uary, 1774, I had never attended the levee of any minister. I made no justification of myself from the charges brought against me; I made no return of the injury by abusing my adversaries; but held a cool, sullen silence, reserving myself to some future opportunity; for which ever, became known, and a petition was sent by the Massachusetts assembly to the crown asking for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver, the latter being chief-justice. The petition was heard on January 20, 1774; and Wedderburn, afterwards Lord Chancellor Loughborough, appeared in opposition to the petition, and availed himself of the opportunity to pour on Franklin, who was standing at the bar, a torrent of abuse which was as malignant as it was coarse. Turning to Franklin, whose philosophical attainments he ridiculed and whose political character he denounced, he pointed him out as a thief, to the delight of Sandwich and officials of his type, who signified their approval by loud and jeering laughter, in which even Gower, the president of the council, joined. Franklin listened apparently unmoved. It is said that eight years afterwards, when he signed the preliminaries of peace by which the independence of the United States was recognized, he wore the coat that he had on when insulted by Wedderburn. I endeavored, in the appendix to the second edition of my digest of international law, to show that this tradition is without foundation; and on its face it seems unlikely that a display so dramatic would have been made by Franklin, to whose nature dramatic or histrionic display was peculiarly foreign.

Lord Campbell (6 Lives of Lord Chancellors, 104) attaches extraordinary consequence to this affront. "I now come to his (Wedderburn's) memorable contest with Benjamin Franklin.

The babe that was unborn might rue

The speaking of that day.'

*

"It mainly conduced to the civil war which soon followed, and to the dismemberment of the empire, by exciting overweening arrogance on the one side, and rankling revenge on the other. Had Franklin been soothed instead of being insulted, America might have been saved. As yet, though eager for the redress of the wrongs of his transatlantic brethren, he professed, and I believe he felt, respect and kindness for the mother country, and a desire that all differences between them might be honorably adjusted. A petition to the king was unanimously agreed to [in the Massachusetts assembly] praying for the recall of the lieutenant-governor and the chief-justice. This petition was very imprudently referred to a committee of the privy council, that its allegations might be openly discussed. The executive government ought quietly to have disposed of it either by refusing the prayer, or by trans. ferring the parties complained against to some other sphere, where their services would be more available for the public good; but it was thought that a glorious opportunity had occurred of publicly inveighing against the colonists and of heaping cdium on their champion. As the day for the hearing approached, public expectation was raised to a higher pitch than it had been by any juridical proceeding since the trial of Sacheverell. The scene was the council chamber at the cockpit, Whiteball. Thirty-five privy counselors attended, with Earl Gower, the lord president, at their head. Accommodation was made near the bar for Burke, Priestley, Jeremy Bentham, and distinguished strangers, and the adjoining rooms were crowded by an innumerable multitude who could only catch some distant murmurs of the vituperation, and inquire from time to time what was likely to be the result. We have from Jeremy Bentham, a curious description of the apartment and the appearance of him who was beheld of all beholders: The president's chair was with the back parallel to and not far distant from the fire; the chimney-piece, projecting a foot or two, formed a recess on each side. Alone in the recess, on the left hand of the president, stood Benjamin Franklin in such a position as not to be visible from the situation of

6

conduct I had several reasons not necessary here to specify. Now and then I heard it said, that the reasonable part of the administration was ashamed of the treatment they had given me. I suspected that some the president, remaining the whole time like a rock in the same posture, his head resting on his left hand, and in that attitude abiding the pelting of the pitiless storm.' Dunning and Lee stood at the bar as counsel for the petitioners. Wedderburn, as solicitor-general, alone attended for the crown, or more properly speaking as assessor to the privy council. His station was between the seats of two of the members on the side of the right hand of the lord president.' * Wedderburn did not stand

