the means of obtaining, and motives for giving places, my wonder is diminished.”

The _Autobiography_ makes it evident enough that for Loudon Franklin came to entertain the heartiest contempt.[15] His Lords.h.i.+p's movements in 1757 he stigmatized as frivolous, expensive and disgraceful to the nation beyond conception. He was responsible, Franklin thought, for the loss of Fort George, and for the foundering of a large part of the Carolina fleet, which, for lack of notice from him, remained anch.o.r.ed in the worm-infested waters of Charleston harbor for three months, after he had raised his embargo on the exportation of provisions. Nor does Franklin hesitate to charge that this embargo, while laid on the pretence of cutting off the enemy from supplies, was in reality laid for the purpose of beating down the price of provisions in the interest of the contractors, in whose profits, it was suspected, that Loudon had a share. Not only did his Lords.h.i.+p decline, on the shallow pretext that he did not wish to mix his accounts with those of his predecessors, to give Franklin the order that he had promised him for the payment of the balance, still due him on account of Braddock's expedition, though liquidated by his own audit, but, when Franklin urged the fact that he had charged no commission for his services, as a reason why he should be promptly paid, his Lords.h.i.+p cynically replied, ”O, Sir, you must not think of persuading us that you are no gainer; we understand better those affairs, and know that everyone concerned in supplying the army finds means, in the doing it, to fill his own pockets.”

Franklin and his son arrived in London on July 27, 1757. Shortly after he had settled down in his lodgings, he called upon Dr. Fothergill, whose counsel he had been advised to obtain, and who thought that, before an application was made to the British Government, there should be an effort to reach an understanding with the Penns themselves. Then took place the interview between Franklin and Lord Granville, at which his Lords.h.i.+p, after some preliminary discourse, expressed this alarming opinion:

You Americans have wrong ideas of the nature of your const.i.tution; you contend that the King's instructions to his governors are not laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard them at your own discretion. But those instructions are not like the pocket instructions given to a minister going abroad, for regulating his conduct in some trifling point of ceremony. They are first drawn up by judges learned in the laws; they are then considered, debated, and perhaps amended in Council, after which they are signed by the king. They are then, so far as they relate to you, the _law of the land_, for the King is the LEGISLATOR OF THE COLONIES.

The correctness of this opinion was combated by Franklin. He told his Lords.h.i.+p that this was new doctrine to him, and that he had always understood from the American charters that the colonial laws were to be enacted by the a.s.semblies of the Colonies, and that, once enacted and a.s.sented to by the King, the King could not repeal or alter them, and that, as the colonial a.s.semblies could not make laws for themselves without his a.s.sent, so he could not make laws for them without their a.s.sent. The great man's reply was as brief as a great man's reply is only too likely to be when his opinions are questioned by his inferiors. It was merely that Franklin was totally mistaken. Franklin did not think so, and, concerned for fear that Lord Granville might be but expressing the sentiment of the Court, he wrote down what had been said to him as soon as he returned to his lodgings. The utterance reminded him that some twenty years before a bill had been introduced into Parliament by the ministry of that time containing a clause, intended to make the King's instructions laws in the Colonies, but that the clause had been stricken out of it by the House of Commons. For this, he said, the Colonies adored the Commons, as their friends and the friends of liberty, until it afterwards seemed as if they had refused the point of sovereignty to the King only that they might reserve it for themselves.

A meeting between the Proprietaries and Franklin was arranged by Doctor Fothergill. It a.s.sumed the form that such meetings are apt to a.s.sume, that is of mutual professions of an earnest desire to agree, repet.i.tion of the old antagonistic reasonings and a disagreement as stubborn as before.

