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American Military University
King’s Friend No More
The Political Evolution of Benjamin Franklin
By
Nathanael Miller
HIST 551
The American Revolution in Context
Dr. Anne Venson

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The British lost Benjamin Franklin Jan. 29, 1774. Two years before the
American colonies declared independence during open revolt, Franklin’s loyalty to
the crown was broken and his political thinking began an electrifying evolution.
Formerly lagging behind such young firebrands as John and Samuel Adams,
Franklin’s experience that cold London morning pushed him over some mental
precipice, and his keenly penetrating mind began to develop a political philosophy
outstripping even the most radical thinkers back in the American colonies. This
paper will argue that British insults, arrogance, and assumption of new powers over
the colonies drove Franklin from his position as a loyal colonial advocate to become
the internationally renowned elder statesman of the American Revolution.
Although some aspects of imperial policy troubled him—such as England’s
use of the colonies as a dumping ground for convicts—Franklin was a man who
loved civic order and sought to improve society and himself through existing legal
structures. “He was proud to English,” and, upon his return to London as
Pennsylvania’s agent , he fully expected to be accorded all the rights of an
Englishman.1 He was too much a student of human nature to not expect some
prejudice, but he was confident in his abilities to persuade others to a more
enlightened point of view. Settling into London life he found himself accepted by the
British intelligentsia and many of the leading lights in the House of Commons. This
early reception “prompted thoughts about a glorious future for both Britain and
America.”2 However, events over the next decade would slowly disillusion him.
1 Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin. (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press,
2002), 74.
2 Ibid, 76.

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Perhaps his acceptance had not been as an Englishman from America, but merely
because he personally was such a remarkable man?
Franklin’s initial stint in Britain as a colonial agent (he was representing the
Pennsylvania Assembly in a fracas with the Penn family over land taxes) provided
the opportunity for a personal journey that significantly reinforced his affection for
Britain.3 He and his son William journeyed to the ancestral Franklin home of
Northamptonshire in 1758, allowing Franklin to meet his cousins and even hear
tales of his uncle, Thomas Franklin. Thomas had remained in England when his
brother Josiah (Franklin’s father) headed to the New World. While his father had
been an intellectually limited man, Franklin’s Uncle Thomas had been something of
an inventor and even elder statesman around Northamptonshire. Thomas Franklin
was a self-made man whose life mirrored Benjamin Franklin’s own pull-himself-up
rise from poverty. After this visit, Franklin and William journeyed to the ancestral
home of Franklin’s wife, Deborah, becoming even more deeply immersed in the
roots of Franklin’s British heritage. The completion of these personal pilgrimages
coincided with the news of several old friends’ death back in Philadelphia, leading
Franklin to strongly consider a permanent relocation to England. 4
Franklin’s laissez-faire attitude toward British actions was therefore
understandably hard to shake off. In early 1764—only seven years before the
Battles of Lexington and Concord—Franklin learned of the proposed direct taxes
Parliament was planning to impose on the American colonies. Franklin was back
3 H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. (New
York, Anchor Books, 2000), 298.
4 Ibid., 300.

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home in Philadelphia during a break in his long service in London “mending political
fences” that had been broken as he fought the powerful Penn family on behalf of the
Pennsylvania legislature before the king’s Privy Council.5 Upon learning of what
would become the Stamp Act of 1765, Franklin “was indifferent,”6 merely writing his
London contacts that heavy taxation on America would cut revenue to London by
making capital scarce in the colonies.
Hard-liners in America were already drawing a firm line in the proverbial
sand. Men with names that would one day be famous, such as John Hancock, Samuel
Adams, and John Adams, were well ahead of Franklin in protesting the new taxes as
a violation of their rights. These hardliners maintained their colonial charters came
directly from the king, and therefore Parliament had no authority to tax them.
Franklin’s tendency to be diplomatic and advocate for compromise “made the
impatient younger men suspicious of him, thinking him timid, lacking in the
forcefulness necessary to defend American interests.”7
This did not mean Franklin had not thought about inter-colonial unity before,
but the context he operated in was the French and Indian War. In 1754, Franklin
was Pennsylvania’s representative to a convention of seven colonies. The delegates
met in Albany, N.Y., to discuss creating some form of confederation to defend
themselves during the war. Franklin developed an outline for a plan consisting of a
king-appointed military governor general who would act as the executive authority
fulfilling legislative measures passed by a grand council made up of colonial
5 Don Cook, The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785.
(New York, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), 56.
6 Ibid., 57.
7 Ibid., 58.

