acts, and the measures taken to carry them into execution, have been laid before administration, attended to, and determined upon, not only to the injury of the reputation of the people, but to the depriving them of their invaluable rights and liberties.

"Whereas, this house are humbly of opinion, that his majesty will judge it to be incompatible with the interest of his crown, and the peace and safety of the good people of this his loyal province, that persons should be continued in places of high trust and authority in it, who are known to have with great industry, though secretly, endeavored to undermine, alter, and overthrow the constitution of the province..

"Therefore,

"Resolved, That this house is bound in duty to the king and their constituents, humbly to remonstrate to his majesty, the conduct of his excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq. governor, and the honorable Andrew Oliver, Esq. lieutenantgovernor of this province; and to pray that his majesty would be pleased to remove them for ever from the government thereof."

Upon these Resolutions was founded the following petition, transmitted to me to be presented to his majesty.'

Lord Dartmouth, secretary of state for the colonies, being in the country when I received this petition, I transmitted it to his lordship, enclosed in a letter, of which the following is a copy, as also of his answer.

No one who knows Lord Dartmouth, can doubt the sincerity of the good wishes expressed in his

1 See Appendix, No. 5. * See Appendix, No. 5.

letter to me; and if his majesty's other servants had fortunately been possessed of the same benevolent dispositions, with as much of that attention to the public interest, and dexterity in managing it, as statesmen of this country generally show in obtaining and securing their places, here was a fine opportunity put into their hands of "re-establishing the union and harmony that formerly subsisted between Great Britain and her colonies,"so necessary to the welfare of both, and upon the easy condition of only" restoring things to the state they were in at the conclusion of the late war." This was a solemn declaration sent over from the province most aggrieved, in which they acquitted Britain of their grievances, and charged them all upon a few individuals of their own country. Upon the heads of these very mischievous men they deprecated no vengeance, though that of the whole nation was justly merited; they considered it as an hard thing for an administration to punish a governor who had acted from orders, though the orders had been procured by his misrepresentations and calumnies; they therefore only petitioned, "that his majesty would be pleased to remove T. Hutchinson, esq. and A. Oliver, esq. from their posts in that government, and place good and faithful men in their stead." These men might have been placed or pensioned elsewhere, as others have been; or, like the scape-goats of old, they might have carried away into the wilderness all the offences which had arisen between the two countries, with the burthen

of which, they, having been the authors of these mischiefs, were most justly chargeable.

But this opportunity ministers had not the wisdom to embrace; they chose rather to reject it, and to abuse and punish me for giving it. A court clamor was raised against me as an incendiary; and the very action upon which I valued myself, as it appeared to me a means of lessening our differences, I was unlucky enough to find charged upon me, as a wicked attempt to increase them. Strange perversion!'

I was it seems equally unlucky in another action, which I also intended for a good one, and which brought on the above-mentioned clamor. The news being arrived here of the publication of those letters in America, great enquiry was made who had transmitted them. Mr. Temple, a gentleman of the customs, was accused of it in the papers. He vindicated himself. A public altercation ensued upon it, between him and a Mr. Whately, brother and executor to the person to whom it was supposed the letters had been originally written, and who was suspected by some of communicating them; on the

“We must not, in the course of public life, expect immediate approbation, and immediate grateful acknowledgment of our services. But let us persevere through abuse, and even injury. The internal satisfaction of a good conscience is always present, and time will do us justice in the minds of the people, even those at present the most prejudiced against us."-FRANKLIN'S PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE.

supposition, that by his brother's death they might have fallen into his hands. As the gentleman to whom I sent them, had, in his letter to me above recited, given an important reason for his desiring it should be concealed, that he was the person who received them, and had for the same reason chosen not to let it be known I sent them, I suffered that altercation to go on without interfering, supposing it would end, as other newspaper controversies usually do, when the parties and the public should be tired of them. But this dispute unexpectedly and suddenly produced a duel. The gentlemen were parted; Mr. Whately was wounded, but not dangerously. This, however, alarmed me, and made me wish I had prevented it; but imagining all now over between them, I still kept silence, till I heard that the duel was understood to be unfinished, (as having been interrupted by persons accidentally near,) and that it would probably be repeated as soon as Mr. Whately, who was mending daily, had recovered his strength. I then thought it high time to interpose; and as the quarrel was for the public opinion, I took what I thought the shortest way to settle that opinion, with regard to the parties, by publishing what follows.'

This declaration of mine was at first generally approved, except that some blamed me for not having made it sooner, so as to prevent the duel; but I had

See Appendix, No. 5.

not the gift of prophecy: I could not foresee that the gentlemen would fight; I did not even foresee that either of them could possibly take it ill of me. I imagined I was doing them a good office, in clearing both of them from suspicion, and removing the cause of their difference. I should have thought it natural for them both to have thanked me, but I was mistaken as to one of them; his wound perhaps at first prevented him, and afterwards he was tutored probably to another kind of behavior by his court connexions. My only acquaintance with this gentleman, Mr. William Whately, was from an application he made to me to do him the favor of enquiring after some land in Pennsylvania, supposed to have been purchased anciently from the first proprietor, by a Major Thomson, his grandfather, of which they had some imperfect memorandums in the family, but knew not whether it might not have been sold or conveyed away by him in his life-time, as there was no mention of it in his will. I took the trouble of writing accordingly, to a friend of mine, an eminent lawyer there, well acquainted with such business, desiring him to make the enquiry. He took some pains in it at my request, and succeeded; and in a letter informed me, that he had found the land; that the proprietary claimed it, but he thought the title was clear to the heir of Thomson; that he could easily recover it for him, and would undertake it if Mr. Whately should think fit to employ him; or if he should rather choose