The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (74 page)

Franklin spent January and February 1766 striving to mend the breach between Britain and America. It was a demanding business, in that the loudest voices on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to shout him down. Joseph Galloway wrote from Philadelphia describing “the violent temper of the Americans, which has been so worked up as to be ready even for rebellion itself.” Galloway wanted to urge moderation by
composing a pamphlet to that effect. “But the difficulty will be in getting it published, the printers on the [American] continent having combined together to print every thing inflammatory and nothing that is rational and cool…. The people are taught to believe the greatest absurdities, and their passions are excited to a degree of resentment against the Mother Country beyond all description.”

On the other side of the water, the insisters on respect for the rule of law issued dire warnings to the Rockingham ministry against retreating in the face of illegal and unwarranted violence. “Can it be supposed that the colonists will ever submit to bear any share in those grievous burdens and taxes, with which we are loaded, when they find that the Government will not or dare not assert its own authority and power?” demanded one regular contributor to the published debate. “Have we not reason to expect that they will shake off all dependence and subjection, and neither suffer a limitation of their trade nor any duty to be imposed upon their commodities? Is not this want of spirit and resolution a direct encouragement of the mob to redress every imaginary grievance by force and violence?”

Franklin entered the fray in print and in person. He wrote several pieces for London journals defending American moderates against charges of guilt by association with the rioters, countering imputations of American niggardliness in matters touching imperial defense, pointing out that much of the tax burden Britons complained of got passed on to the Americans in the form of higher prices, and generally reminding readers of the essential unity of interest between colonies and mother country.

He also produced and circulated a political cartoon depicting to what end the Stamp Act and other such measures might lead. The picture was a bloody one, showing Britannia dismembered, her legs and arms lying about her as she leaned disconsolately against a globe. The lost limbs were labeled Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and New England; the motto declared
“Date Obolum Bellisario,”
or “Give a penny to Belisarius,” referring to a Roman general who reduced the provinces to Rome’s rule but was reduced himself to poverty in old age. Franklin had the cartoon printed on cards “on which I have lately wrote all my messages,” he explained to David Hall. His sister Jane Mecom got one, along with a note: “The moral is, that the colonies might be ruined, but that Britain would thereby be maimed.”

His most
telling testimony, however, came in an appearance before the House of Commons. For three days the House convened as a
committee of the whole to examine evidence relating to the Stamp Act, its unfavorable reception in America, and the demands of both the colonists and British merchants to have the measure repealed. The leading witness was Franklin.

As is often the case in such hearings, Franklin’s appearance was not entirely unorchestrated. The Rockingham ministry was looking for a way to distance itself from what it considered the shortsighted, if not downright stupid, legacy of its predecessor. But it needed better reason than the riots in Boston and New York and Philadelphia. Franklin—the august doctor, the celebrated philosopher and scientist, the astute observer of politics and human character, the deft writer and discussant; in short, the epitome of reason—fit the ministry’s need admirably. Many of the questions put to Franklin gave the impression of having been scripted—an impression confirmed by Franklin’s later remarks and writings.

Yet his appearance at Westminster was hardly a love-fest. By mid-February 1766 the wailing of the British merchants made repeal of the Stamp Act almost certain, but the terms of repeal—in particular, whether it would be accompanied by a reaffirmation of Parliament’s sovereignty over the American colonies, and what form such reaffirmation might take—remained to be determined. Several of Franklin’s questioners sought to undermine his answers by reading either more or less into them than he intended.

A friend opened the questioning by asking what taxes the Americans paid, of their own levying. “Many, and very heavy taxes,” Franklin replied. Asked to specify regarding Pennsylvania, Franklin continued, “There are taxes on all estates real and personal; a poll tax; a tax on all offices, professions, trades, and businesses, according to their profits; an excise on all wine, rum, and other spirits; and a duty of ten pounds per head on all Negroes imported, with some other duties.”

A second friend inquired of the feasibility of distributing the stamps in the American colonies. Deputy Postmaster Franklin, speaking with knowledge unexcelled of transport and communications in North America, described grave difficulties. “The posts go only along the sea coasts; they do not, except in a few instances, go back into the country; and if they did, sending for stamps by post would occasion an expense of postage amounting, in many cases, to much more than that of the stamps themselves.”

An adversary, a member of the late Grenville ministry, broke in to ask bluntly whether the colonies could afford to pay the stamp duty.

Franklin replied equally bluntly. “In my opinion, there is not gold and silver enough in the colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year.”

George Grenville himself queried whether Franklin thought that the Americans, protected by the British army and navy, should pay no part of the expense of maintaining those forces.

Franklin rejected the premise. The colonies, he said, had essentially defended themselves during the last war, raising 25,000 soldiers and spending millions of pounds.