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representatives (note here the king-appointed military governor; Franklin’s
insistence on the king’s authority over the colonies would become key to his
arguments as the American crisis developed). In fact, it was during this Albany
conference that the drawing of a dismembered, eight-segmented snake first
appeared. Each segment was labeled with the name of a colony, and the whole
snake was surmounted by the words “Join or Die.” Often “characterized as the first
political cartoon in America,” and attributed to Franklin, this snake demonstrated
that Franklin was already thinking in terms of uniting the colonies in common
cause.8 Variations of this snake, with 13 segments, would later appear as the
rebellion gathered steam in 1775 and 1776. The Albany plan came to nothing, but
the seed was planted firmly in Franklin’s mind.
However, at the time the Stamp Act was proposed, Franklin firmly remained
in the reconciliationist camp. Franklin’s deep ties to the political intercourse
between the mother country and American colonies were literally embodied in the
body of Franklin’s own son, William. Franklin beamed with pride as William took
office as the royal governor of New Jersey in 1763. Perhaps Franklin saw this
paternal tie to a colonial royal office as emblematic of the dream he had long
espoused, the dream of “a triumphant British Empire uniting Britain and America.”9
Franklin believed making this dream a reality was simplicity itself: the colonies only
needed direct representation in Parliament.
8 Brands, 234.
9 Thomas Fleming, The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers. (New York, Harper,
2009), 90.

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As the proposed Stamp Act wound its way through Parliament in late 1764,
Franklin floated a proposed alternative to his contacts. Avoiding the sticky question
of Parliament’s right to tax the colonies without granting them representation,
Franklin suggested Parliament authorize paper currency for the colonies. Issuing
this currency at interest would generate the revenue Parliament sought without
taxing the colonies directly and would be an easier burden for the colonies to bear.
The advantage to Franklin’s idea was that the people most affected by this plan
would be merchants and the wealthy, people used to using money and paying
interest rates. The Stamp Act favored by Prime Minster Lord Grenville would affect
“people often without much money.”10 Hitting these people with a tax on items of
necessity, such as legal documents, was pretty much guaranteed to generate unrest.
Franklin’s alternative came to nothing; the Stamp Act passed.
Franklin then helped endanger his own reputation after Lord Grenville
awarded him the right to name the stamp commissioner for Pennsylvania. By
naming a commissioner, indeed, by showing any support for the Stamp Act, Franklin
created the impression he was firmly on the British side of the issue, not merely a
man making the best of a bad situation. Franklin completely “misgauged the
reaction to the Stamp Act.”11 His long years in England might have desensitized him
to public opinion back in the colonies because the explosive anger erupting from
across the Atlantic completely caught him off guard. In fact, his attempt to work
within the system imposed on the colonies led some to actually accuse Franklin of
10 Brands, 361.
11 Ibid., 364.

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authoring the Stamp Act! He took pains to refute this charge in a letter to Joseph
Galloway, characterizing the indictment as “infamous false Accusations (sic).”12
Despite these bizarre allegations, Franklin was taking up his pen in 1765 to
quell the anti-American hyperbole sweeping British political discourse. It was not
easy; the angry radicals in America fueled the controversy he was attempting to
quell. Although most riots in the colonies were almost ritualized (loud mobs of
demonstrators parading and burning effigies), some were not.13 The destruction of
Lt. Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s home by a Boston mob in 1765 provided the
anti-American factions in Parliament evidence that the colonies were already in
revolt and must be dealt with sternly. Franklin’s insistence the colonies “have not
the least desire of independence” was not as powerful an argument as it might
otherwise have been.14 Despite this, Franklin was not about to give up on his dream
of a true union of England and America in the houses of Parliament…yet. Even as
late as 1766, in the middle of the Stamp Act turmoil, Franklin “found Britain more
congenial in many respects that Pennsylvania.”15
In both person and print Franklin strove to thread the needle between
growing American radicalism and increasing British pugnaciousness. He authored
numerous pieces aimed at London publications that printed sympathetic accounts
of the colonists. In person he strove to present the majority of colonists as
12 Benjamin Franklin, letter to Joseph Galloway, Nov. 8, 1766. Franklin: Writings.
(New York, The Library of America, 1987), 821.
13 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution. (New York, Vintage
Books, 1993), 91.
14 Benjamin Franklin, “Invectives Against the Americans,” Dec. 28, 1765. Franklin:
Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 564.
15 Brands, 372.

