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and made public, on the 18th of June, 1761, that Boone had been transferred to South Carolina on the preceding 14th of April and that Josiah Hardy was to be his successor. On the 7th of July, 1761, the Assembly presented their last address in which they expressed their high appreciation of his conduct as Governor, spoke of his administration as "not only unsullied, but publicly kind and benevolent, such an administration as yours demands our grateful acknowledgments." He left for his new government in December, 1761, and entered upon his duties there early in January, 1762, but did not succeed in Carolina and was recalled in May, 1764. He was a man of some humor, as several of his letters still preserved, written to Horatio Gates, afterwards at Major General in the colonial service, will show. He married in South Carolina, and writing afterwards, in 1767, to General Gates, with whom he was in constant correspondence, speaks of his family in this manner: "I hope to have an opportunity of presenting my Yamasee squaw to Mrs. Gates and the papooses when a little more civilized." He made no serious impression on the politics of the colony while in New Jersey. Two of his proclamations still remain; one, naming the 24th of October, 1760, as a day of thanksgiving, and the other forbidding any person to become a schoolmaster, after the year in which the proclamation was issued, without a license from him, granted on the certificate of two magistrates, who are especially directed not to issue such certificates without being fully satisfied of the qualifications of the candidates.

Prior to the appointment of Franklin as Governor, there had been a deep seated feeling of uneasiness which extended to all the thirteen colonies. Mutterings of discontent were heard all over the land. Some out-spoken voices protested with no uncertain sound. The uneasiness was fast increasing and rapidly verging into an outbreak of open rebellion. It did not begin with the Stamp Act, nor with the disregard of the rights of the colonists in being taxed without representation.

When the early settlers first came to America, they fled from oppression at home and fondly hoped that in this western world they would be permitted to live unmolested. In their fierce battle for mere existence, their contests with the savage wilderness and with the more savage Indian, they received no aid from the mother country and they asked for none. And when the territory in America, claimed by the English was threatened with invasion, these same colonists stepped manfully to the front, furnished men and money, and unassisted, repelled the invader. The English stood aloof; promised aid, but gave

none. The well appointed fleets of England were anchored, idle, in the home port, while the ill equipped vessels of the colonists were attacking forts and the lives of their bravest and best were sacrificed for an ungrateful monarch. This wicked supineness, this selfish indifference, of the English king and ministry, in neglecting to assist the struggling colonists, fighting for the preservation of British territory, was never forgotten. Promises unfulfilled, made in the most. solemn manner, provoked in the minds of the thinking men of the colonies a doubt of the integrity of the mother country. What could be expected from a nation that suffered its own children to brave and dare so much in fighting its battles, without acknowledging their sacrifice or ever fulfilling its solemn promises of aid?

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The colonies increased in population and launched out in mercantile. and commercial enterprises, which betokened strength and energy, and suggested to the English that this people might become their rival in the near future. The British ministry also awaked to the consciousness that in this flourishing country might certainly be found a source of revenue, and set about devising measures to control the budding enterprises of their subjects in America, so as to divert any profit derived therefrom into the treasury of the kingdom try occupied by the colonists had an immense seaboard, great rivers, fertile valleys and boundless timber lands. God and Nature seemed to have created this continent for the development of a mighty nation. With blind fatuity that destroyed the very source of expected wealth, the British Ministry instituted a series of measures which stung and maddened the citizens who breathed the free air of this great country, and finally drove them into rebellion.

In establishing the authority of the English Ministry in New Jersey, William Franklin, the son of one of the grandest patriots of those times, became a facile tool. It is difficult to understand why, with such an ancestry, he should so far have fallen short of the high destiny which he might have attained, but it is, perhaps, to be attributed to the mediocrity of his character and talents, which made him subservient to those whom he thought would be undoubted victors in the contest.

When he was appointed, great doubts were expressed in many quarters, of his ability to perform the duties of the position to which he was called. He was made Governor at a very critical period in the history of New Jersey. Although, in prior years, the colonists in that province had been loyal to the core, yet the time had now come when

that loyalty was shaken and, in the near future, was to be lost to the English King. A Governor of ability, of moderation, of firmness and of wisdom, might, perhaps, have achieved a different result. But Franklin did not possess the qualifications necessary to enable him to meet the stirring issues of the time.

