and two months later all America was in a ferment.

In the banquet of discord which the obliging Mr Townshend now 66 set before the King," the Revenue Act may be considered as the grand piece of provocation, the veritable pièce de résistance. It was ingeniously concocted, but I must refer the Reader to the pages of Burke for a description of the many ingredients of contradictory motive which it embodied without managing to blend them. Three chief things are to be noted about it. It was an Act of Parliament, imposing taxation, a thing which Americans abhorred; and its preamble asserted the general principle which they had contested so famously. But then, what it imposed was a duty on imports from Britain. So, it had an affinity with the duties already being paid under the Navigation Act; the principle of which had been admitted as constitutional and just by Franklin in his examination before the House. But again, the scene of collection was now to be in America; so that there should be no question any more as to the jurisdiction of Parliament, or the validity of its Acts, in that country. The inhabitants would see the tax-gatherer in their midst, and they would know who had sent him. Further, the proceeds of the taxes were to go to form a Civil List; out of which the governors of colonies, and presently other officials, were to receive their salaries from the King. This innovation would make the relation of the people to the Governors that of a subject population in a conquered province to officials set over them by a distant despot: to whom, and to whom alone, these Governors would feel that they owed either respect or kindness. Finally, it was indicated clearly that this was not the end, but that more would follow as occasion served or the need arose.

Small wonder, then, if the resistance opposed to

this new attack was fierce and general. As the commotion exceeded that created by the Stamp Act, so the measures of retaliation proposed were of a more drastic and defiant kind. Not only was the non-consumption of British goods again resolved upon, but the different colonies now decided to set up all sorts of manufactures for themselves; not for the occasion only, but for the rest of time. It is scarcely possible for us nowadays to conceive how extreme, how unnatural, how monstrous almost, this decision of Americans to make for themselves the pins, nails, beaver hats and cutlery which they needed, seemed to honest, home-staying English folk in those days. Even friends of America felt that the colonists were going very far indeed! And since "all minds were now employed in considering, all pens in defending, the rights which Mr Townshend's Acts invaded," there presently resulted an immense intellectual development of the whole subject, a development of all its bearings in the consciousness and daily thoughts of men. This in itself was fast creating an entirely new situation, not to be nullified by the half-hearted undoing, on the part of the mother-country, of that which it had been an insult as well as a wrong to do at all. The history of the six or eight years that followed might be set forth as an illustration of this text, and very full of moral interest it would be. This, however, is not the place for it, so the Reader can only be reminded of two or three important dates. One day in September 1768eighteen months after the passing of the Revenue Act-fourteen British menof-war lay with their broadsides towards the town of Boston, to cover the landing of 700 British soldiers. "With muskets charged, bayonets fixed, drums beating, fifes playing, and a complete train of artillery," these took possession of the Common, the State-house, the Court-house, and the Fanueil Hall,

where those famous town-meetings of the Boston citizens had been held. An apparition like this did not bode reconciliation: but the people being helpless, the peace was kept for a time. About eighteen months later, however (March 1770), occurred the affair between soldiers and populace, known as the Boston Massacre; a trivial affair in itself, but immensely dynamic in its moral effects. A little after

this came an incomplete, and therefore ineffective repeal of the Revenue Act; the tax on tea being retained for the sake of asserting the principle. But as Americans, strange to say, still gave no orders for this taxed tea (though they were really going to have it cheaper than they had ever had it before) the King induced ministers to have four ship-loads sent into American ports, thus bringing temptation very near the door. From New York and Philadelphia the ships were ignominiously sent back. Charleston the people unloaded the tea, and stored it in cellars, where it perished. But at Boston the Governor would not permit the ship to clear out again, as the people demanded that it should; so a lawless band, disguised as Red Indians, went aboard and emptied the cargo into the harbour. This was in December, 1773; and both in England and America the state of popular feeling was now such as to leave small prospect of a speedy, if indeed of any, renewal of kindness between colonies and mother-country. To such a pass had it come, in so few years. But though the years were few, the time seemed an era to those who had to bear the burden and the strain of them; to those who, like Franklin, called to the difficult part of mediators, had to deal with each day's difficulties as they could, every new day in all that time bringing its own changes of hope and fear.

To treat of Franklin's life during this period with sufficient fulness to make the account interesting

would be to write not a biographical sketch but a very long chapter in general history. The effect of it all would be to show that, apart from any particular transaction in which he may have been concerned, the mere fact of his presence in England during those years was a historical factor of the first importance. And it was a factor which, so long as it counted for anything, counted for preservation of the peace between England and her colonies. His great intellectual and moral prestige dignified in the eyes of all, and especially in the eyes of Ministers, the cause which he stood for; a cause which might else have been more summarily dealt with, as official contempt for the claims of a troublesome pack of people on the fringe of the Empire might have dictated. It was impossible to regard in that way the people who had a Benjamin Franklin for their advocate and representative man. Franklin's many social qualities also, which gained him friendships even in circles least sympathetic to the American cause, enabled him to exercise an influence which cannot be verified in detail, it is true, but the absence of which for a single season would, we cannot doubt, have greatly affected the course of events. And, as a fact, it was not until the hour when that influence was withdrawn-until the hour when Franklin, giving up the long struggle with the forces of arrogance and blindness, bade farewell to these shores and sailed for home-that England gave a head to the counsels of final rigour which changed her children into enemies and lost her an Empire. While he remained here, also, his influence with his countrymen, which was very great in spite of the distance and in spite of the tendency of the colonists to suspect ever and again that they were being sold to the enemy, was of great effect in the service of moderation. He was as much a patriot as any man in America, and few in America had such a reasoned

faith as he in the justice of his country's claims and her power to make them ultimately prevail. But at the same time he knew also the greatness of England, and was acquainted with those good qualities of the English people which were not apparent for the moment in its political relations to America. Therefore, while urging his countrymen not to grow faint in maintaining their rights by all constitutional means - and especially by persisting in their non-importation resolutions with a unanimity which would leave no doubt of their being in earnest-he was none the less explicit in his disapprobation of all those (they were a small but dangerous band) whose idea of patriotism tended to express itself in words of provocation and acts of violence, whereby conciliation would be made more difficult. Thus it came,

that while some in England, finding that Franklin, for all his reasonableness, was as firm as bed-rock on the great principles at issue, described him regretfully as being "too much of an American" for their purposes at this very time the more forward set among his countrymen were apt to insinuate that, after all, Franklin was "too much of an Englishman to be really heart and soul with the patriots in America. This absurdity, however, which was the property of a few, belongs to the later and more morbid stages of the disagreement. Upon the whole, his prestige was as high amongst his countrymen at this time as it was in Europe, and by the year 1770 he found himself invested with the Agentship for four of the colonies. The Agentship for Massachusetts, especially, gave him a good deal of difficult work to do, owing to the great part played by that province in the events which developed the Revolution. For a time, indeed, he was able to do little in the matter, since that self-conscious, vain, and vacillating would-be martinet of office, Lord *I 316