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moderates who should not be considered guilty by association with the few who
were rioting. Despite this, Franklin’s lobbying was slowly but surely leading him to
become the de facto spokesman “not only for Pennsylvania, but for all the American
colonies in their growing antagonism to the mother country.”16 The loyal British
subject was steadily identifying himself more and more as an American.
This shift in Franklin’s thinking and status was clearly evident as he took his
place to answer questions and testify before the House of Commons on the Stamp
Act’s effects on American trade and American attitudes. Arguably Franklin’s “finest
hour” during his long service in London, the testimony he gave in February 1766
would be critical to the repeal of the Stamp Act.17
Franklin’s testimony was not entirely spontaneous. The British government
was looking for a reason to repeal the act, but the terms of the repeal were the
critical point. The government needed a better reason to repeal the act than the
rioting that had scarred New York and Boston. “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 needs admirably.”18 However, Franklin’s testimony was not confined to
the situation in Pennsylvania. The questions from friendly MPs were clearly
prepared in advance—and covered the gamut of all the American colonial
16 Fleming, 93.
17 Cook, 92.
18 Brands, 374.

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experience. Franklin presented the “state of the American mind and the American
spirit.”19
Franklin’s love of the British was starting to strain. He was slowly
discovering the English were growing to view their colonial counterparts not as
fellow subjects with equal rights, but as inferiors. “In fact, it was the English on the
home island who first and most often invoked the term ‘Americans’ to refer to the
far-removed colonists. For sophisticated Englishmen, the term ‘American’ often
conjured up images of unrefined, if not barbarous, persons.”20
The growing arrogance of Parliament decapitated Franklin’s sense of respect
for that legislative body. However, he was still fiercely loyal to the king. During his
testimony, he had asserted that the colonies had the sole right to tax themselves…at
the behest of the king. Unwittingly, Franklin had opened a window into the
significant step his political evolution had taken, as well as proposed a new way to
look at the empire: the colonies were loyal directly to the king, and each colonial
legislature was co-equal to Parliament in its authority to legislate for that colony (in
fact, Franklin inadvertently predicted the form British Empire would ultimately take
in the 20th century). Unfamiliar with George III’s hand in shaping the Stamp Act
itself, Franklin operated under the impression that the ministers in Parliament were
the antagonists of the piece, but that “the king could do no wrong.”21
The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766 and imperial harmony
prevailed…briefly.
19 Ibid., 377.
20 Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. (New York, The
Penguin Press, 2004), 113-114.
21 Ibid, 121.

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Although the crisis seemed to be averted the underlying irritant remained:
Parliament had asserted its right to tax the colonies during the Stamp Act repeal,
and again the colonies resisted this assertion. It was only a matter of time before
something upset this most fragile of apple carts. Charles Townshend rose to the
occasion, intent on both defending Parliament’s right to tax and teaching the
Americans a lesson in humility. However, this relatively new Chancellor of the
Exchequer seems to believe he found a way to assert Parliamentary authority
without causing agitation in America by using Franklin’s own proposal that
“external taxes” (duties on imported goods) were not odious to the colonials.22 He
drew up schedule of new duties on paper, pigments for paints, lead, glass, and (most
famously for American history) tea.
This new schedule of duties would have caused controversy no matter what.
Franklin had been attempting to navigate very narrow waters during his lobbying
efforts and his testimony before the House of Commons. His distinction between
external taxes (import duties) and “internal taxes” (direct taxation to raise revenue)
were not universally shared in the colonies. Franklin found it an expedient
argument to use in attempting to sway British public opinion to the colonial cause,
but like all expedients, it had the potential to backfire…and it did. Townshend
subsequently based his case for the new duties on Franklin’s own argument! How
could the colonists object to duties? Duties, after all, were not “internal taxes.”
However, Townshend’s new duties went well beyond merely raising money from
imports; the new duties were earmarked to provide the salaries of royal governors
22 Brands, 389.

