Dr. Franklin and his "Hints"

"It is the united voice of America to preserve their freedom, or lose their lives in defence of it. Their resolutions are not the effects of inconsiderate rashness, but the sound result of sober inquiry and deliberation. The true spirit of liberty was never so universally diffused through all ranks and order of people in any country on the face of the earth, as it now is through all North America. If the late acts of Parliament are not to be repealed, the wisest step for both countries is to separate, and not to spend their blood and treasure in destroying each other. It is barely possible that Great Britain may depopulate North America; she never can conquer the inhabitants."

Such was the attitude of the king and his American subjects when the new Parliament assembled on the 30th of November, 1774, the old one having been dissolved in September. At that time Dr. Franklin, who had been disgraced early in the year, so far as the ribald tongue of a dishonest solicitor-general, and an ill-mannered Privy Council could disgrace him, had become an object of deep concern by men of all parties. The king hated him for his sturdy republicanism and inflexible political honesty. Hutchinson, then in England, hated him for Franklin's exposure of his perfidy, and he pursued him relentlessly; and, at one time, there were intimations that if the agent remained in England, it would be at the peril of his life. On the other hand, the friends of the government regarded him as a bulwark of political wisdom, and a match in the field of diplomacy for the whole British ministry. It was believed by all that he was the depositary of the secret intentions of the colonists, toward Great Britain, in the measures they had adopted. He was solicited to promulgate the extent of the demands of the Americans; and so urgent were the calls for this knowledge, that without waiting for the reception of a record of the proceedings of the Continental Congress, he prepared a paper entitled "Hints for Conversation upon the subject of Terms that may probably produce a Durable Union between Britain and the Colonies," in seventeen propositions. The upshot of the whole was that the colonies should be reinstated in the position which they held in relation to the imperial government before the obnoxious acts then complained of became laws, by a repeal--by a destruction of the whole brood of offensive enactments in reference to America, hatched since the accession of George the Third. In a word, he proposed that English subjects in America should enjoy all the essential rights and privileges claimed as the birthright of English subjects in England. This paper found its way to the ministry, and possibly to the king; and had the prime minister been allowed to follow the bent of his inclination and of his clear judgment, it might have been the basis of a compromise that would have preserved the unity of the British realm. Franklin had expressed, in these "Hints," the sentiments of his countrymen.

The sage was a sphynx to the ministry. They were anxious to fathom the secrets which they believed were hidden in him, concerning the extent to which the Americans would consent to modify the "Hints," but his consummate diplomatic skill foiled their curiosity. Beneath a perfect freedom and frankness of manner of expression, there was always, to English minds, a riddle they could not solve. It was thought that in the amenities of social intercourse he might inadvertently drop a clue, or make confessions under the melting influence of adroitly applied compliments; and the charms of an accomplished woman, a sister-in-law of Earl Howe (the commander of the British fleet on the American coast in less than two years afterward), were employed to open the heart and mind of the impenetrable stateman. She was a lover of science; brilliant in conversation; winning in deportment, and a skillful player of chess, a game which Dr. Franklin was fond of. The story runs thus, as told by the stateman himself: