the city that Dr. Franklin had been soundly castigated by Wedderbern, removed from his office, &c. These rumors only indicated a foregone conclusion; for such was precisely the course which matters took on the examination. Mr. Danning and Mr. John Lee, two eminent barristers, engaged by Dr. Franklin, appeared as counsel for the Massachusetts House of Representatives, producing and reading copies of the famous letters in support of the petition. Mr. Wedderbern followed in an eloquent, artful, and sarcastic speech, bitterly abusing Dr. Franklin, who stood consciously erect and bore it all, apparently unmoved. On this occasion he was dressed in a full suit of Manchester spotted velvet-a circumstance which, of no consequence in itself, has been noted, because he preserved the same suit, and wore it when he signed the treaties of commerce and alliance with France, thus indicating that he felt more than he permitted himself to betray, and that he saw more events in the future than he allowed himself to predict. As Wedderbern proceeded, the members of the council frequently laughed outright, and so far forgot decorum as to cry "Hear! hear!" At no time in his life was he more bitterly and cruelly insulted. He remarked to a friend the next day that "he had never before been so sensible of the power of a good conscience; for that if he had not considered the thing for which he had been so much insulted as one of the best actions of his life, and what he should certainly do again in the like circumstances, he could not have supported it." The petition of the Assem

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bly of Massachusetts for the dismissal of the governor and lieutenant-governor was dismissed as groundless, vexatious, and scandalous, and calculated only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the said province." On the Monday morning following, Dr. Franklin received his notice of removal from the office of postmaster in the provinces. This he had looked for; but not for the artful mode in which it was made to appear a personal disgrace, and an endorsement of the malice of his enemies. He had been injured, also, in his resources by an order from the ministry to the governor of Massachusetts, to sign no warrant on the colonial treasury for his expenses as agent. How Dr. Franklin viewed the course of the ministry toward him is shown in the following squib, published by him anonymously in the Public Advertiser:

"SIR: Your correspondent Britannicus inveighs violently against Dr. Franklin for his ingratitude to the ministry of this nation, who have conferred upon him so many favors. They gave him the post-office of America; they made his son a governor; and they offered him a post of five hundred a year in the Salt-office, if he would relinquish the interests of his country; but he had the wickedness to continue true to it, and is as much an American as ever. As it is a settled point in government here that every man has his price, it is plain that they are bunglers in their business, and have not offered him enough

Their master has as much reason to be

angry with nem as Rodrigue in the play with his apothecary, or not effectually poisoning Pandolpho, and they must probably make use of the apothecary's justification, viz.:

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Rodrigue. You promised to have this Pandolpho upon his bier in less than a week; 'tis now more than a month since, and he still walks and stares me in the face.

"Fell. True; and yet I have done my best endeavors. In various ways I have given the miscreant as much poison as would have killed an elephant. He has swallowed dose after dose; far from hurting him, he seems the better for it. He hath a wonderful strong constitution. I find I can not kill him but by cutting his throat, and that, I take it, is not my business.

"Rodrigue. Then it must be mine.""

There is a singular aptness in the above, when Dr. Franklin is known as the author. It lets us into the light in which he regarded ministerial overtures and favors. What he did accept would have been poison indeed, and effectual poison, to almost any man else; and that his influence and character were not effectually destroyed with his countrymen by his relations to the British government was not through any forbearance of his enemies. But he survived it all; and what was designed to be the final blow, his removal from the post-office, with its intended ignominy, only produced the effect already described at

the opening of this chapter. His situation now had become more critical in another light. He kept away from the ministerial levees, and virtually resigned his post as agent of Massachusetts, putting his papers into the hands of Mr. Arthur Lee, who was designated as his successor; but he resumed the business of the agency during Mr. Lee's absence on the Continent.

The famous "tea party" occurred in Boston Harbor while the ministry in England were busy with Dr. Franklin. An act had been passed allowing a drawback on teas sent from England to America, of which the effect was to make the article, even with the imposition of the colonial duty, actually cheaper in America than in England. But the colonists, far from swallowing this gilded pill, were exasperated at the attempt to bribe them into a surrender of principle. The views of the proceedings in America, the return of the tea from some ports, and its destruction in Boston, familiarized the public mind to the expectation that blows might result between the mother country and the colonies. The Hutchinson Letters, and the proceedings thereupon, had brought him into a more prominent position than ever, and caused him to be fully identified with the proceedings in America. The ministerial party par ticularly charged this upon him; and his friends, who saw in the accusation only a triumphant refu tat in of the want of patriotism with which his Amer ic in enemies had charged him, were far from eneavoring to disprove the ministerial allegations. He

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had now become anxious to return home, having been absent ten years. But a Continental Congress was called to meet in September, 1774, and Dr. Franklin decided to wait until the spring of 1775 before his return home.

Before the arrival of that time, his desire to revisit America was abated by the afflicting intelligence of the death of his wife. They had been married forty-four years. Much of that time he had been separated from her by his public duties; but in his absence he might almost be said to be present in his household, by the minute, familiar, and affectionate correspondence, specimens of which we have given. In his autobiography he bears testimony to her worth and good qualities, and in his letters before her death and after he makes frequent and affectionate mention of her. While in the society of the great and wise in Europe, his wife and family were frequent subjects of conversation with him; and he seemed to strive always while she lived to make her, in some sense, the sharer of the social pleasures which he found in the families of his European friends. Those friends bear accidental but honorable testimony to his affection as a husband and a father, in the tokens of their remembrance which they commissioned him to send his family from persons who loved those connected with their honored guest. While the husband was absent, the wife was his competent and judicious agent. She died December 19th, 1774, and was buried in the cemetery of Christ Church, in the corner bounded by Arch and Fifth streets.