The case of the armed revenue schooner the Gaspé, excited fresh animosity. This vessel had proved very active in enforcing the revenue laws, and was consequently a source of annoyance to the shipping employed in Narragansett Bay. It was determined to destroy this vessel, and when a favorable opportunity offered, she was boarded—June 10th—while aground in a shoal place, and burned, by a party from Providence. Although a reward of £600 was offered for the discovery of the perpetrators of this outrage, and a free pardon to any accomplice, no evidence could be obtained against the parties concerned; a fact which shows, significantly enough, that opposition to the measures and policy of the English government was a settled matter on the part of the colonists.
The unpopularity of Hutchinson was not a little increased by a rather remarkable incident which occurred at this time. Franklin, who was now agent of Massachusetts, had had put into his hands, in some unexplained way, certain letters of Hutchinson and Oliver, written to a member of Parliament, since deceased. In these letters, Hutchinson had spoken very freely of the character and conduct of the popular leaders, and of the necessity of energetic measures being adopted to prevent the progress of " what are called English liberties." Franklin sent these letters to Massachusetts, with the express injunction under which he had laid himself, that they should not be copied or published. The effect produced, by these letters, on the public mind, when, soon after, they had found their way into print, was tremendous, and the General Court, in June, addressed a petition to the king for Hutchinson's speedy removal. Franklin, in the summer of the following year, was violently assailed before the privy council, by Wedderburne, the advocate for Hutchinson, and was charged with being a man of letters indeed, a homo trium literarum! the sting of which biting sarcasm for a long time rankled in the philosopher's mind. The petition for Hutchinson's removal was voted scandalous and vexatious, and Franklin was dismissed from his office of postmaster general.[1]
- ↑ Dr. Hosack, in his "Biographical Memoir of Hugh Williamson, M. D.," read before the New York Historical Society, November, 1819, states that Dr. Williamson was the person who obtained these letters by his bold address, and conveyed them to Franklin. Mr. Sparks, however, is not convinced of the accuracy of this statement. He gives it as his opinion that Dr. Williamson could not have been the person who got possession of the letters, and declares that "the manner in which the letters fell into Franklin's hands was never explained." Franklin never divulged the secret. For a full consideration of the whole matter, see Dr. Franklin's own account, and Mr. Sparks's note upon it, in "Writings of Franklin," vol. iv., p. 441, etc. Also, consult Bancroft, vol vi., p. 435, 490–500.
ient measures, without discussing points of right; ; and he knew that great pains had been taken to persuade the people in England, as well as the ministry, that this was all the people in America expected or desired; and that suspicions of other views, either in the body of the people, or in men who had influence over them, were groundless, and had been caused by misrepresentations of governors, and other crown officers in the colonies, in order to promote their own sinister views. But now, a measure was engaged in, which, if pursued to effect, must cause, not a return of the colonies to their former submission, but a total separation from the kincdom, by their independency upon Parliament, the only band which could keep them united to it."—" History of Massachusetts,"p. 370.
