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American Military University

King’s Friend No More The Political Evolution of Benjamin Franklin

By Nathanael Miller

HIST 551 The American Revolution in Context

Dr. Anne Venson

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The British lost Benjamin Franklin Jan. 29, 1774. Two years before the

American colonies declared independence during open revolt, Franklin’s loyalty to

the crown was broken and his political thinking began an electrifying evolution.

Formerly lagging behind such young firebrands as John and Samuel Adams,

Franklin’s experience that cold London morning pushed him over some mental

precipice, and his keenly penetrating mind began to develop a political philosophy

outstripping even the most radical thinkers back in the American colonies. This

paper will argue that British insults, arrogance, and assumption of new powers over

the colonies drove Franklin from his position as a loyal colonial advocate to become

the internationally renowned elder statesman of the American Revolution.

Although some aspects of imperial policy troubled him—such as England’s

use of the colonies as a dumping ground for convicts—Franklin was a man who

loved civic order and sought to improve society and himself through existing legal

structures. “He was proud to English,” and, upon his return to London as

Pennsylvania’s agent , he fully expected to be accorded all the rights of an

Englishman.1 He was too much a student of human nature to not expect some

prejudice, but he was confident in his abilities to persuade others to a more

enlightened point of view. Settling into London life he found himself accepted by the

British intelligentsia and many of the leading lights in the House of Commons. This

early reception “prompted thoughts about a glorious future for both Britain and

America.”2 However, events over the next decade would slowly disillusion him.

1 Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin. (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2002), 74. 2 Ibid, 76.

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Perhaps his acceptance had not been as an Englishman from America, but merely

because he personally was such a remarkable man?

Franklin’s initial stint in Britain as a colonial agent (he was representing the

Pennsylvania Assembly in a fracas with the Penn family over land taxes) provided

the opportunity for a personal journey that significantly reinforced his affection for

Britain.3 He and his son William journeyed to the ancestral Franklin home of

Northamptonshire in 1758, allowing Franklin to meet his cousins and even hear

tales of his uncle, Thomas Franklin. Thomas had remained in England when his

brother Josiah (Franklin’s father) headed to the New World. While his father had

been an intellectually limited man, Franklin’s Uncle Thomas had been something of

an inventor and even elder statesman around Northamptonshire. Thomas Franklin

was a self-made man whose life mirrored Benjamin Franklin’s own pull-himself-up

rise from poverty. After this visit, Franklin and William journeyed to the ancestral

home of Franklin’s wife, Deborah, becoming even more deeply immersed in the

roots of Franklin’s British heritage. The completion of these personal pilgrimages

coincided with the news of several old friends’ death back in Philadelphia, leading

Franklin to strongly consider a permanent relocation to England. 4

Franklin’s laissez-faire attitude toward British actions was therefore

understandably hard to shake off. In early 1764—only seven years before the

Battles of Lexington and Concord—Franklin learned of the proposed direct taxes

Parliament was planning to impose on the American colonies. Franklin was back

3 H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. (New York, Anchor Books, 2000), 298. 4 Ibid., 300.

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home in Philadelphia during a break in his long service in London “mending political

fences” that had been broken as he fought the powerful Penn family on behalf of the

Pennsylvania legislature before the king’s Privy Council.5 Upon learning of what

would become the Stamp Act of 1765, Franklin “was indifferent,”6 merely writing his

London contacts that heavy taxation on America would cut revenue to London by

making capital scarce in the colonies.

Hard-liners in America were already drawing a firm line in the proverbial

sand. Men with names that would one day be famous, such as John Hancock, Samuel

Adams, and John Adams, were well ahead of Franklin in protesting the new taxes as

a violation of their rights. These hardliners maintained their colonial charters came

directly from the king, and therefore Parliament had no authority to tax them.

Franklin’s tendency to be diplomatic and advocate for compromise “made the

impatient younger men suspicious of him, thinking him timid, lacking in the

forcefulness necessary to defend American interests.”7

This did not mean Franklin had not thought about inter-colonial unity before,

but the context he operated in was the French and Indian War. In 1754, Franklin

was Pennsylvania’s representative to a convention of seven colonies. The delegates

met in Albany, N.Y., to discuss creating some form of confederation to defend

themselves during the war. Franklin developed an outline for a plan consisting of a

king-appointed military governor general who would act as the executive authority

fulfilling legislative measures passed by a grand council made up of colonial 5 Don Cook, The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785. (New York, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), 56. 6 Ibid., 57. 7 Ibid., 58.

