stead."1 The Governor and Council took no action upon it. The House sent up another message, again exposing the erroneous view which the Governor had presented of his obligation in this case, and concluding with the words: "When we complain, we cannot even be heard 1 we have yet the pleasure of contemplating that posterity, for whom we are now struggling, will do us justice, by abhorring the memory of those men of those men who owe their greatness to their country's ruin.'" And they dismissed the subject with the Resolve "That this House have done all that in the capacity of Representatives of the people in this Court can be done, for the removal of Peter Oliver from the seat in the Superior Court; and it must be presumed that the Governor's refusing to take any measures therein is because he also receives his support from the Crown." The Governor sent the Secretary with a message to prorogue the Court. The House kept its doors closed against him till it had finished some matters of business, among others, an order to the Committee of Correspondence "to write and transmit letters to the other Colonies and to Dr. Franklin, relating to the Chief Justice his receiving a salary from the Crown." Governor Hutchinson never again met a General Court of Massachusetts.

Before this prorogation, two events of interest to the Province, but as yet unknown in it, had taken place on the other side of the water. The relation of the more important of them belongs to a future chapter; the other was the result of the petition for a removal of Hutchinson from his government. Franklin sent to the Earl of Dartmouth the Address of the Representatives of Massachu

1 "The Report of the Lords' Committees appointed by the House of Lords," printed in a separate volume, brings down to this point an account of "the several proceedings in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay

in opposition to the sovereignty of his Majesty in his Parliament of Great Britain over that Province, and also what hath passed in this House relative thereto from the first day of January, 1764.”

1774. Jan.

The

setts, with a request that it might be laid before the King, and in due time a day was appointed for a hearing before the "Committee of the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs." Israel Mauduit, on his petition, was permitted to appear for the defence with counsel, for which service he selected the Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn (afterwards the Lord Chancellor Loughborough). Franklin had for counsel Mr. John Dunning (afterwards Lord Ashburton) and Mr. John Lee (afterwards Solicitor-General). The President of the Council and thirty-five Lords were present at the hearing. authenticity of the letters complained of being admitted. by the defence, though only attested copies were produced, the prosecutors argued that the charges founded upon them by the Representatives of Massachusetts were sufficiently sustained, and that their petition for the removal of the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor was reasonable and should be granted. Mr. Wedderburn maintained that the Governor had" enjoyed the people's confidence, to the very time of the arrival of these letters; that the letters, so far from being justly offensive, "contained the strongest proofs of Mr. Hutchinson's good sense, his great moderation, and his sincere regard to the welfare of that his native Province;" that they were all "written before the time when either of these gentlemen were possessed of the offices from which the Assembly now ask their removal;" and that, instead of what was alleged of "the tendency of these letters to incense the mother country against her Colonies," no endeavors had been spared for several years on the part of agitators in Massachusetts to create that alienation,' and that Hutchinson was maligned and prosecuted by them on account of the steadi

1 Wedderburn supposed Franklin 112-115.) He had probably been to be the author and mover of the led to this opinion by Hutchinson, transactions at the Boston town who afterwards expressed it in his meeting of November, 1772. (Let- History (III. 365). ters of Governor Hutchinson, &c.

ness and vigor of his exertions to hinder that result. But the most emphatic part of his speech was what was aimed directly against Franklin, whom, in the most impassioned terms, it charged with theft in obtaining the letters which he had sent to Boston. This charge, and that of alleged circumstances relating to the act, and aggravating its criminality, he pressed at much length, and with the use of all his extraordinary power of invective. And he further endeavored to discredit Franklin by suggesting that he was prompted by an ambition to succeed to Hutchinson's place. The Lords of the Committee, who repeatedly, during Wedderburn's speech, had been moved to loud laughter by his witty sallies, reported that the petition of the Representatives of Massachusetts ought to be dismissed, being "founded upon resolutions formed upon false and erroneous allegations; and that the same is groundless, vexatious, and scandalous, and calculated only for the seditious purposes of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the said Province." The Lords and Committee did "further humbly report to his Majesty that nothing had been laid before them which does or can, in their opinion, in any manner or in any degree impeach the honor, integrity, or conduct of the said Governor or Lieutenant-Governor." And 1774. the King "was pleased, with the advice of his Privy Council, to approve the Report, and to pass an

Feb.

