the people as factious and wicked, recommended that the liberties of the province be greatly lessened, that the governor be made independent of the assembly, that a provincial aristocracy be set up, and that the officers who served the crown be "effectually supported."

Franklin asked leave to copy the letters. This was refused; but leave was given to send them to America, and they were soon on the way to Thomas Cushing, chairman of the committee of correspondence of the Massachusetts assembly. Cushing was charged not to have them copied or put in print, but to keep them a few months, show them to whom he pleased, and send them back to England. By him they were shown to the foremost men of Boston; and given to John Adams, who carried them on his circuit and showed them to the chief men of Massachusetts. When the general court met they were read, with closed doors, to an amazed assembly. The assembly petitioned the king to remove both Hutchinson and Oliver, and the letters at once appeared in print. Copies of the pamphlet went over to England, where the letters were published in the London journals, to the astonishment of the Tory party. How the Americans got them no one knew. The public suspected Thomas Whately, who owned the papers his brother left. Whately suspected

John Temple, once lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire, who had by permission taken from the papers of William Whately letters of his own. A duel followed, in which Ralph Izard and Arthur Lee acted somewhat as seconds. Whately was wounded. The duel became the talk of the town; and a second meeting was threatened, when Franklin, to prevent further mischief, explained. Through the "Public Advertiser" of Christmas Day, 1773, he assured the public that the letters had never at any time been in the hands of Mr. Whately, that they could not therefore have been taken from him by Mr. Temple, and that neither of them was in any way concerned in sending the letters to America, as he alone obtained and sent them to Boston. This he was justified in doing because they were not private letters between friends, but were written on public matters by public men holding public offices, were intended to bring about public measures, and had been handed about among other public men to lead them to favor such measures. Their purpose was to enrage the mother country against her colonies, to widen the breach already existing, and this they had done.

The ministry saw in this confession a fine opportunity and made haste to use it. Thomas Whately was a government banker, and made

some money by paying pensions for the crown. He was now forced to bring suit against Franklin for the recovery of the profits said to have been made by the sale of his brother's letters. The petition for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver had long been lying, forgotten, in the archives of the Lords of Trade. This was at once taken up, and Franklin was soon before the privy council to answer with regard to the same. It was then the usage for the council to meet in one of the rooms of a building which passed by the name of the Cockpit. Around the fire, and down the sides of the long table, had often been gathered many famous men. But it may well be doubted whether the room had ever held a company quite so distinguished as that assembled to hear the agent of the colony of the Massachusetts Bay insulted, browbeaten, maligned, and defamed. In that room had been done many acts shameful alike to the English government and to Englishmen. But none went down to such a depth of infamy as that perpetrated on that day on our illustrious countryman.

An idle story is still passing current that Franklin in time had his revenge, and that, when about to sign the treaty of peace in 1783, he quit the room to put on the very suit he wore when Wedderburn abused him before the

privy council. The story is untrue and was disproved, long before Franklin died, by the published statements of one of the secretaries present at the signing.

The petition of Massachusetts was declared to be scandalous and seditious by the privy council, and was not granted. Franklin lost his place in the post-office, and wrote in defense of his behavior a pamphlet called "An Account of the Transactions relating to Governor Hutchinson's Letters.". And now parliament passed the Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Bill, the Transportation Bill, the Quebec Act. Then came the first continental congress, and the revolution opened in earnest. As the news of each act of resistance came over to London, the position of Franklin grew daily more dangerous and unpleasant. whole Tory press set upon him. He ought to be put under arrest. He was the fomenter of all the colonial troubles. He was an archtraitor, an ungrateful wretch. Was ever an unworthy subject, it was asked, so loaded with benefits by a gracious king? Had he not been made a postmaster-general? Had not his son been made a governor? Had he not been offered a rich place in the salt-office for himself? And what return did he make? With the royal commission in his pocket he had incited

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his country to rebellion and bloodshed. Johnson called him the master of mischief, who taught congress "to put in motion the engine of electricity, and give the great stroke by the name of Boston." At home the Tory governor sought to deprive him of his pay as agent. The press told the people that he had sold his country for places, and they believed it. For a time his work seemed ended. He shunned the court, went no longer to the levees of the ministers, and kept away from the office of Lord Dartmouth. Indeed, he was about to come home, when news that congress was to meet detained him. While he tarried he wrote a few more essays for the "Public Advertiser," helped Arthur Lee in the preparation of his "True state of the proceedings in the parliament of Great Britain and in the province of Massachusetts Bay, relative to the giving and granting the money of the people of that province and of all America, in the house of commons in which they are not represented," and delivered to Lord Dartmouth the famous Declaration of Rights. This done, he set sail on the 21st of March, 1775, for Philadelphia; landed on the 5th of May, heard with amazement of the fight at Concord and Lexington, and was the next day welcomed home in an ode.

He had been abroad ten years and six months,