There is great difficulty in arriving at the time and the place of his birth, nor is it known who was his mother. Very little can be learned of his early youth, although he was received into his father's family when about a year old, and was under his fostering care until he attained his majority. In his earlier years he showed quite a fondness for books, but, later, sought a military career, even going so far as to make an attempt, clandestinely, to enter the Naval service in a privateer. Before he was of age he received a commission in the forces raised by Pennsylvania, in the French war. His commission was for a subordinate office, but he soon rose to the rank of Captain. He served for a short time on the frontier and then, returning to Philadelphia, became an assistant to his father in his scientific experiments and professional work. For two years, from 1754 to 1756, he was in the general Post Office, of which the elder Franklin had the management, as Post Master General, and was also Clerk of the General Assembly. In June, 1757, his father went to London, having been ap pointed colonial agent in England, and Franklin went with him. The business, as well as the inclination of the elder Franklin, led him to make frequent journeys over the continent and through England and Scotland, on which occasions he was accompanied by his son, who thus acquired great social and mental improvement from the society and conversation of men of science and learning whom he was constantly meeting. In 1762 the University of Oxford conferred the degree of LL.D. upon Benjamin Franklin, and that of A. M. upon his son. It was in the same year that through the influence of Lord Bute, without any solicitation whatever from his father, William - Franklin was appointed Governor of New Jersey. It is said that Lord Halifax, then Minister of American affairs, submitted him to a close examination, this being deemed necessary mainly on account of his having been born in the colony.

Franklin was commissioned Governor on the 9th day of September, 1762, and reached New Jersey, February 24, 1763, coming direct from England. He met the Legislature at Amboy for the first time, May 26, 1763, when Robert Ogden from Essex County, who had just been

elected Speaker, was presented to him, and he was graciously pleased to recognize the appointment. At the same time he made an address to the Legislature, as was always usual with a new Governor. The speech was short, common place and suggested nothing of importance except the statement made by all prior Governors, with one notable exception, that it was desirable to make provision for the expenses of the Government, which included, of course, his own salary. He gave general promises of what his action would be, but distinctly. avowed that he should at all times govern his course by his duty to his "Gracious Majesty." He was wise in one direction;-he gathered around him, as members of his Council, some of the wisest and best men of the province. Among them were Robert Hunter Morris, Chief Justice and Charles Read, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the province; David Ogden, an eminent lawyer of Essex County, and afterwards also, an Associate Justice of the same court; Samuel Smith, the first historian of New Jersey; Peter Kemble, a prominent citizen. of Morris County and the Earl of Sterling, a Major General in the colonial army during the War of the Revolution. Subsequently, Richard Stockton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, took the place of a deceased member, on the recommendation of the Governor Cortlandt Skinner, at one time Attorney General of the Colony, later on, also became a Councillor. Abler or more competent men never met together in a legislative body than was the Council during the whole of Franklin's administration. It was generally in accord with the other two branches of the Legislature, never evincing a captious spirit and never disagreeing with either, except in essential mat

ters.

The second act of the Assembly, passed after the meeting with Franklin, was friendly and generous to him. It provided for the payment of a salary of £1200 to the Governor and £60 besides for his house rent. The first act related to those volunteers, during the French War, who had become disabled by wounds, and made provision for the payment of indemnities to many of them.

Franklin and the Assembly, as well as the Council, made frequent interchange of addresses. It was generally the case that some member of the Legislature was a Quaker and objection was frequently made by him to the style of the address; the matter was approved, but complaint was made of the manner. To the people of these modern times, whether Quakers.or not, the objection would appear proper,

for the speeches were fulsome to the last degree and so continued, even after the trouble between the colonies and Great Britain had broken out into actual rebellion. They always began with this formula: "We, his Majesty's loyal and dutiful subjects" and the last speech made by the Legislature to the Governor which appears in the record of the Council, begins, as usual, with those words and besides, recognizes Franklin as the royal Governor and calls their address "the humble address of the Representatives of the Colony." But with all this apparent subservience all through the addresses within the last five or six years prior to the time the colonists proclaimed their freedom from the mother country, was to be found an unmistakable sentiment of sturdy independence and an undoubted adherence to the cause of liberty. In their expression of a determination to secure freedom from oppression there could be no mistake and it is plainly evident that Franklin so understood it. There was a party in both Council and Legislature, during the whole of Franklin's rule, who were loyalists and who sympathized with him in his adherence to the English crown. This party was not in the majority, but it was by no means insignificant. The Speaker of the Assembly, Cortlandt Skinner, did not hesitate, in 1775, when he presented the "humble address” of “his Majesty's loyal and dutiful subjects," which he had signed as Speaker, to declare that the speech "being different from my sentiments, I think it necessary thus publicly to declare it—a step I should not have taken had I been permitted to enter my dissent on the minutes of the House." While many causes of complaint existed against the mother country, there were two which came to the front almost immediately after Franklin was made Governor. One was the Navigation Act, the other the Stamp Act. The first did not directly affect New Jersey. There were no ports to receive foreign commerce in that colony; Perth Amboy had sunk into utter insignificance as a port of entry and the bright hopes its founders had entertained of its becoming a rival to New York in commercial enterprise, were blasted. New Jersey was obliged to depend almost entirely upon New York and Philadelphia for its foreign. trade. But that act did materially affect Boston and New York. Massachusetts was ablaze, and the other colonies sympathized with her and spoke out in loud protest against the oppression perpetrated by the officers of the crown in attempting to enforce its provisions. Application was made to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, for a process, called a "writ of assistance," to be issued enabling the officers of the

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