1 In the course of the inquiry as mortally wounded. Upon this, to how the letters were obtained, Mr. William Whately, brother and executor to Thomas Whately, to whom some of them were addressed, said that he remembered having lent an unexamined parcel of manuscripts to Mr. John Temple. The inference was that the letters in question had been wrongfully communicated by Temple to Franklin, who sent them to America. A duel was the consequence, in which Whately was seriously for a time, it was feared,

-

Franklin published in a newspaper (December 25): "I think it incumbent on me to declare (for the prevention of further mischief, as far as such a declaration may contribute to prevent it) that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question. Mr. W. could not communicate them, because they were never in his possession; and for the same reason they could not be taken from him by Mr. T.”

order accordingly.""

Franklin was forthwith discharged

from his office of Postmaster-General in America, and it is said to have been offered to Hutchinson.

The expected departure of Hutchinson from Massachusetts was for a time delayed by the sudden death of Andrew Oliver; for if neither Governor nor LieutenantGovernor should be in the Province, the chief executive authority would be vested, by the charter, in the Council, which, in existing circumstances, it was not safe to trust. There was nothing for him but to remain till a successor should be appointed and should arrive. Before this release he had taken up his abode at the Castle, yielding to the urgency of his friends, who fancied that he was in personal danger.

1774.

May.

June.

At length General Gage came with a commission as Governor of Massachusetts, and Hutchinson sailed for England. Of course there were no such compliments as had been customary on the departure of a Governor. The Council, the Representatives, and the town of Boston were silent. He received the several addresses of "one hundred and twenty of the merchants and principal gentlemen of the town of Boston, of very reputable characters, of the gentlemen of the law, with three or four exceptions only, of the Episcopal clergy, of the magistrates of the county of Middlesex, of the principal gentlemen of the town of Salem, and of the principal gentlemen of the town of Marblehead, expressing their

1 These proceedings are related in an appendix to the pamphlet published at London in 1774, under the title of The Letters of Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, &c."

For Franklin's account and vindication of his agency in respect to this whole affair, see Sparks, Works of Benjamin Franklin, IV. 405-440; comp. the editor's valuable note thereon, ibid., 441-455; Almon, Prior Documents, 275, who refers to

the similar case of a return from England of a letter from Paul Dudley in 1705 (see above, Vol. IV. 306); Works of John Adams, I. 133, 319; II. 333; Russell, Memorials and Correspondence of Fox, I. 123-126; Lord Fitzwilliam. Correspondence of Burke, I. 453; Mahon, History of England, V. 323-329; Fitz-Maurice, Life of Shelburne, II. 296–298; Correspondence of the Earl of Chatham, IV. 322 et seq.

approbation of his public conduct, and their affectionate wishes for his prosperity; and the magistrates of the county of Plymouth were so polite as to direct an address to be sent to him in England, it not being prepared before he left Boston." 1 But many of the signers, from an altered judgment, or from considerations of prudence, afterwards recanted, and publicly withdrew their names.

Hutchinson never saw his native country again. Soon after his arrival in England, he was presented to the King by Lord Dartmouth, and a remarkable conversation took place. A detailed account of the interview is now in the possession of the Governor's family. He also left to them, in manuscript, a third volume of his History of Massachusetts, bringing down the narrative to the time of his departure from the Province. Of this volume his representative, after much solicitation from this country, consented, fifty years ago, to have a small edition printed in England.

1780.

Hutchinson died suddenly in his retired residence at Brompton, near London, at the age of June, sixty-nine years. After a little time he had ceased to be received with attention at Court, where he was regarded with increasing disfavor as the unsatisfactory progress of the war showed the untrustworthiness of those representations of his which had encouraged it. He mingled, more or less, in the melancholy society of his fellow-exiles. But in this sympathy there was little to sustain a man who had lived like him, and his last years were depressed with the intolerable memories of disappointment and mortification.

Hutchinson may be allowed to have been not the most culpable of those great men of New England who, in the three special crises of her history, abased themselves to take the lead in deserting and withstanding her righteous

1 Hutch., Hist., III. 459.

2 See Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc., 1871, p. 59.