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and other officials. “The effect of this, as Townshend intended and the Americans
immediately recognized, would be to free royal governors and other royal officials
from the control of the local assemblies, which heretofore had paid their salaries.”23
Townshend’s intention to remove economic power over royal officials from
the colonists was not born in a vacuum. For instance, Townshend was newly
appointed to the Board of Trade in 1749 “when a long brewing crisis erupted in
New Jersey.”24 The colonial legislature refused to pay the salary of the royal
governor due to his refusal to print paper money. The Board of Trade eventually
threatened to install a new governor and pay his salary themselves. This never
came to pass, but the Board, and Townshend, saw the advantages of royal officials
freed from financial thralldom to colonial legislatures. Townshend would attempt
to implement this in 1767 with his new duties.
Another target Townshend aimed to hit was severe punishment of New York
for its contumacious refusal to support the Quartering Act of 1765. The Quartering
Act required the colonies to provide money for supplies and billets in order that the
British Army might quarter and operate in that area. New York argued that, since
most of the British Army was located within New York, it bore an unfair and
overlarge burden. Part of New York’s reaction to this act was not merely based on
the economic burden of the Quartering Act, it was that the act itself as seen as a
precursor to Britain sending troops to American to enforce the Stamp Act at bayonet
point. One aspect Townshend’s overall plan for punishing New York was for the
23 Ibid., 389.
24 Robert J. Chaffin, “The Townshend Acts of 1767.” The William and Mary Quarterly,
Vol. 27, Issue 1 (Jan. 1970), 93.

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king to refuse to assent to any new laws for New York until that recalcitrant colony
complied with the Quartering Act. 25
Although not directly part of the Townshend Acts (in fact, Townshend
ignored this particular issue entirely) the Cabinet voted to expand the Admiralty
Courts in America. These courts would help enforce prosecutions of smugglers and
thereby ensure duties were paid. The court at Halifax would be augmented by the
establishment of courts in Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston. The expansion of
the courts certainly helped Townshend’s cause along even as it helped the forces of
colonial rebellion along.26
Franklin’s reaction was strong and quite unambiguous. He took up his pen
immediately and drafted a long letter “To the Printer” outlining the coming storm in
America, especially regarding the issue of salaries for the royal officials. He began
by pointing out that royal governors were usually not native sons of America. These
were men who were imposed on the colonies by the king. The only tie these officials
had to their colonies was the fact their salaries were dependent on the colonial
legislature. However, “if by means of these forced duties, government is to be
supported in America, without the intervention of the Assemblies, their Assemblies
will soon be looked upon as useless, and a governor will not call them…thus the
people will be deprived of their most essential rights.”27
In the space of a year, from the repeal of the Stamp Act (1765) to the
imposition of the Townshend Acts (1767) Franklin’s patience with Britain was
25 Chaffin, 105.
26 Ibid., 111.
27 Benjamin Franklin, “To the Printer,” 1768. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The
Library of America, 1987), 611.

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severely shaken. More than this, Franklin, the great advocate of a true political
union between Britain and America, was already foreseeing the split that would
come in the next decade. Writing to his friend, Scottish High Court Justice Lord H. H.
Kames, Franklin lamented the appalling lack of wisdom in Britain that was steadily
severing colonial loyalty.28 Franklin was prescient enough to see the end result of
Parliament and the Cabinet’s actions, even if he had not quite been pushed over the
edge himself. That signal event was coming…but it was still in his future.
Franklin’s efforts between 1768 and 1771 seemed to border on the
desperate. Here was a man frantically searching for a means to keep his cherished
empire intact. “Franklin had tried in virtually every way he knew how to change the
views of king, royal boards and councils, and Parliament,” but so far nothing had
worked.29 He had used reasoned argument; he had lobbied the most influential men
in person. He wrote letters (both anonymous and by name) to printers all over
Britain and America.
In 1769, Franklin’s writings became very caustic, yet still clung to the
Englishman’s ultimate affection for the king. That one tie still bound him to the Old
World. He increasingly predicated his arguments on the basis of loyalty to King
George III as the foundation for resistance to Parliament’s unwise usurpation of
American rights: “That being loyal subjects to their sovereign, the Americans think
28 Edwin S. Gaustad, Benjamin Franklin. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 72.
Ebook; accessed Sept. 9, 2014.
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/ehost/detail?sid=3158dbd8-39cf-
483d-861f-9ab54611e71f@sessionmgr115&vid=0#db=nlebk&AN=161237
29 Ibid., 79.

