1

During the session of the Massachusetts assembly, in the summer of 1773, a discovery was made which added fresh fuel to the flame long fince kindled in that province. The celebrated Dr. Franklin, agent of the house of representatives in England, had by fome unknown means acquired poffeffion of certain letters written in confidence by the governor Hutchinson, the lieutenant governor Oliver, and others, to divers of their friends and correspondents in England, in which they express themselves very freely on the fituation of affairs in America; and their fentiments are fuch as might reasonably be expected from their public conduct. The writers appear to have been men very refpectable in their private characters; but viewing the tranfactions which were passing before them through a thick cloud of prejudice, resentment, and interest, they discover an eager folicitude that government should adopt more violent, or in their language more vigorous, neafures in support of its authority; and in their laudable anxiety for the re-establishment of order and tranquillity, they seemed not in the leaft to suspect, that of such meafures a civil war must be the inevitable result: nor had they the wisdom or magnanimity to comprehend, that far otherties than military force and imperious edicts were neceffary to form that bond of connection which could alone restore peace and prosperity to the colonies, or render the connection itself advantageous or honorable to the mother country. These letters were, by a license which cannot be justified, even though prompted by motives the most patriotic, tranfmitted by Dr. Franklin to his constituents at Boston, upon whom they made an impression much eafier to conceive than to describe. "This, says Mr. Hutchinson, in one of his letters, is most certainly a crifis. If no measures shall have been taken to secure the dependence of the colonies, befides fome declaratory acts and refolves, it is all over with us. There must be an abridgement of what are called English liberties; and he lays it down down as a maxim, that a colony cannot enjoy all the liberty of the parent state. I wish, says he, the good of the colony, when I wish to fee some farther restraint of liberty rather than the connection with the parent state should be broken. In another letter he expresses his hopes that provisions for diffolving the commercial combinations, and for inflicting penalties on those who do not renounce them, would be made as foon as parliament meets." Mr. Oliver, the lieutenant governor, intimates that the officers of the crown, i. e. the governor, lieutenant governor, and judges, ought to be made independent of the people; for, says he, it is a difficult matter to serve two masters. The government, he affirms, has been too weak to fubdue the turbulent spirits. He infinuates the expediency of "TAKING OFF" those persons whom he styles "the original incendiaries." He wishes for the institution of an order of patricians, and afferts the neceffity of an ALTERATION OF THE CHARTERS." The assembly, thrown into a violent flame by the reading of these letters, unanimoufly refolved, " that the tendency and design of the faid letters was to overthrow the constitution of this government, and to introduce arbitrary power into the province;" and a petition was immediately voted to the king, to remove the governor Hutchinfon, and the lieutenant governor Oliver, for ever from the government of the province.

The PETITION being transmitted to the agent of the afsembly, Dr. Franklin, was by him delivered to lord Dartmouth; and on its being presented to the king, his majesty fignified his pleasure that it should be laid before him in council. On the 29th of January 1774, Dr. Franklin was summoned in his official capacity as agent of the province in support of the petition. Mr. Wedderburn, now lord Loughborough and chancellor of Great Britain*, appearing as counsel for the defendants, delivered in that capacity against the agent, the house of representatives, the province

S2

province of Massachusetts, and the whole continent of America, one of the most extraordinary invectives that was on any occafion perhaps ever heard in the council chamber. "Dr. Franklin, faid Mr. Wedderburn, stands in the light of the first mover and prime conductor of this whole contrivance against his majesty's two governors : and having, by the help of his own special confidents and party leaders, first made the assembly his agent in carrying on his own secret designs, he now appears before your lordships to give the finishing stroke to the work of his own hands. How these letters came into possession of any one but the right owners, is a mystery for Dr. Franklin to explain. Your lordships know the train of mischiefs which followed the concealment*. After they had been left for five months to have their full operation, at length comes out a letter, which it is impoffible to read without horror, expreffive of the coolest and most deliberate malevolence. My lords, what poetic fiction only had penned for the breast of a cruel African, Dr. Franklin has realized and transcribed from his own-His too is the language of a ZANGA.

Know then 'twas I,

I forged the letter, I disposed the picture:
I hated, I despised, and I destroy.

And he now appears before your lordships, wrapped up in impenetrable secrecy, to fupport a charge against his majesty's governor and lieutenant governor, and expects that your lordships should advise the punishing them on account of certain letters which he will not produce, and which he dares not tell how he obtained. These are the lefsons taught in Dr. Franklin's school of politics. With regard regard to his constituents, the factious leaders at Boston, whomake this complaint against their governors, if the relating of their evil doings be criminal, and tending to alienate his majesty's affections, must not the doing of them be much more fo? Yet now they ask that his majesty will gratify and reward them for doing these things, and that he will punish their governors for relating them, because they are so very bad that it cannot but offend his majesty to hear of them." From these passages fome judgment may be formed of the general strain of this famous Philippic, which, violating every rule and limit of decorum, stands upon record as the grossest insult ever offered to a great and venerable character, the most diftinguished ornament of his age and country. A wife government would have known his value, and been happy to have availed itself of his experience and fagacity; but the counsels of a Franklin under the present reign were not likely to preponderate over those of a Hutchinson. The report of the lords of the council was in a few days afterwards made, the KING'S most excellent majesty being present, " that the petition in question was founded upon falfe and erroneous allegations, and that the fame is groundless, vexatious, and scandalous, and calculated only for the feditious purposes of keeping up a spirit of clamor and difcontent in the province." And his majesty was pleased, upon taking the said report into confideration, to approve thereof, and to order the said petition of the affembly of Maffachusetts to be dismissed accordingly. Such was the mode in which a petition from the first provincial legiflature in the empire, composed of men eminent for ability and integrity, was treated by the British government, which perhaps had never duly pondered the antient maxim of moral and political wisdom, "that pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." But a matter of higher import, and attended with far more fe

rious consequences, which at this time took place, is now to be related.

When at a very early period of lord North's administration the duties on paper, glass, and colors were repealed, it has been already remarked, that the duty on TEA was purposely left as a mark of legislative supremacy. The East India Company finding their stock of tea to accumulate in their warehouses, in confequence of the lofs of the American market, were very urgent with the minister, to repeal the American import duty of three-pence per pound, offering in lieu of it to pay double the fum on exportation. A fairer opportunity could not occur to terminate the difpute. As the duty would not have been taken off at the instance of the Americans, either in the dread of their resentment, or in the profpect of their advantage, it might have been hoped that the most strenuous stickler for "the dignity of the crown," and "the honor of parliament," whose fleeping and waking dreams had centered folely in these beloved and darling objects, might at length have banished his perturbations, and preffed his pillow in peace. This conceffion, however, the minister was not inclined, or, which is far more probable, was not PERMITTED to make; and things remained on this footing, till in the session of 1773 the act paffed for allowing the exportation of TEAS duty-free, and the Company, eager to make a grand effort to relieve themselves from their difficulties, were buoyed up with the flattering expectation, by becoming their own factors, of regaining poffeffion of the American market: for when the teas were actually transported across the Atlantic and lodged in warehouses, the mere circumstance of their having previously paid the import duty would not, it was imagined, impede the Company's fales. In this idea, however, they were most egregioufly and fatally mistaken. The Americans confidered this new attempt in no other light than as an infidious artifice and collufion, calculated and designed to inveigle them