The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (76 page)

But should the grantees find settlers to whom to sell the land, they might expect to turn a profit. The most ambitious speculators in that era could hope to become very wealthy, from holdings in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of acres. Franklin, whose Nova Scotia tracts totaled some 11,500 acres, initially set his sights lower. Yet even he could hope to leave a legacy. “I tell Sally this is for grandchildren,” Debbie said in the letter to Franklin about paying Anthony Wayne. “She seemed very well pleased.”

Encouraged, Franklin applied for a grant on his own. Early in 1766 he requested 20,000 acres in Nova Scotia, to be selected where he or his agent thought best. His request bubbled slowly up through the British bureaucracy; in June 1767 the Privy Council awarded Franklin his prize, subject to conditions similar to those on the earlier grant.

Even as the second Nova Scotia request was moving forward, Franklin was working on a scheme far grander—one, moreover, in which he cooperated more closely than ever with his son. Perhaps because William sensed, after the tumultuous events surrounding the Stamp Act, that the tenure of a royal governor might be brief, he worked assiduously, almost obsessively, to gain a stake in unsettled lands. With some Philadelphia friends of his father’s, the Indian agent George Croghan, and Sir William Johnson, the superintendent for Indian affairs in the northern part of the colonies, William organized a group called the Illinois Company to seek vast grants in the Illinois country beyond the Ohio River. Eventually the project grew to encompass the creation of a new colony in the west. William knew that such a venture required an agent in England; for this purpose he invited his father to join. Franklin did so with pleasure.

During the latter half of 1766 and most of 1767 father and son corresponded regularly; the most frequent object of discussion was the
status of the Illinois project. “I have mentioned the Illinois affair to Lord Shelburne,” Franklin wrote William in September 1766. Shelburne was secretary of state of the Southern Department of the American colonies and was considered supportive of western settlement. “His Lordship had read your plan for establishing a colony there, recommended by Sir William Johnson, and said it appeared to him to be a reasonable scheme.” Two weeks later Franklin reported further progress: “I was again with Lord Shelburne a few days since, and said a good deal to him on the affair of the Illinois settlement. He was pleased to say he really approved of it.” Yet Shelburne cautioned that during the current period of financial retrenchment, patience must be the watchword.

Franklin was patient—but not inactive. He enlisted the help of Richard Jackson, who, upon request from the ministry, delivered his opinion that the Illinois plan was “certainly well framed.” Jackson added, “I have no doubt of its practicability or utility.” Franklin kept at his task, until in August 1767 he was able to announce a major hurdle surmounted. He had again dined with Shelburne, who was accompanied in this case by the secretary of state for the Northern Department, Henry Conway. “The Secretaries appeared finally to be fully convinced,” Franklin wrote William. The only remaining obstacle was the Board of Trade, which, the two secretaries suggested, ought to be brought round privately before the matter reached that body in official form.

The lobbying took a few months; in late October the Board of Trade summoned Franklin and Richard Jackson to answer certain questions. Apparently satisfied with what they heard, the members approved the plan.

And then, at the edge of success, the project encountered a new obstacle. The better to coordinate colonial policy, the imperial government melded the Northern and Southern departments into a single American Department; over this new office was placed Lord Hillsborough. Shelburne had been a friend of the Americans; Hillsborough proved just the opposite. He was skeptical of new projects and new expenses; he was also suspicious of most things American. The Illinois project came to a shuddering halt; the two Franklins’ dream of western wealth danced beyond their reach.

The elevation
of Hillsborough at just this moment was no accident, although the reason had nothing to do with the Franklins’ land scheme. The British government had never been stable since the accession
of George III, and it remained unstable—not least since George himself was less than a rock. The young king’s infatuation with Bute had worn off the way infatuations do, but, as infatuations often do, it left traces of jealousy and suspicion, and not in the king alone. George Grenville might have become a powerful and long-tenured prime minister, but he could never put out of his mind that Bute had been George’s first love. In 1765 the king fell seriously ill; though none knew it, these were the first symptoms of the hereditary disease—apparently porphyria—that would drive him mad. The malady prompted calls for the creation of a regency in the event the monarch was carried off or permanently incapacitated. Although George recovered, the regency bill passed, and in doing so provoked a row over the identity of the regent. George wanted to appoint his own; Grenville and the ministry wanted their man. When George won out, Grenville refused to accept defeat gracefully. He insisted on spiting the king, and demonstrating his power, by forcing the resignation of Bute’s brother, whom George still favored, from an inconsequential office.

The king wept and gnashed his teeth. He struggled to free himself of Grenville but found no rescuer. “George the Third,” jibed Horace Walpole, “is the true successor of George the Second, and inherits all his grandfather’s humiliations.” But the grandson had learned from those humiliations, and before long he found the alternative to Grenville he had been seeking. That this alternative and his friends were discovered at the racetrack at Ascot prompted another wag to declare that the new government was formed of “persons called from the
stud
to the
state,
and transformed miraculously out of jockeys into ministers.” On the lead horse was the Marquis of Rockingham.