*

*

in need of the stimulus of a fierce attack; but came fully charged with venom which he had long been distilling." Large extracts from Wedderburn's speech are then given in which occur the following: "I hope, my lords, you will mark and brand the man for the honor of this country, of Europe, and of mankind. I can compare him only to Zanga in Dr. Young's Revenge': 'Know, then, 'twas I, I forged the letter, I disposed the picture, I hated, I despised, and I destroy.' I ask, my lords, whether the revengeful temper attributed by poetic fiction only to the bloody-minded African is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of this wily New Englander." "The effect," continues Campbell," of this invective upon the hearers was greater than almost anything we read in the history of English eloquence. Says Jeremy Bentham, without any prejudice in favor of the orator I was not more astonished at the brilliancy of his lightning than astounded by the thunder that accompanied it.' We can easily, conceive the delight of the assembled privy counselors, who had been selected and summoned on this occasion from their known hatred of the discontented Americans and their impatient desire to coerce them, but without very strong testimony we could not give credit of the stories circulated of their demeanor, considering they were sitting as judges and that at least the affectation of impartiality might have been expected from them. Nevertheless,' says Dr. Priestley, 'at the sallies of his sarcastic wit all the members of the council (the president himself, Lord Gower, not excepted) frequently laughed outright. No person belonging to the council behaved with decent gravity except Lord North, who, coming late, took his stand behind a chair opposite me.' Some accounts represent that they actually cheered him as if they had been listening to a spirited party speech in Parliament. Lord Shelburne, in a letter to Lord Chatham, writes: "The indecency of their behavior exceeded, as is agreed on all hands, that of any committee of election;' and Charles Fox, in the debate on the renewal of the war in 1803, warning the house not to be led away by the delusive eloquence of Pitt, reminded them 'how all men tossed up their hats and clapped their hands in boundless delight at Mr. Wedderburn's speech against Dr. Franklin, without reckoning the cost it was to entail upon them."" 'Wedderburn," so Lord Campbell sums up his discussion of this epoch-making proceeding, "must be severely condemned for thus pandering to the low passions of his countrymen instead of honestly trying to enlighten them. So objectionable was this proceeding, which he probably prompted and in which he played the principal part, that Adolphus, the almost indiscriminate apologist of all the measures of George III's reign, is driven to confess that 'the character of the inquiry and the dignity of the tribunal to whose investigation it was submitted were not duly considered. Ministers, taught by experience, ought to have known the degradation which they must inevitably incur when they elevated an individual into the rank of a personal opponent. Dr. Franklin, who had recently completed his sixty-seventh year, who was known and honored in the most eminent philosophical and literary societies in Europe, sat, with his gray unadorned locks, a hearer of one of the severest invectives that ever proceeded from the tongue of man; and an observer of a boisterous merriment and exultation which added nothing to the dignity of his judges. He had sufficient self-command to suppress all display of feeling: but the transactions of the day sunk deeply into his mind and produced an inextinguishable rancor against this country which colored all the

66

who told me this, did it to draw from me my sentiments concerning it, and perhaps my purposes; but I said little or nothing upon the subject. In the mean time their measures with regard to New England failing

acts of his subsequent life and occasioned extensive and ever memorable consequences.""

But it was not Wedderburn's vituperation which, standing by itself, produced this effect. Franklin could have borne this, had this been all, with the equanimity with which he bore the still more vituperative attacks of Arthur Lee and of Izard. It was the action of the government on the Massachusetts petition, of which Wedderburn's speech was merely an incident, which occasioned such "memorable consequences." That petition was perfectly proper and respectful. The Massachusetts assembly had ample evidence that Hutchinson and Oliver, royal governor and chief-justice, were bent on establishing what would have been virtually martial law in the commonwealth. The petition for the removal of these two functionaries was referred to a committee selected from those members of the privy council who had been most violent in contemptuous objurgations of America. The hearing was planned and carried on in such a way as to show the American people not only that they could not obtain justice from the mother country, but that when they asked for justice they would receive insult. The committee instantly, without deliberation, voted that the petition was "false, groundless, vexatious, and scandalous and calculated only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the provinces." And this contemptuous decision was made at a hearing charged with such indecent and malignant contempt of colonial rights as to convince American patriots that they would receive from the British crown, when they applied for redress, not merely injustice but insult. (See Introduction, §§ 21, 23.)

