the past few years, and it is possible he may even have over-estimated their significance and influence. They showed, at any rate, that those measures which were most bitterly resented by the Colonists had been long advocated and preached in the secret ear of Government by responsible Americans, whose opinions could not but carry great weight with English ministers. From this discovery it followed, that there was at once less cause for anger and less reason for despair than there had lately seemed to be, even to Franklin. His own vast patience had begun to feel the strain and the wear of those years; and across the ocean English injustice, as it was considered, was fast creating a new America, an America very full of anti-British feeling. This was very unlike that land as he had known it, and the change was to him sincerely regrettable. It was also a menace; for it might presently gather sufficient force to make the pace in that country, and then the hopes of reconciliation would be small indeed. To avert this, and to neutralise the growing sense of a national animosity, Franklin considered that no means would serve so powerfully as the conveying to the leaders of opinion in America that new knowledge, that new side-light upon the whole situation, which had just come to him, and had affected his own feelings so favourably, so forgivingly, towards those who were responsible in this country. He begged permission to send these letters to America. After some delay, permission was granted; and on December 2, 1772, he enclosed them in his usual official dispatch, addressed to the secretary of the committee of correspondence of Massachusetts Assembly. He was not at liberty to explain whom he had them from: they were not to be copied or printed: and when they had been shown to the leading men of the popular party, they were to be returned to this country. On all these

points he had, and transmitted to his correspondent, explicit instructions.

There is not space here to follow the letters in their wanderings. Suffice it, that they were shown to many men and some women, and that their presence in America, if not their precise import, was soon the secret of a whole continent. The effect was everywhere what Franklin had anticipated: rage against Hutchinson; kindlier feelings towards England than had prevailed for many months. They were duly returned after a time; but, Franklin's instructions notwithstanding, they had got into print in America. Copies found their way over here, the newspapers gave them in full, there was a great deal of annoyance in the official world, a great deal of talk about the matter everywhere. In all of which there was nothing that called for Franklin's intervention. But just when the nine-days' wonder was ready to die down, it suddenly started off into a new and untoward career of thrilling interest. Mr Thomas Whately announced in the newspapers that the letters so much spoken of had been written to his late brother; and as good as said that they had been stolen from the executors by Mr John Temple. Mr Temple thereupon challenged Mr Whately to fight. Fight they did at dawn of a December day, in Hyde Park, and Whately was badly wounded. On returning to town (he had been in the country for a few days) Franklin heard of this duel, and heard also that the gentlemen were going to fight again. He therefore sat down and promptly wrote the following letter:

"TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC Advertiser.

"Sir,-Finding that two gentlemen have been unfortunately engaged in a duel, about a transaction and its circumstances, of which both of them are totally ignorant and innocent, I think it incumbent upon me to declare (for the prevention of farther mischief, as far as such a declaration may contribute to prevent it) that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to

!

Boston the letters in question. Mr W. could not communicate them, because they were never in his possession; and, for the same reason, they could not be taken from him by Mr T. They were not of the nature of private letters between friends. They were written by public officers to persons in public stations, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures; they were therefore handed to other public persons, who might be influenced by them to produce those measures. Their tendency was to incense the mother-country against her Colonies, and, by the steps recommended, to widen the breach; which they effected. The chief caution expressed with regard to privacy was, to keep their contents from the Colony agents, who, the writers apprehended, might return them, or copies of them, to America. apprehension was, it seems, well founded; for the first Colony agent who laid his hands on them thought it his duty to transmit them to his constituents.

"B. FRANKLIN,

That

"Agent for the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay. "Craven Street, December 25th, 1773."

By this announcement, a new surprise sprang out of this surprising, if not sensational, subject. But the greatest sensation was yet to come. Franklin had not expected his letter to have any other effect than the preventing of possible homicide, and everybody thought he had acted with spirit and propriety in the matter. He was soon to find that he had delivered himself into the hands of enemies. Personal enemies, it is true, he had none in England, and of friends he had a great many. But the cause which he represented was becoming more and more obnoxious and exasperating to those in power. Which means that a growing sense of their own incapacity to deal with the situation which they had made for themselves, against all wise advice, had begun already to render them morbid. Those who were disappointed at finding Franklin "too much of an American," were apt also to tell themselves, when matters came to this stage, and as their troubles thickened, that if it were not for that disobliging, therefore ill-disposed Franklin, those troubles would not exist at all. It is natural to the human mind to hate a

just man; and equally natural to those who find themselves vainly battling against a moral principle and the wishes of a people, to assume that the interpreter and spokesman of the insurgent moral will is the sole maker of all the mischief. These and other determinants may have been at work. Certain it is that official England now thought it saw a possibility of damaging the American cause in the person of its most illustrious exponent; and, no kind god preventing, it hurriedly took the foolish business. in hand.

It had been Franklin's duty some months previously to present a Petition from the Massachusetts Assembly, praying that his Majesty would be graciously pleased to remove

from their official positions Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, as being men who had wrought to make misunderstanding and dispeace between the different parts of his Majesty's dominions. Months passed, and no result of this petition was forthcoming. But now Franklin received on Saturday, January 8, 1774, a brief and sudden intimation that this petition was to be considered by the Lords of Committee (to whom it had been referred by the King) on the following Tuesday; when he, as agent for the Assembly, was commanded to attend. Late on Monday afternoon it was intimated to him that Messrs Hutchinson and Oliver were to be heard by counsel. This was short notice of an unusual procedure, not to say a startling fact. At the meeting he at once raised that point, submitting that the matter before their Lordships was "a question of civil or political prudence,' upon which their Lordships were "already perfect judges, and could receive no assistance in it from the arguments of counsel." If counsel was heard on the one side, however, it ought also to be

heard on the other. He therefore craved their Lordships to appoint a further day for the hearing, that he might have an opportunity of instructing counsel on behalf of his clients. A further hearing was accordingly appointed for Saturday the 29th of that month.

Brief as the proceedings at this meeting had been, they left little room for doubt that some very bad intentions towards himself were preparing their hour. An inkling that this was so became curiously diffused; and the Press of this country hastened to assume an exceedingly sympathetic attitude towards these intentions, whatever they might be. Franklin suddenly found himself an object of general attack, and very precise reports reached him as to the nature and upshot of the performance which had been arranged for the 29th.

After some difficulty in finding a suitable counsel, he secured the famous John Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton; a lawyer of the highest intellectual power, but too often unable to do himself justice owing to his many physical frailties. Dunning promptly set aside the elaborate brief which Franklin's solicitor had prepared, and decided that their case could not be better argued than on the ground taken up by Franklin himself at the first meeting of the Committee.

On the morning of the 29th there was a general movement of high political London towards the Cockpit, as the building was called, in which these Privy Council meetings were held. The attendance of Privy Councillors on this occasion was almost unprecedented: thirty-five in all sat round the table, which extended down the middle of the large oblong room. There was, besides, a large gathering of members of Parliament and other public men, and a few private persons whose distinction or connections had gained them admit