However, it was agreed that Franklin should reduce the complaints against the Proprietaries to writing, and that the Proprietaries were to consider them. When the paper was drawn, they submitted it to their solicitor, Ferdinand John Paris, who had represented them in the celebrated litigation between the Penns and the Lords Baltimore over the boundary line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, and had written all their papers and messages in their disputes with the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly. ”He was,” says Franklin, ”a proud, angry man, and as I had occasionally in the answers of the a.s.sembly treated his papers with some severity, they being really weak in point of argument and haughty in expression, he had conceived a mortal enmity to me.” With Paris, Franklin refused to discuss the points of his paper, and the Proprietaries then, on the advice of Paris, placed it in the hands of the Attorney- and Solicitor-Generals for their opinion and advice.

By them no answer was given for nearly a year, though Franklin frequently called upon the Proprietaries for an answer only to be told that they had not yet received the opinion of their learned advisers. What the opinion was when it was finally rendered the Proprietaries did not let Franklin know, but instead addressed a long communication, drawn and signed by Paris, to the a.s.sembly, reciting the contents of Franklin's paper, complaining of its lack of formality as rudeness, and justifying their conduct. They would be willing, they said, to compose the dispute, if the a.s.sembly would send out _some person of candor_ to treat with them.

Franklin supposed that the incivility imputed to him consisted in the fact that he had not addressed the Proprietaries by their a.s.sumed t.i.tle of True and Absolute Proprietaries of the Province of Pennsylvania.

The letter of the Proprietaries was not answered by the a.s.sembly. While they were pretending to treat with Franklin, Governor Denny had been unable to withstand the pressure of his situation, and, at the request of Lord Loudon, had approved an act subjecting the estates of the Penns to taxation. When this Act was transmitted to England, the Proprietaries, upon the advice of Paris, pet.i.tioned the King to withhold his a.s.sent from it, and, when the pet.i.tion came on for hearing, the parties were represented by counsel. On the one hand it was contended that the purpose of the Act was to impose an oppressive burden upon the Proprietary estates, and that the a.s.sessment under it would be so unequal because of the popular prejudice against the Penns that they would be ruined. To this it was replied that the Act was not conceived with any such purpose, and would not have any such effect, that the a.s.sessors were honest and discreet men under oath, and that any advantage that might inure to them individually from over-a.s.sessing the property of the Proprietaries would be too trifling to induce them to perjure themselves. It was also urged in opposition to the pet.i.tion that the money, for which the Act provided, had been printed and issued, and was now in the hands of the inhabitants of the Province, and would be deprived of all value, to their great injury, if the Act did not receive the royal a.s.sent merely because of the selfish and groundless fears of the Proprietaries. At this point, Lord Mansfield, one of the counsel for the Proprietaries, led Franklin off into a room nearby, while the other lawyers were still pleading, and asked him if he was really of the opinion that the Proprietary estate would not be unfairly taxed if the Act was executed. ”Certainly,” said Franklin. ”Then,” said he, ”you can have little objection to enter into an engagement to a.s.sure that point.” ”None at all,”

replied Franklin. Paris was then called in, and, after some discussion, a paper, such as Lord Mansfield suggested, was drawn up and signed by Franklin and Mr. Charles, who was the agent of Pennsylvania for ordinary purposes, and the law was given the royal a.s.sent with the further engagement, upon the part of Franklin and Mr. Charles, that it should be amended in certain respects by subsequent legislation. This legislation, however, the a.s.sembly afterwards declined to enact when a committee, appointed by it, upon which it was careful to place several close friends of the Proprietaries, brought in an unanimous report stating that the yearly tax levied before the order of the Council reached Pennsylvania had been imposed with perfect fairness as between the Proprietaries and the other tax-payers.

In the most important respect, therefore, Franklin's mission to England had resulted in success. The principle was established by the Crown that the estate of the Proprietaries was subject to taxation equally with that of the humblest citizen of Pennsylvania; and the credit of the paper money, then scattered throughout the province, was saved. The a.s.sembly rewarded its servant, when he returned to Pennsylvania, with its formal thanks and the sum of three thousand pounds. He responded in the happy terms which he always had at his command on occasions of this sort. ”He made answer,” says the official report, ”that he was thankful to the House, for the very handsome and generous Allowance they had been pleased to make him for his Services; but that the Approbation of this House was, in his Estimation, far above every other kind of Recompense.”

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