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they have a good right to enjoy offices under him in America, as a Scotchman has in
Scotland, or an Englishman in England.”30
Again, in 1770, Franklin continued to base his advocacy on loyalty to the
king: “Much abuse has lately been thrown out against the Colonies, by the Writers
for the American part of our Administration. Our Fellow Subjects there are
continually represented as Rebels to their Sovereign, and inimical to the British
nation,” (emphasis added).31 In this letter, Franklin refuted charges of rebellion in
the colonies by continuing to point out the resistance had been to acts of Parliament,
not the sovereign authority of King George III. “The Americans were ever attached
to the House of Hanover,” Franklin wrote, but resisted Parliament’s attempt to “raise
a revenue from them without their consent.”32 Even at this late date Franklin was
lone a voice crying in the wind, trying to get English heads to see that keeping
America and Americans pacified meant recognizing Americans were subjects of the
king, not Parliament.
During the ensuring years, Franklin had become not only Pennsylvania’s
agent in London, but also Georgia and New Jersey’s (it is a testament to his
reputation for defending American ideals that colonies from completely opposite
ends of the continent commissioned him). In 1771 Massachusetts voted to make
Franklin it’s agent as well. As such, Franklin had to present his commission to the
Viscount Hillsborough, head of the American Department in Lord North’s
30 Benjamin Franklin, “To the Printer,” Jan. 17, 1769. Franklin: Writings. (New York,
The Library of America, 1987),
31 Benjamin Franklin, “The Rise and Present State of Our Misunderstanding,” Nov. 8,
1770. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America, 1987), 659.
32 Ibid., 660.

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government. Hillsborough was already known to be hostile to colonial interests; in
fact, he had “set up a secret committee of the Privy Council to undertake a full secret
examination of colonial affairs and to make recommendations for future action.”33
Upon presenting his newest credentials, Franklin was rebuffed by
Hillsborough. According to Franklin’s account, Hillsborough told Franklin that only
the royal governors could give their assent to a colonial agent after signing a bill
passed by the assembly. Franklin’s responded that a signed bill was not needed; an
agent was appointed by simple vote of the assembly. Hillsborough snubbed
Franklin by asserting a new interpretation of the English constitutional system—
that a governor had to approve an agent through a full legislative bill. Even Edmund
Burke, a member of House of Commons, realized Hillsborough’s position threatened
to inflame the American problem by “giving royal governors veto power over the
appointments of agents” for the colonies.34 Allowing the king’s appointees such
power completely overrode any semblance of the Englishman’s right to be
represented in the government.
Franklin was disillusioned by the interview and the attitudes he found in the
British cabinet. Heretofore he had experienced a sense of importance in imperial
affairs. That sense of importance was rudely dashed. As Franklin understood just
how deeply the anti-American feeling in Parliament ran, he took refuge in his
increasing sense of American loyalty to the king. Following his interview with the
33 Cook, 152.
34 Ibid., 157.

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Viscount Hillsborough, Franklin no longer referred to England as “home.” From
then on, the “home” he talked of and longed for was America.35
While seeking ways to ameliorate the Americans’ plight, Franklin himself
began hinting at the core problem of the British system (even if he himself did not
realize where this line of reasoning would lead him). Writing to the Massachusetts
House of Representatives in July 1773, Franklin wondered how the colonies could
seek redress “when on considers the King’s situation, surrounded by Ministers,
Councellors (sic), and Judges learned in the law, who are all of this Opinion.”36
Though still talking optimistically about the king’s benevolence, Franklin seemingly
contradicted this rosy attitude by pointing out the king needed to get on with his
own Parliament. His answer in this letter was a “strict Union between the Mother
County and the Colonies,” such as that between Britain and Scotland.37
In Oct. 1773 Franklin wrote his son, the governor of New Jersey. He strongly
denied accusations that he had advocated colonial “independency” (sic). In fact, he
actively exhorted his son to encourage the Americans to “avoid all tumults and every
violent measure” that might endanger the legitimacy of American claims. Franklin
then added two sentences that had become all but de rigueur for his written
thoughts on the colonial turmoil: “From a long consideration of the subject, I am
indeed of opinion, that the parliament has no right to make any law whatever,
binding on the colonies. That the king, and not the king, lords, and commons
35 Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin. (New York, The
Penguin Press, 2004), 138.
36 Benjamin Franklin, “A Little Time Must Infallibly Bring Us All We Demand or
Desire,” July 7, 1773.. Franklin: Writings. (New York, The Library of America,
1987), 682.
37 Ibid., 684.