Alexander Wedderburn was born in Edinburgh in February, 1733. In 1753 he moved to London, and in 1757 he was admitted to the English bar. His knowledge of Scotch law, as well as his marked forensic abilities, led to his employment in the great Douglass case in 1769, in which he greatly distinguished himself.

Attaching himself to Lord Bute, he entered Parliament in 1762 as a partisan of that minister; and then, after Bate's fall, sported himself for a while in opposition, taking ground in opposition to North's American policy. This, however, was but a temporary diversion, and in 1772 he formally "ratted" and was made solicitorgeneral by North. From this time he devoted himself to a vehement support of the war, accompanied by frequent indecorous vituperation of his former whig associates. He was employed, as will hereafter appear, on a confidential mission, in the summer of 1776, to Paris for the purpose of counteracting the growing friendly tendency of the French ministry towards America. A more unfortunate person could scarcely have been selected, since his attack on Franklin was regarded in Paris as singularly brutal, and his speeches in Parliament had been almost as insulting to France as to America. In 1778 he became attorney-general and in 1780 chief-justice of the common pleas, under the title of Lord Loughborough; and on the formation of the North-Fox coalition ministry, be came first commissioner of the great seal. When Pitt came into power he went out of office, but was made chancellor by Pitt in 1793. This post he resigned in April, 1801, when he was created Earl of Roslyn. Without political principle, but gifted with plausible eloquence and great business tact, he managed to attain the highest position open to his profession, and to support himself in it, so far as his judicial action was concerned, with respectability. He died in January, 1805; and George III hearing of his death, said, "he has not left a greater knave behind him in my dominions." But Wedderburn, as his correspondence and speeches show, while a “knave,” was not a "great knave," if to great knavery sagacity is essential; for, by his vituperative attacks on his opponents, when they were not able to defend themselves, he much enhanced the difficulties of his case. And it is one of the most discreditable features of George III's political career that he should have placed in the highest offices a man whose knavery he declared to be so great.

of the success that had been confidently expected, and finding themselves more and more embarrassed, they began, as it seems, to think of making use of me, if they could, to assist in disengaging them. But it was too humiliating to think of applying to me openly and directly, and therefore it was contrived to obtain what they could of my sentiments through others.

The accounts from America during the recess all manifested that the measures of administration had neither divided nor intimidated the people there; that, on the contrary, they were more and more united and determined; and that a non-importation agreement was likely to take place. The ministry thence apprehending that this, by distressing the trading and manufacturing towns, might influence votes against the court in the elections for a new Parliament (which were in course to come on the succeeding year), suddenly and unexpectedly dissolved the old one, and ordered the choice of a new one within the shortest time admitted by law, before the inconveniences of that agreement could begin to be felt or produce any such effect.

When I came to England in 1757, you may remember I made several attempts to be introduced to Lord Chatham* (at that time first minis