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representatives (note here the king-appointed military governor; Franklin’s

insistence on the king’s authority over the colonies would become key to his

arguments as the American crisis developed). In fact, it was during this Albany

conference that the drawing of a dismembered, eight-segmented snake first

appeared. Each segment was labeled with the name of a colony, and the whole

snake was surmounted by the words “Join or Die.” Often “characterized as the first

political cartoon in America,” and attributed to Franklin, this snake demonstrated

that Franklin was already thinking in terms of uniting the colonies in common

cause.8 Variations of this snake, with 13 segments, would later appear as the

rebellion gathered steam in 1775 and 1776. The Albany plan came to nothing, but

the seed was planted firmly in Franklin’s mind.

However, at the time the Stamp Act was proposed, Franklin firmly remained

in the reconciliationist camp. Franklin’s deep ties to the political intercourse

between the mother country and American colonies were literally embodied in the

body of Franklin’s own son, William. Franklin beamed with pride as William took

office as the royal governor of New Jersey in 1763. Perhaps Franklin saw this

paternal tie to a colonial royal office as emblematic of the dream he had long

espoused, the dream of “a triumphant British Empire uniting Britain and America.”9

Franklin believed making this dream a reality was simplicity itself: the colonies only

needed direct representation in Parliament.

8 Brands, 234. 9 Thomas Fleming, The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers. (New York, Harper, 2009), 90.

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As the proposed Stamp Act wound its way through Parliament in late 1764,

Franklin floated a proposed alternative to his contacts. Avoiding the sticky question

of Parliament’s right to tax the colonies without granting them representation,

Franklin suggested Parliament authorize paper currency for the colonies. Issuing

this currency at interest would generate the revenue Parliament sought without

taxing the colonies directly and would be an easier burden for the colonies to bear.

The advantage to Franklin’s idea was that the people most affected by this plan

would be merchants and the wealthy, people used to using money and paying

interest rates. The Stamp Act favored by Prime Minster Lord Grenville would affect

“people often without much money.”10 Hitting these people with a tax on items of

necessity, such as legal documents, was pretty much guaranteed to generate unrest.

Franklin’s alternative came to nothing; the Stamp Act passed.

Franklin then helped endanger his own reputation after Lord Grenville

awarded him the right to name the stamp commissioner for Pennsylvania. By

naming a commissioner, indeed, by showing any support for the Stamp Act, Franklin

created the impression he was firmly on the British side of the issue, not merely a

man making the best of a bad situation. Franklin completely “misgauged the

reaction to the Stamp Act.”11 His long years in England might have desensitized him

to public opinion back in the colonies because the explosive anger erupting from

across the Atlantic completely caught him off guard. In fact, his attempt to work

within the system imposed on the colonies led some to actually accuse Franklin of

10 Brands, 361. 11 Ibid., 364.

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authoring the Stamp Act! He took pains to refute this charge in a letter to Joseph

Galloway, characterizing the indictment as “infamous false Accusations (sic).”12

Despite these bizarre allegations, Franklin was taking up his pen in 1765 to

quell the anti-American hyperbole sweeping British political discourse. It was not

easy; the angry radicals in America fueled the controversy he was attempting to

quell. Although most riots in the colonies were almost ritualized (loud mobs of

demonstrators parading and burning effigies), some were not.13 The destruction of

Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s home by a Boston mob in 1765 provided the

anti-American factions in Parliament evidence that the colonies were already in

revolt and must be dealt with sternly. Franklin’s insistence the colonies “have not

the least desire of independence” was not as powerful an argument as it might

otherwise have been.14 Despite this, Franklin was not about to give up on his dream

of a true union of England and America in the houses of Parliament…yet. Even as

late as 1766, in the middle of the Stamp Act turmoil, Franklin “found Britain more

congenial in many respects that Pennsylvania.”15

In both person and print Franklin strove to thread the needle between

growing American radicalism and increasing British pugnaciousness. He authored

numerous pieces aimed at London publications that printed sympathetic accounts

of the colonists. In person he strove to present the majority of colonists as

12 Benjamin Franklin, letter to Joseph Galloway, Nov. 8, 1766. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 821. 13 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution. (New York, Vintage Books, 1993), 91. 14 Benjamin Franklin, “Invectives Against the Americans,” Dec. 28, 1765. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 564. 15 Brands, 372.

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moderates who should not be considered guilty by association with the few who

were rioting. Despite this, Franklin’s lobbying was slowly but surely leading him to

become the de facto spokesman “not only for Pennsylvania, but for all the American

colonies in their growing antagonism to the mother country.”16 The loyal British

subject was steadily identifying himself more and more as an American.

This shift in Franklin’s thinking and status was clearly evident as he took his

place to answer questions and testify before the House of Commons on the Stamp

Act’s effects on American trade and American attitudes. Arguably Franklin’s “finest

hour” during his long service in London, the testimony he gave in February 1766

would be critical to the repeal of the Stamp Act.17

Franklin’s testimony was not entirely spontaneous. The British government

was looking for a reason to repeal the act, but the terms of the repeal were the

critical point. The government needed a better reason to repeal the act than the

rioting that had scarred New York and Boston. “Franklin—the august doctor, the

celebrated philosopher and scientist, the astute observer of politics and human

character, the deft writer and discussant; in short, the epitome of reason—fit the

ministry’s needs admirably.”18 However, Franklin’s testimony was not confined to

the situation in Pennsylvania. The questions from friendly MPs were clearly

prepared in advance—and covered the gamut of all the American colonial

16 Fleming, 93. 17 Cook, 92. 18 Brands, 374.

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experience. Franklin presented the “state of the American mind and the American

spirit.”19

Franklin’s love of the British was starting to strain. He was slowly

discovering the English were growing to view their colonial counterparts not as

fellow subjects with equal rights, but as inferiors. “In fact, it was the English on the

home island who first and most often invoked the term ‘Americans’ to refer to the

far-removed colonists. For sophisticated Englishmen, the term ‘American’ often

conjured up images of unrefined, if not barbarous, persons.”20

The growing arrogance of Parliament decapitated Franklin’s sense of respect

for that legislative body. However, he was still fiercely loyal to the king. During his

testimony, he had asserted that the colonies had the sole right to tax themselves…at

the behest of the king. Unwittingly, Franklin had opened a window into the

significant step his political evolution had taken, as well as proposed a new way to

look at the empire: the colonies were loyal directly to the king, and each colonial

legislature was co-equal to Parliament in its authority to legislate for that colony (in

fact, Franklin inadvertently predicted the form British Empire would ultimately take

in the 20th century). Unfamiliar with George III’s hand in shaping the Stamp Act

itself, Franklin operated under the impression that the ministers in Parliament were

the antagonists of the piece, but that “the king could do no wrong.”21

The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766 and imperial harmony

prevailed…briefly. 19 Ibid., 377. 20 Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. (New York, The Penguin Press, 2004), 113-114. 21 Ibid, 121.

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Although the crisis seemed to be averted the underlying irritant remained:

Parliament had asserted its right to tax the colonies during the Stamp Act repeal,

and again the colonies resisted this assertion. It was only a matter of time before

something upset this most fragile of apple carts. Charles Townshend rose to the

occasion, intent on both defending Parliament’s right to tax and teaching the

Americans a lesson in humility. However, this relatively new Chancellor of the

Exchequer seems to believe he found a way to assert Parliamentary authority

without causing agitation in America by using Franklin’s own proposal that

“external taxes” (duties on imported goods) were not odious to the colonials.22 He

drew up schedule of new duties on paper, pigments for paints, lead, glass, and (most

famously for American history) tea.

This new schedule of duties would have caused controversy no matter what.

Franklin had been attempting to navigate very narrow waters during his lobbying

efforts and his testimony before the House of Commons. His distinction between

external taxes (import duties) and “internal taxes” (direct taxation to raise revenue)

were not universally shared in the colonies. Franklin found it an expedient

argument to use in attempting to sway British public opinion to the colonial cause,

but like all expedients, it had the potential to backfire…and it did. Townshend

subsequently based his case for the new duties on Franklin’s own argument! How

could the colonists object to duties? Duties, after all, were not “internal taxes.”

However, Townshend’s new duties went well beyond merely raising money from

imports; the new duties were earmarked to provide the salaries of royal governors

22 Brands, 389.

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and other officials. “The effect of this, as Townshend intended and the Americans

immediately recognized, would be to free royal governors and other royal officials

from the control of the local assemblies, which heretofore had paid their salaries.”23

Townshend’s intention to remove economic power over royal officials from

the colonists was not born in a vacuum. For instance, Townshend was newly

appointed to the Board of Trade in 1749 “when a long brewing crisis erupted in

New Jersey.”24 The colonial legislature refused to pay the salary of the royal

governor due to his refusal to print paper money. The Board of Trade eventually

threatened to install a new governor and pay his salary themselves. This never

came to pass, but the Board, and Townshend, saw the advantages of royal officials

freed from financial thralldom to colonial legislatures. Townshend would attempt

to implement this in 1767 with his new duties.