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collectively, is their sovereign, and that the king with their respective parliaments, is
their only legislator (sic).”38 Franklin clung tenaciously to his imperial vision based
around loyalty to King George III.
Finally, that fateful 29th day of January in 1774 arrived.
Late in 1772 Franklin engaged in the dubious tactic of releasing letters he
had obtained from Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts, and
other royal officials, to friends of his back in America. The letters were damaging to
the British because they hardened the colonial sense of oppression. The source of
the leak ignited a firestorm in London that resulted in duel. To prevent further
bloodshed, Franklin went public on Christmas Day 1773. It was a risky decision
because “the consequences for Franklin could not have been graver.”39 He had just
made a public declaration of guilt in mishandling private correspondence. This guilt
was potentially all the more damning because Franklin was the deputy postmaster
for the American colonies—a royal office, if a minor one. Franklin perhaps expected
a measure of censure, but the Hutchison letter affair was quickly swallowed up by
the on-rushing flood of events in America as 1774 dawned over London.
January brought news that colonials had boarded British ships in Boston
Harbor and destroyed a cargo of just-arrived tea. Although the hated Townshend
Acts had largely been repealed, a new act giving favorable duties to tea shipped to
American by the East India Company ignited the firestorm again. Once more the
colonists felt they were being squeezed for money by a distant British Parliament.
38 Benjamin Franklin, Letter to William Franklin, Oct. 6, 1773. Franklin: Writings.
(New York, The Library of America, 1987), 885-886.
39 Kenneth Lawing Penegar, The Political Trial of Benjamin Franklin: A Prelude to the
American Revolution. (New York, Algora Publishing, 2011), 34

18. 17
In most ports, the tea was simply prevented from being landed, but in Boston a
group of men loosely disguised as Mohawk Indians “boarded three British ships in
Boston Harbor and threw overboard some £20,000 worth of tea.”40
The British were furious, and Parliament reacted aggressively against the
man they had come to identify as the primary agitator in their midst: Benjamin
Franklin. Franklin had initially been summoned before the Privy Council on Jan. 11
over the Hutchinson letter affair, but he said he would need three weeks for his legal
counsel to prepare a proper defense. During that three-week interval, news of the
Boston Tea Party arrived. As Franklin entered the hearing that fateful January 29th,
“the ostensible reason for the hearing had almost been forgotten.”41 One of the
interesting facts of this hearing was that it was not a trial at all; it not civil or
criminal in character. It was to be a hearing on the colonial problems (including
Franklin’s admission of the Hutchinson letter affair) and the reading of a petition by
the colonies for redress. However, Solicitor general Alexander Wedderburn seized
the chance to pin the entire history of the agitation in the colonies, and particularly
Massachusetts, on Franklin. This was no surprise to the assembled crowd. “Those
who knew his courtroom or parliamentary reputation could predict that
Wedderburn would go beyond where prudence would dictate.”42
It is unclear how much of this Franklin expected. He knew of Wedderburn’s
reputation, but Wedderburn’s function that day was merely to present the history of
the colonial upheavals, Franklin’s own duplicity in the Hutchinson affair, and then
40 Frank W. Thackeray, Events that Changed America in the Eighteenth Century.
(Wesport, Conn.; Greenwood Press, 1998), 81.
41 Brands, 469.
42 Penegar, 76.

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make a recommendation for the Privy Council to carry to the king. Whatever
Franklin, or others, expected, Wedderburn turned the proceedings into a personal
vendetta against the colonial agent standing before him. His tirade against Franklin
lasted nearly an hour. The exact words he spat at Franklin are largely lost to
history; even the scandal-loving British press found Wedderburn’s language “too
foul or libelous” for printing.43
“The abuse heaped on Franklin by Alexander Wedderburn that day was
extensive and intentionally demeaning.”44 Apparently no one else at the council was
concerned with appearances, nor the impropriety of turning a hearing on colonial
issues into a thorough roasting of one man. Even Franklin’s own lawyer did not
raise an objection to Wedderburn’s breach of the points of order that normally
prevailed during Privy Council hearings. Wedderburn’s unopposed and
inappropriate assault was perhaps allowed because it provided a release of
collective British anger at their wayward colonial subjects, but this did not mean all
British leaders approved. Men such as Edmund Burke and Lord Shelburne found
the spectacle an appalling breach of propriety and procedure. Within weeks of the
attack, Wedderburn was being castigated even by the British press.
Franklin remained silent, almost statue-like. He betrayed no emotion. As the
true character of the hearing became evident to him, he simply put on a veritable
mask and did not give the politically blood-thirsty crowd the joy of seeing him react.
Once Wedderburn was done, the Privy Council, as expected, stripped Franklin of his
postmastership. The ordeal outraged Franklin because it seemed to encapsulated
43 Brands, 471.
44 Penegar, 83.