Yet Grenville had his revenge. Rockingham’s first order of business was liquidating the Stamp Act fiasco Grenville had created, and he rallied what he trumpeted to George as “public opinion” behind repeal. The public in question did not include Grenville and his friends, as they demonstrated in cross-examining Franklin during his testimony before Commons; and although they failed to prevent repeal they weakened Rockingham. Subsequent Rockingham reforms—of the Sugar Act, for instance, which was revised to lower the molasses duty from three pence to one, while extending it to British molasses—pleased certain constituencies (Americans especially) but further alienated the Grenville crowd.

This alienation might not have unseated Rockingham had Rockingham not simultaneously alienated the king. George was unhappy with the
repeal of the Stamp Act, preferring a stiffer line against the unruly Americans. Nor did he like Rockingham’s appeal to the public, a strategy that promised to place the Crown in the shade of such rabble as were ruining the empire in America. Moreover, following his recovery from his illness, George was in a mood to place his own stamp, even if not Grenville’s stamps, on imperial politics.

Between Grenville’s enmity and George’s envy, Rockingham was pushed aside. His successor seemed, at first glance, an odd choice. William Pitt had most recently distinguished himself by speaking out against the Stamp Act. “I rejoice that America has resisted,” he proclaimed in Commons (in the very face of Grenville, a single seat away). “Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.” Americans rejoiced, in their turn, at Pitt’s rejoicing; a statue to Pitt went up in New York. But this was hardly language to reassure a worried monarch confronting incipient rebellion.

All the same, Pitt proved the indispensable man now, as he had previously. He was as popular as Grenville was not, and George could hope that some of the Great Commoner’s popularity would rub off on the Crown. Unfortunately for both, George offered Pitt an earldom, and Pitt accepted. Almost at once his popularity with the masses began to dissipate; how could an earl (of Chatham) be the Great Commoner? Popularity aside, Pitt’s move from Commons to Lords was a tactical blunder, for it precluded control of the lower house, by now far and away the most important body in British politics. As if this were not enough, he fell badly ill, leaving day-to-day direction of government affairs in the hands of his associates, who showed even worse judgment and considerably less talent.

Franklin
observed the ministerial minuets with a mixture of fascination and dismay. “The confusion among our Great Men still continues as great as ever,” he told Joseph Galloway. “And a melancholy thing it is to consider, that instead of employing the present leisure of peace in such measures as might extend our commerce, pay off our debts, secure allies, and increase the strength and ability of the nation to support a future war, the whole time seems wasted in party contentions about power and profit, in court intrigues and cabals, and in abusing one another.”

Also abused were the Americans. Franklin visited the House of Lords and heard the peers rant about the insubordinate wretches across
the sea. “It gave me great uneasiness to find much resentment against the colonies in the disputants,” he recorded. “The word
rebellion
was frequently used.”

Franklin did what he could to avert the abuse. He frequented the pages of the London journals, writing under various noms de plume. As “A Friend to Both Countries” he characterized the current atmosphere and sought to deflate it.

Every step is now taken to enrage us against America. Pamphlets and news papers fly about, and coffee-houses ring with lying reports of its being in rebellion. Force is called for. Fleets and troops should be sent. Those already there should be called in from the distant posts and quartered on the capital towns. The principal people should be brought here and hanged, &c. And why?

Why! Do you ask why?

Yes. I beg leave to ask why?

Why they are going to throw off the government of
this country,
and set up for themselves.

Pray how does that appear?

Why, are they not all in arms?

No. They are all in peace.

Have they not refused to make the compensation to the sufferers by the late riots, that was required of them by government here?

No. They have made ample satisfaction. Which, by the way, has not been done here to the sufferers by your own riots.

Have they not burnt the custom-house?

No. That story is an absolute invented lie, without the least foundation.

As “Benevolus,” Franklin answered several allegations commonly laid against the Americans. The colonies were
not
settled at the expense of Parliament, he explained. “If we examine our records, the journals of Parliament, we shall not find that a farthing was ever granted for the settling any colonies before the last reign, and then only for Georgia and Nova Scotia, which are still of little value.” The colonies had
not
received their constitutions from Parliament, but from the king. Consequently Parliament could not claim that the colonial assemblies were creatures of Parliament.

The colonies had
not
been constantly protected from the Indians at Parliament’s expense. “They protected themselves at their own expence for near 150 years after the first settlement and never thought of applying to Parliament for any aid against the Indians.” The last two wars were fought
not
for the colonies’ protection, but for the protection of British trade. In the most recent case: “The colonies were in peace, and the settlers had not been attacked or molested in the least, till after the miscarriage of Braddock’s expedition to the Ohio.”