Another target Townshend aimed to hit was severe punishment of New York

for its contumacious refusal to support the Quartering Act of 1765. The Quartering

Act required the colonies to provide money for supplies and billets in order that the

British Army might quarter and operate in that area. New York argued that, since

most of the British Army was located within New York, it bore an unfair and

overlarge burden. Part of New York’s reaction to this act was not merely based on

the economic burden of the Quartering Act, it was that the act itself as seen as a

precursor to Britain sending troops to American to enforce the Stamp Act at bayonet

point. One aspect Townshend’s overall plan for punishing New York was for the

23 Ibid., 389. 24 Robert J. Chaffin, “The Townshend Acts of 1767.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 27, Issue 1 (Jan. 1970), 93.

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king to refuse to assent to any new laws for New York until that recalcitrant colony

complied with the Quartering Act. 25

Although not directly part of the Townshend Acts (in fact, Townshend

ignored this particular issue entirely) the Cabinet voted to expand the Admiralty

Courts in America. These courts would help enforce prosecutions of smugglers and

thereby ensure duties were paid. The court at Halifax would be augmented by the

establishment of courts in Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. The expansion of

the courts certainly helped Townshend’s cause along even as it helped the forces of

colonial rebellion along.26

Franklin’s reaction was strong and quite unambiguous. He took up his pen

immediately and drafted a long letter “To the Printer” outlining the coming storm in

America, especially regarding the issue of salaries for the royal officials. He began

by pointing out that royal governors were usually not native sons of America. These

were men who were imposed on the colonies by the king. The only tie these officials

had to their colonies was the fact their salaries were dependent on the colonial

legislature. However, “if by means of these forced duties, government is to be

supported in America, without the intervention of the Assemblies, their Assemblies

will soon be looked upon as useless, and a governor will not call them…thus the

people will be deprived of their most essential rights.”27

In the space of a year, from the repeal of the Stamp Act (1765) to the

imposition of the Townshend Acts (1767) Franklin’s patience with Britain was 25 Chaffin, 105. 26 Ibid., 111. 27 Benjamin Franklin, “To the Printer,” 1768. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 611.

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severely shaken. More than this, Franklin, the great advocate of a true political

union between Britain and America, was already foreseeing the split that would

come in the next decade. Writing to his friend, Scottish High Court Justice Lord H. H.

Kames, Franklin lamented the appalling lack of wisdom in Britain that was steadily

severing colonial loyalty.28 Franklin was prescient enough to see the end result of

Parliament and the Cabinet’s actions, even if he had not quite been pushed over the

edge himself. That signal event was coming…but it was still in his future.

Franklin’s efforts between 1768 and 1771 seemed to border on the

desperate. Here was a man frantically searching for a means to keep his cherished

empire intact. “Franklin had tried in virtually every way he knew how to change the

views of king, royal boards and councils, and Parliament,” but so far nothing had

worked.29 He had used reasoned argument; he had lobbied the most influential men

in person. He wrote letters (both anonymous and by name) to printers all over

Britain and America.

In 1769, Franklin’s writings became very caustic, yet still clung to the

Englishman’s ultimate affection for the king. That one tie still bound him to the Old

World. He increasingly predicated his arguments on the basis of loyalty to King

George III as the foundation for resistance to Parliament’s unwise usurpation of

American rights: “That being loyal subjects to their sovereign, the Americans think

28 Edwin S. Gaustad, Benjamin Franklin. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 72. Ebook; accessed Sept. 9, 2014. http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/ehost/detail?sid=3158dbd8-39cf-483d-861f-9ab54611e71f@sessionmgr115&vid=0#db=nlebk&AN=161237 29 Ibid., 79.