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“the wicked folly of a government that would cut off its nose to spite its face.”45 It
also snapped Franklin’s remaining, if fragile, sense of loyalty to his formerly beloved
king. For nearly a decade he had advocated ways to strengthen the British Empire,
and this was the result?
Even while working against obnoxious legislation like the Stamp Act and the
Townshend Acts Franklin had been careful to stay within the British legal system
and always counseled his fellow Americans to do the same. He had consistently
professed his and America’s loyalty to the king and offered solutions to the
constitutional problems he saw upsetting the British ship of state. He had even
decried the Boston Tea Party and encouraged his fellow Americans to pay for the
property they had destroyed! By 1774, however, Franklin had reached the point of
no return. “There was nothing for honest Americans in the empire but illegitimate
insult and unwarranted condemnation.”46
Franklin suffered the political wrath he did partly as a result of his role as
agent of the colonies. He was the messenger; his was the task of going before
Parliament and presenting colonial petitions, grievances, etc. It is not surprising
therefore the British came to equate him with the colonial grievances he carried.
Still, he was justified in his own personal censure of the British authorities. Had any
of them put passion aside and at least looked at him and his personal conduct right
up until the fiasco before the Privy Council, they would have seen a loyal, if
unorthodox, British subject. Franklin was “a latecomer to the Americans’
45 Brands, 475.
46 Ibid., 476.

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intransigent assertion of rights. Negotiation was more to his taste.”47 Nevertheless,
he shot himself in the proverbial foot because he insisted on openly acting—albeit
within the imperial system—on his belief that Parliament was wrong and his fellow
Americans were right.
By 1774, on the eve of his appearance before the Privy Council, Franklin
found it a self-evident truth that the only way to save the empire was for Parliament
to renounce all legislative authority over the colonies. The goodwill of the
Americans for the king was the glue holding the empire together; Parliament’s
attempt to usurp the rights and authority of colonial assemblies was steadily
breaking that last tie. Yet, despite his growing doubts about Parliament and his
growing identification as an American, Franklin truly seems to have been clueless
just how firmly Parliament had dug its heels in. “He could scarcely believe…that the
people who mattered in England would continue to leave their government in the
hands of men who could not see something so obvious.”48 Until that last, fatal
moment in front of the Privy Council, Franklin wanted to believe the kind’s
benevolent hand would halt the onrush to calamity. Walking out of the Privy
Council, Franklin left his faith in the empire and the king behind forever. Although
he met with British leaders over the year 14 months, he was inflexible now,
maintaining the only condition for reconciliation was for Parliament to back off
completely. There was no middle ground. Even the king ceased to be a factor in his
arguments for colonial rights. The British government would, of course, never
accept this condition.
47 Morgan, 189.
48 Ibid., 201-202.

22. 21
Franklin departed Britain the next year, never to return.
The British lost Benjamin Franklin Jan. 29, 1774. Two years before the
American colonies declared independence during open revolt, Franklin’s loyalty to
the crown was broken and his political thinking began an electrifying evolution.
Formerly lagging behind such young firebrands as John and Samuel Adams,
Franklin’s experience that cold London morning pushed him over some mental
precipice, and his keenly penetrating mind began to develop a political philosophy
outstripping even the most radical thinkers back in the American colonies. The
years of increasing British insults had eroded his loyalty until the abuse he suffered
before the Privy Council snapped the last cords of affection he held for the empire.
The experience showed Franklin—two full years before the States in Congress
assembled agreed to it—that “to independence America must come.”49
49 Brands, 7.

23. 1
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Brands, H. W., The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. New
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Chaffin, Robert J., “The Townshend Acts of 1767.” The William and Mary Quarterly,
Vol. 27, Issue 1 (Jan. 1970).
Cook, Don, The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785. New
York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.
Fleming, Thomas, The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers. New York: Harper,
2009.
Franklin, Benjamin, Franklin: Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1987.
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Penegar, Kenneth Lawing, The Political Trial of Benjamin Franklin: A Prelude to the
American Revolution. New York: Algora Publishing, 2011.
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