I

to sell it, my friend empowered me to make him an offer of 50001. sterling for it. With this letter I waited upon him about a month before the duel, at his house in Lombard Street, the first time I had ever been in it. He was pleased with the intelligence, and called upon me once or twice afterwards to concert the means of making out his title. I mention some of these circumstances to show, that it was not through any previous acquaintance with him that I came to the knowledge of the famous letters; for they had been in America near a year before I so much as knew where he lived:-and the others I mention to show his gratitude. could have excused his not thanking me for sparing him a second hazard of his life; for though he might feel himself served, he might also apprehend that to seem pleased would look as if he was afraid of fighting again; or perhaps he did not value his life at any thing; but the addition to his fortune one would think of some value to a banker; and yet the return this worthy gentleman made me for both favors, was without the smallest previous notice, warning, complaint, or request to me, directly or indirectly, to clap upon my back a chancery suit. His bill set forth, "That he was administrator of the goods and chattels of his late brother Thomas Whately; that some letters had been written to his said brother by the governors Hutchinson and Oliver; that those letters had been in the custody of his said brother at the time of his death, or had been by him

delivered to some other person for perusal, and to be by such person safely kept and returned to said Thomas Whately; that the same had by some means come into my hands; that to prevent a discovery, I, or some person by my order, had erased the address ofthe letters to the said Thomas Whately; that, carrying on the trade of a printer, I had, by my agents or confederates, printed and published the same letters in America, and disposed of great numbers; that I threatened to print and sell the same in England; and that he had applied to me to deliver up to him the said letters, and all copies thereof, and desist from printing and publishing the same, and account with him for the profits thereof; and he was in hopes I would have complied with such re quest, but so it was that I had refused, &c. contrary to equity and good conscience, and to the manifest injury and oppression of him the complainant; and praying my lord chancellor that I might be obliged to discover how I came by the letters, what number of copies I had printed and sold, and to account with him for the profits, &c. &c." The gentleman himself must have known, that every circumstance of this was totally false; that of his brother's having deli vered the letters to some other person for perusal, excepted. Those as little acquainted with law as I was, (who indeed never before had a law-suit of any kind) may wonder at this as much as I did; but I have now learnt that in chancery, though the defendant must swear the truth of every point in his

answer, the plaintiff is not put to his oath, or obliged to have the least regard to truth in his bill, but is allowed to lie as much as he pleases. I do not understand this, unless it be for the encouragement of business.

My answer upon oath was, "That the letters in question were given to me, and came into my hands, as agent for the house of representatives of the province of Massachusetts Bay; that when given to me, I did not know to whom they had been addressed, no address appearing upon them; nor did I know before, that any such letters existed; that I had not been for many years concerned in printing; that I did not cause the letters to be printed, nor direct the doing it; that I did not erase any address that might have been on the letters, nor did I know that any other person had made such erasure; that I did, as agent to the province, transmit (as I apprehended it my duty to do) the said letters to one of the committee, with whom I had been directed to correspond, inasmuch as in my judgment they related to matters of great public importance to that province, and were put into my hands for that purpose; that I had never been applied to by the complainant, as asserted in his bill, and had made no profits of the letters, nor intended to make any," &c.

It was about this time become evident, that all thoughts of reconciliation with the colony of the Massachusetts Bay, by attention to their petitions

and a redress of their grievances, was laid aside; that severity was resolved; and that the decrying and vilifying the people of that country, and me their agent, among the rest, was quite a court measure. It was the ton with all the ministerial folks to abuse them and me, in every company, and in every newspaper; and it was intimated to me as a thing settled, long before it happened, that the petition for removal of the governors was to be rejected, the assembly censured, and myself, who had presented it, was to be punished by the loss of my place in the post-office. For all this I was therefore prepared; but the attack from Mr. Whately was, I own, a surprise to me: under the abovementioned circumstances of obligation, and without the slightest provocation, I could not have imagined any man base enough to commence, of his own motion, such a vexatious suit against me. a little accidental information served to throw some light upon the business: an acquaintance' calling on me, after having just been at the treasury, showed me what he styled a pretty thing, for a friend of his; it was an order for 1507. payable to Dr. Samuel Johnson, said to be one half of his yearly pension, and drawn by the secretary of the treasury on this same Mr. Whately. I then con

But

This was the late William Strahan, esq. M. P. and king's printer:-father to the present member of parliament for Aldborough.

sidered him as a banker to the treasury for the pension-money, and thence, as having an interested connexion with administration, that might induce him to act by direction of others in harassing me with this suit; which gave me if possible a still meaner opinion of him, than if he had done it of his own accord.

What further steps he or his confederates, the ministers, will take in this cause, I know not: I do not indeed believe the banker himself, finding there are no profits to be shared, would willingly lay out a sixpence more upon the suit; but then my finances are not sufficient to cope at law with the treasury here; especially when administration has taken care to prevent my constituents of New England from paying me any salary, or reimbursing me any expenses, by a special instruction to the governor, not to sign any warrant for that purpose on the treasury there.

The injustice of thus depriving the people there of the use of their own money, to pay an agent acting in their defence, while the governor, with a large salary out of the money extorted from them by act of parliament, was enabled to pay plentifully Mauduit and Wedderburn to abuse and defame them and their agent, is so evident as to need no comment.-But this they call GOVERNMENT!!

Here closes the tract, as written by Dr. Franklin.