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they have a good right to enjoy offices under him in America, as a Scotchman has in

Scotland, or an Englishman in England.”30

Again, in 1770, Franklin continued to base his advocacy on loyalty to the

king: “Much abuse has lately been thrown out against the Colonies, by the Writers

for the American part of our Administration. Our Fellow Subjects there are

continually represented as Rebels to their Sovereign, and inimical to the British

nation,” (emphasis added).31 In this letter, Franklin refuted charges of rebellion in

the colonies by continuing to point out the resistance had been to acts of Parliament,

not the sovereign authority of King George III. “The Americans were ever attached

to the House of Hanover,” Franklin wrote, but resisted Parliament’s attempt to “raise

a revenue from them without their consent.”32 Even at this late date Franklin was

lone a voice crying in the wind, trying to get English heads to see that keeping

America and Americans pacified meant recognizing Americans were subjects of the

king, not Parliament.

During the ensuring years, Franklin had become not only Pennsylvania’s

agent in London, but also Georgia and New Jersey’s (it is a testament to his

reputation for defending American ideals that colonies from completely opposite

ends of the continent commissioned him). In 1771 Massachusetts voted to make

Franklin it’s agent as well. As such, Franklin had to present his commission to the

Viscount Hillsborough, head of the American Department in Lord North’s

30 Benjamin Franklin, “To the Printer,” Jan. 17, 1769. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 31 Benjamin Franklin, “The Rise and Present State of Our Misunderstanding,” Nov. 8, 1770. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 659. 32 Ibid., 660.

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government. Hillsborough was already known to be hostile to colonial interests; in

fact, he had “set up a secret committee of the Privy Council to undertake a full secret

examination of colonial affairs and to make recommendations for future action.”33

Upon presenting his newest credentials, Franklin was rebuffed by

Hillsborough. According to Franklin’s account, Hillsborough told Franklin that only

the royal governors could give their assent to a colonial agent after signing a bill

passed by the assembly. Franklin’s responded that a signed bill was not needed; an

agent was appointed by simple vote of the assembly. Hillsborough snubbed

Franklin by asserting a new interpretation of the English constitutional system—

that a governor had to approve an agent through a full legislative bill. Even Edmund

Burke, a member of House of Commons, realized Hillsborough’s position threatened

to inflame the American problem by “giving royal governors veto power over the

appointments of agents” for the colonies.34 Allowing the king’s appointees such

power completely overrode any semblance of the Englishman’s right to be

represented in the government.

Franklin was disillusioned by the interview and the attitudes he found in the

British cabinet. Heretofore he had experienced a sense of importance in imperial

affairs. That sense of importance was rudely dashed. As Franklin understood just

how deeply the anti-American feeling in Parliament ran, he took refuge in his

increasing sense of American loyalty to the king. Following his interview with the

33 Cook, 152. 34 Ibid., 157.

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Viscount Hillsborough, Franklin no longer referred to England as “home.” From

then on, the “home” he talked of and longed for was America.35

While seeking ways to ameliorate the Americans’ plight, Franklin himself

began hinting at the core problem of the British system (even if he himself did not

realize where this line of reasoning would lead him). Writing to the Massachusetts

House of Representatives in July 1773, Franklin wondered how the colonies could

seek redress “when on considers the King’s situation, surrounded by Ministers,

Councellors (sic), and Judges learned in the law, who are all of this Opinion.”36

Though still talking optimistically about the king’s benevolence, Franklin seemingly

contradicted this rosy attitude by pointing out the king needed to get on with his

own Parliament. His answer in this letter was a “strict Union between the Mother

County and the Colonies,” such as that between Britain and Scotland.37

In Oct. 1773 Franklin wrote his son, the governor of New Jersey. He strongly

denied accusations that he had advocated colonial “independency” (sic). In fact, he

actively exhorted his son to encourage the Americans to “avoid all tumults and every

violent measure” that might endanger the legitimacy of American claims. Franklin

then added two sentences that had become all but de rigueur for his written

thoughts on the colonial turmoil: “From a long consideration of the subject, I am

indeed of opinion, that the parliament has no right to make any law whatever,

binding on the colonies. That the king, and not the king, lords, and commons 35 Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. (New York, The Penguin Press, 2004), 138. 36 Benjamin Franklin, “A Little Time Must Infallibly Bring Us All We Demand or Desire,” July 7, 1773.. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 682. 37 Ibid., 684.

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collectively, is their sovereign, and that the king with their respective parliaments, is

their only legislator (sic).”38 Franklin clung tenaciously to his imperial vision based

around loyalty to King George III.

Finally, that fateful 29th day of January in 1774 arrived.