Quite so, Grenville continued, but had not Parliament reimbursed the colonies for their expenses?

Franklin parried this as well. “We were only reimbursed what, in your opinion, we had advanced beyond our proportion, or beyond what might reasonably be expected from us; and it was a very small part of what we spent.”

Franklin’s friends put questions that allowed him to state his argument most succinctly. What was the temper of the Americans toward Great Britain before 1763?

“The best in the world,” he answered. “They submitted willingly to the government of the Crown, and paid, in all their courts, obedience to acts of Parliament. Numerous as the people are in the several old provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, or armies, to keep them in subjection. They were governed by this country at the expense only of a little pen, ink, and paper. They were led by a thread.”

And what was the temper of the Americans now?

“Very much altered.”

In what light had the Americans formerly viewed Parliament?

“As the great bulwark and security of their liberties and privileges.” Arbitrary ministers might overstep, but as a body Parliament could always be counted on to redress grievances.

And did the Americans retain their respect for Parliament?

“No, it is greatly lessened.”

A questioner probed the matter of taxes and duties. Had the Americans formerly objected to Parliament’s authority on these subjects?

“I never heard any objection to the right of laying duties to regulate commerce; but a right to lay internal taxes was never supposed to be in Parliament, as we are not represented there.”

After additional discussion of duties—which Franklin interchangeably called external taxes—and taxes proper, or internal taxes, a former minister under Grenville suggested that a tax was a tax. What was the difference?

“The difference is very great. An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost, and other charges on the commodity, and when it is offered to sale, makes a part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent, if not laid by their own representatives. The Stamp Act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry nor make our wills unless we pay such and such sums, and thus it is intended to extort our money from us, or ruin us by the consequences of refusing to pay it.”

A friend asked whether anything less than military force could compel the Americans to accept the stamps.

“I do not see how a military force can be applied to that purpose.”

Why not? one of the Grenville men asked.

“Suppose a military force is sent into America. They will find nobody in arms. What are they then to do? They cannot force a man to take stamps who chooses to do without them. They will not find a rebellion; they may indeed make one.”

By the
testimony of those most interested, the effect of Franklin’s appearance in Commons was electric. “The Marquis of Rockingham told a friend of mine a few days after, that he never knew truth make so great a progress in so very short a time,” said William Strahan. “From that very day, the repeal was generally and absolutely determined, all that passed afterwards being only mere form.” Strahan was never shy about heralding Franklin’s triumphs, but even he thought his friend had outdone himself. “Happy man! In truth I almost envy him the inward pleasure, as well as the outward fame, he must derive from having it in his power to do his country such eminent and seasonable service.”

Repeal had more fathers than Strahan conceded, but Franklin’s performance was indeed inspired. The opponents of repeal could rouse indignation against the rabble who tore down Thomas Hutchinson’s house and defied king and Parliament, but indignation dissolved in the sweet reason of Dr. Franklin. If that sweet reason included some tenuous reasoning—Franklin’s distinction between internal and external taxes, for example, was more his own invention than a reflection of opinion in America—none present was placed to refute him. (When one unfriendly
questioner tried to do so, Franklin rebuffed him with a clever riposte. This member suggested that the Americans might use the same arguments Franklin deployed against internal taxes to reject external taxes. “They never have hitherto,” Franklin responded. “Many arguments have been lately used here to shew them that there is no difference, and that if you have no right to tax them internally, you have none to tax them externally, or make any other law to bind them. At present they do not reason so, but in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments.”)

To reasonableness he added just the right note of resolve. He was not defiant, not bellicose. He was simply reporting the state of the American mind and the American spirit. Here again he bent the truth to suit his purpose. He must have known, after all the violence of the summer and autumn in America, that a return to the status quo would not appease those who now had the bit in their teeth. But as with his posited distinction between internal and external taxes, he was willing to deal with the consequences of that interpretation later. For the present the goal was repeal of the Stamp Act.

The goal was achieved in March 1766, almost a year to the day after the act had received royal approval. To no one’s great surprise, repeal was accompanied by a Declaratory Act, which asserted the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever.”

Equally unsurprising, this mixed outcome left a certain sour taste. Many in America remained unreconciled to Parliament’s authority; many in Britain resented the Americans’ ability to flout the law with impunity. The latter feeling gave rise to a demand that the colonies compensate the home government for the cost of stamping all that paper, which was never used.

Franklin registered a sardonic judgment on this demand. In an anonymous letter to a London journal he wrote that the affair put him in mind of a Frenchman who used to accost English visitors on the Pont-Neuf in Paris, with effusive compliments in his mouth and a red-hot poker in his hand.

“Pray Monsieur Anglais,” says he, “Do me the favour to let me have the honour of thrusting this hot iron into your backside?”