* The distinctive position of Chatham and of Shelburne has been already noticed. (Introduction, § 32.) Whether, had Chatham lived, he would have supported the preliminaries of 1782 has been much discussed. He probably would have done so, in the then position of affairs, if the recognition of independence could have been made part of a system of commercial reciprocity. His love for America, and his dislike of France would have led him to give to the new empire all the Mississippi, and then, by establishing between it and England commercial reciprocity, to make the United States the chief feeder and the chief customer of England, in this way augmenting England's wealth to an extent which would never have been reached hid that valley remained in Spanish hands. That Chatham may have taken this position we may infer from the fact that this was the position of his son, William Pitt, who supported the peace, and who introduced a bill for commercial reciprocity with the United States, making such reciprocity a part of the system of pacification. Chatham had great defects. He was fond of occasional theatrical display. He was jealous of associates who would be likely to interfere in the premises of war and of foreign affairs over which, as minister, he assumed control. His temper prevented him from gathering round him a body of political friends. He quarreled from time to time with his two brothers-in-law, Temple and George Grenville, though they had much with him in common, beside the link of their sister, Chatham's wife, who was a woman of much ability, and who did her best to keep up the family attachments. He would enter into no party alliance with the Rockingham whigs, though his principles and theirs were much the same, and though by such an alliance the tory ascendancy would have been broken. When he did form a ministry, on his last accession to power, it was not a cabinet of consulting and harmonizing statesmen, but a mere aggregation of heads of departments, each one of which was at liberty to go his own way, and who, from their great diversity of opinion, had no common policy. And then there is no question that during the greater part of this administration, he was insane.

Yet, with all this, he not only had a political genius superior to that of any man of his day, but an eloquence and enthusiasm which aroused for him almost constant popular admiration and support. His patriotism was vehement and haughty; but the object of its devotion was not the English soil but the English people, wherever

He

ter), on account of my Pennsylvania business, but without success was then too great a man, or too much occupied in affairs of greater moment. I was therefore obliged to content myself with a kind of nonapparent and unacknowledged communication through Mr. Potter and Mr. Wood, his secretaries, who seemed to cultivate an acquaintance with me by their civilities, and drew from me what information I could give relative to the American war, with my sentiments occasionally on measures that were proposed or advised by others, which gave me the opportunity of recommending and enforcing the utility of conquering Canada. I afterwards considered Mr. Pitt as an inaccessible. I admired him at a distance, and made no more attempts for a nearer aquaintance. I had only once or twice the satisfaction of hearing through Lord Shelburne, and I think Lord Stanhope, that he did me the honor of mentioning me sometimes as a person of respectable character.

But towards the end of August last, returning from Brighthelmstone, I called to visit my friend Mr. Sargent at his seat, Halsted in Kent, agreeable to a former engagement. He let me know that he had prom. ised to conduct me to Lord Stanhope's at Chevening, who expected I would call on him when I came into that neighborhood. We accordingly waited on Lord Stanhope that evening, who told me Lord Chatham desired to see me, and that Mr. Sargent's house, where I was to lodge, being in the way, he would call for me there the next morning and carry me to Hayes. This was done accordingly. That truly great man re; ceived me with abundance of civility, inquired particularly into the situation of affairs in America, spoke feelingly of the severity of the late laws against the Massachusetts, gave me some account of his speech in opposing them, and expressed great regard and esteem for the people of that country, who he hoped would continue firm and united in defending by all peaceable and legal means their constitutional rights. they might be. America to him was his country as much as England; part of it his genius had torn from France; the Englishmen who dwelt in the Anglican colonies he looked upon with peculiar love and pride, partly because they had aided him in his great Canadian victories, partly because the class of men in England who disparaged the colonies were the class of men whom he particularly despised; but perhaps chiefly because he regarded Englishmen in America as fighting not merely for their own liberty, but for the liberty of Englishmen in England. Among them he saw almost universally implanted a heroic love of liberty, which in England was then comparatively dormant. It was for this reason that while he declared that if he were in America he would never lay down his arms until the national grievances were redressed, he nevertheless summoned all his old eloquence to rouse Eugland to continue the war as long as America was allied to France. Yet we can gather from this last speech that it was on France alone that he desired to concentrate the attack; and it is not inconsistent with his position to suppose that if he could have detached America from France he would have acceded to American independence, provided it was coupled with commercial reciprocity. But the alternative he most dreaded was the subjugation of Englishmen in America by royal arms, not only because he loved America, but because he believed that the liberty of Englishmen in England would be lost when that of Englishmen in America was destroyed. (See Introduction, § 22.)