Late in 1772 Franklin engaged in the dubious tactic of releasing letters he

had obtained from Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, and

other royal officials, to friends of his back in America. The letters were damaging to

the British because they hardened the colonial sense of oppression. The source of

the leak ignited a firestorm in London that resulted in duel. To prevent further

bloodshed, Franklin went public on Christmas Day 1773. It was a risky decision

because “the consequences for Franklin could not have been graver.”39 He had just

made a public declaration of guilt in mishandling private correspondence. This guilt

was potentially all the more damning because Franklin was the deputy postmaster

for the American colonies—a royal office, if a minor one. Franklin perhaps expected

a measure of censure, but the Hutchison letter affair was quickly swallowed up by

the on-rushing flood of events in America as 1774 dawned over London.

January brought news that colonials had boarded British ships in Boston

Harbor and destroyed a cargo of just-arrived tea. Although the hated Townshend

Acts had largely been repealed, a new act giving favorable duties to tea shipped to

American by the East India Company ignited the firestorm again. Once more the

colonists felt they were being squeezed for money by a distant British Parliament. 38 Benjamin Franklin, Letter to William Franklin, Oct. 6, 1773. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 885-886. 39 Kenneth Lawing Penegar, The Political Trial of Benjamin Franklin: A Prelude to the American Revolution. (New York, Algora Publishing, 2011), 34

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In most ports, the tea was simply prevented from being landed, but in Boston a

group of men loosely disguised as Mohawk Indians “boarded three British ships in

Boston Harbor and threw overboard some £20,000 worth of tea.”40

The British were furious, and Parliament reacted aggressively against the

man they had come to identify as the primary agitator in their midst: Benjamin

Franklin. Franklin had initially been summoned before the Privy Council on Jan. 11

over the Hutchinson letter affair, but he said he would need three weeks for his legal

counsel to prepare a proper defense. During that three-week interval, news of the

Boston Tea Party arrived. As Franklin entered the hearing that fateful January 29th,

“the ostensible reason for the hearing had almost been forgotten.”41 One of the

interesting facts of this hearing was that it was not a trial at all; it not civil or

criminal in character. It was to be a hearing on the colonial problems (including

Franklin’s admission of the Hutchinson letter affair) and the reading of a petition by

the colonies for redress. However, Solicitor general Alexander Wedderburn seized

the chance to pin the entire history of the agitation in the colonies, and particularly

Massachusetts, on Franklin. This was no surprise to the assembled crowd. “Those

who knew his courtroom or parliamentary reputation could predict that

Wedderburn would go beyond where prudence would dictate.”42

It is unclear how much of this Franklin expected. He knew of Wedderburn’s

reputation, but Wedderburn’s function that day was merely to present the history of

the colonial upheavals, Franklin’s own duplicity in the Hutchinson affair, and then 40 Frank W. Thackeray, Events that Changed America in the Eighteenth Century. (Wesport, Conn.; Greenwood Press, 1998), 81. 41 Brands, 469. 42 Penegar, 76.

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make a recommendation for the Privy Council to carry to the king. Whatever

Franklin, or others, expected, Wedderburn turned the proceedings into a personal

vendetta against the colonial agent standing before him. His tirade against Franklin

lasted nearly an hour. The exact words he spat at Franklin are largely lost to

history; even the scandal-loving British press found Wedderburn’s language “too

foul or libelous” for printing.43

“The abuse heaped on Franklin by Alexander Wedderburn that day was

extensive and intentionally demeaning.”44 Apparently no one else at the council was

concerned with appearances, nor the impropriety of turning a hearing on colonial

issues into a thorough roasting of one man. Even Franklin’s own lawyer did not

raise an objection to Wedderburn’s breach of the points of order that normally

prevailed during Privy Council hearings. Wedderburn’s unopposed and

inappropriate assault was perhaps allowed because it provided a release of

collective British anger at their wayward colonial subjects, but this did not mean all

British leaders approved. Men such as Edmund Burke and Lord Shelburne found

the spectacle an appalling breach of propriety and procedure. Within weeks of the

attack, Wedderburn was being castigated even by the British press.

Franklin remained silent, almost statue-like. He betrayed no emotion. As the

true character of the hearing became evident to him, he simply put on a veritable

mask and did not give the politically blood-thirsty crowd the joy of seeing him react.

Once Wedderburn was done, the Privy Council, as expected, stripped Franklin of his

postmastership. The ordeal outraged Franklin because it seemed to encapsulated 43 Brands, 471. 44 Penegar, 83.

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“the wicked folly of a government that would cut off its nose to spite its face.”45 It

also snapped Franklin’s remaining, if fragile, sense of loyalty to his formerly beloved

king. For nearly a decade he had advocated ways to strengthen the British Empire,

and this was the result?

Even while working against obnoxious legislation like the Stamp Act and the

Townshend Acts Franklin had been careful to stay within the British legal system

and always counseled his fellow Americans to do the same. He had consistently

professed his and America’s loyalty to the king and offered solutions to the

constitutional problems he saw upsetting the British ship of state. He had even

decried the Boston Tea Party and encouraged his fellow Americans to pay for the

property they had destroyed! By 1774, however, Franklin had reached the point of

no return. “There was nothing for honest Americans in the empire but illegitimate

insult and unwarranted condemnation.”46

Franklin suffered the political wrath he did partly as a result of his role as

agent of the colonies. He was the messenger; his was the task of going before

Parliament and presenting colonial petitions, grievances, etc. It is not surprising

therefore the British came to equate him with the colonial grievances he carried.

Still, he was justified in his own personal censure of the British authorities. Had any

of them put passion aside and at least looked at him and his personal conduct right

up until the fiasco before the Privy Council, they would have seen a loyal, if

unorthodox, British subject. Franklin was “a latecomer to the Americans’

45 Brands, 475. 46 Ibid., 476.

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intransigent assertion of rights. Negotiation was more to his taste.”47 Nevertheless,

he shot himself in the proverbial foot because he insisted on openly acting—albeit

within the imperial system—on his belief that Parliament was wrong and his fellow

Americans were right.

By 1774, on the eve of his appearance before the Privy Council, Franklin

found it a self-evident truth that the only way to save the empire was for Parliament

to renounce all legislative authority over the colonies. The goodwill of the

Americans for the king was the glue holding the empire together; Parliament’s

attempt to usurp the rights and authority of colonial assemblies was steadily

breaking that last tie. Yet, despite his growing doubts about Parliament and his

growing identification as an American, Franklin truly seems to have been clueless

just how firmly Parliament had dug its heels in. “He could scarcely believe…that the

people who mattered in England would continue to leave their government in the

hands of men who could not see something so obvious.”48 Until that last, fatal

moment in front of the Privy Council, Franklin wanted to believe the kind’s

benevolent hand would halt the onrush to calamity. Walking out of the Privy

Council, Franklin left his faith in the empire and the king behind forever. Although

he met with British leaders over the year 14 months, he was inflexible now,

maintaining the only condition for reconciliation was for Parliament to back off

completely. There was no middle ground. Even the king ceased to be a factor in his

arguments for colonial rights. The British government would, of course, never

accept this condition. 47 Morgan, 189. 48 Ibid., 201-202.

21

Franklin departed Britain the next year, never to return.

The British lost Benjamin Franklin Jan. 29, 1774. Two years before the

American colonies declared independence during open revolt, Franklin’s loyalty to

the crown was broken and his political thinking began an electrifying evolution.

Formerly lagging behind such young firebrands as John and Samuel Adams,

Franklin’s experience that cold London morning pushed him over some mental

precipice, and his keenly penetrating mind began to develop a political philosophy

outstripping even the most radical thinkers back in the American colonies. The

years of increasing British insults had eroded his loyalty until the abuse he suffered

before the Privy Council snapped the last cords of affection he held for the empire.

The experience showed Franklin—two full years before the States in Congress

assembled agreed to it—that “to independence America must come.”49

49 Brands, 7.

1

Bibliography: Brands, H. W., The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Chaffin, Robert J., “The Townshend Acts of 1767.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 27, Issue 1 (Jan. 1970). Cook, Don, The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995. Fleming, Thomas, The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers. New York: Harper, 2009. Franklin, Benjamin, Franklin: Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1987. Gaustad, Edwin S., Benjamin Franklin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Ebook; accessed Sept. 9, 2014. http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/ehost/detail?sid=3158dbd8-39cf-483d-861f-9ab54611e71f@sessionmgr115&vid=0#db=nlebk&AN=161237 Morgan, Edmund S., Benjamin Franklin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. Penegar, Kenneth Lawing, The Political Trial of Benjamin Franklin: A Prelude to the American Revolution. New York: Algora Publishing, 2011. Thackeray, Frank W., Events that Changed America in the Eighteenth Century. Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Wood, Gordon S., The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. Wood, Gordon S., The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.