Public Statement on the Hutchinson Letters by Benjamin Franklin

Public Statement on the Hutchinson Letters

December 25, 1773; excerpted from Benjamin Franklin's Writings

"Finding that two Gentlemen have been unfortunately engaged in a Duel, about a transaction and its circumstances of which both of them are totally ignorant and innocent, I think it incumbent on me to declare …that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question."

Benjamin Franklin

While Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) waited for King George III's (1738–1820) Privy Council to discuss the Massachusetts petition to remove Governor Thomas Hutchinson (1711–1780) and Lieutenant Governor Andrew Oliver (1706–1774) from office (discussed in previous entry), a duel took place in England. Remember that the Hutchinson letters had been written to Thomas Whately, now dead. How Franklin came to have the letters, no one knows; someone probably stole them and gave them to Franklin. The brother of the dead Mr. Whately accused a man named John Temple of stealing the Hutchinson letters and giving them to Franklin. In the duel between Whately and Temple on December 11, 1773, Whately was wounded. Horrified, Franklin caused a notice to be published in the newspaper.

The notice explained that after hearing about the duel over the letters, Franklin felt compelled to accept sole responsibility for acquiring the letters and sending them to Boston. He said he did so in order to avoid further "mischief." Franklin did not stop there. He went on to explain his interpretation of the letters—that their purpose was to make Great Britain angry

Benjamin Franklin, a major player in the Hutchinson letters affair.
Reproduced by permission of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

at the colonies. He claimed that the letter writers had tried to keep the letters a secret for fear that their contents would become known in the colonies. Indeed, their fears were justified, because once Franklin had the letters, he felt himself duty-bound to send them to America.

• In his statement, Franklin claimed that the letters were "not of the nature of 'private letters between friends,'" but were in fact letters written to public officials urging drastic action against the colonies. Hutchinson claimed to the end of his life that his letters were simply his observations and opinions about what was going on in Massachusetts, written to a friend (Whately). Historians still wonder how truthful Franklin was being when he explained his motives in the Hutchinson letters affair. He may have believed that his misleading statements would help restore harmony between Great Britain and America.

SIR,

Finding that two Gentlemen have been unfortunately engaged in a Duel, about a transaction and its circumstances of which both of them are totally ignorant and innocent, I think it incumbent on me to declare (for the prevention of farther mischief, as far as such a declaration may contribute to prevent it) that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question.—Mr. W. could not communicate them, because they were never in his possession; and for the same reason, they could not be taken from him by Mr. T.—They were not of the nature of "private letters between friends:" They were written by public officers to persons in public station, on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures; they were therefore handed to other public persons who might be influenced by them to produce those measures. Their tendency was to incense the Mother Country against her Colonies, and, by the steps recommended, to widen the breach, which they effected. The chief Caution expressed with regard to Privacy, was, to keep their contents from the Colony Agents, who the writers apprehended might return them, or copies of them, to America. That apprehension was, it seems, well founded; for the first Agent who laid his hands on them, thought it his duty to transmit them to his Constituents.

B. Franklin, Agent for the House of Representatives of the Massachusetts-Bay. (Franklin, pp. 703–4)

Franklin's announcement was the first admission that he was the man who had made public the Hutchinson letters. Franklin was scheduled to appear before the king's Privy Council a month later, in January 1774, to discuss the Massachusetts Assembly's petition to remove Hutchinson from his governorship. Naturally, Parliament had heard about the duel and Franklin's admission of his role in making the Hutchinson letters public. If that was not enough to anger British authorities, the next piece of news to reach England was that the Boston Tea Party had taken place on December 16, 1773. In that incident, Boston rebels protesting British taxes had dumped 342 chests of British tea into Boston Harbor. When Franklin appeared before the Privy Council in January 1774, the Council was not very happy to see him.

Writer Philip McFarland described the scene in Parliament:

The Privy Council was not long in concluding that the Assembly's request was based on "False and erroneous allegations [charges]," and hence was "groundless, Vexatious [pronounced vex-Ashus; annoying] and Scandalous and calculated only for the …Purpose of keeping up a Spirit of Clamour [loud outcry] and Discontent." But much of the hearing was directed …not toward the petition but toward the agent who had submitted it. For the first time in all his years in England, Dr. Franklin was treated with something less than courtesy. He was, in fact, to be humiliated, an old man approaching seventy …while thirty-four lords of the Privy Council among crowds of spectators sniggered [laughed with contempt] and applauded in approval….

…the solicitor general, having charged him with being a thief, advised the prudent [careful] to hide their papers and lock up their [desks] when this gentleman came among them.

The next day, Franklin's job as deputy postmaster of the colonies was taken from him by the British government as punishment for his part in the Hutchinson letters affair. Few of his friends in London thanked Franklin for his decision about the letters. He was abused in the newspapers, and those he thought were his friends turned on him. Franklin was bitter, but not sorry; he thought his act was one of the best things he had ever done.

Although the Massachusetts petition to remove Hutchinson and Oliver from office was rejected by the king's Privy Council, Hutchinson's career in Massachusetts was nearly over. He went to England to ask for another job. In July 1774, he spoke personally with King George III. He urged the king to reconcile with the colonies, a plea he had never made when he was governor. Meanwhile, the British passed the Intolerable Acts to punish Boston for the Boston Tea Party. The Intolerable Acts closed the Port of Boston, gave the British-appointed governor of Massachusetts complete control of town meetings, ordered that British officials who committed major crimes in the colonies would be tried in Great Britain, and required that the colonists house British soldiers in dwellings belonging to private citizens. To make sure the Intolerable Acts were enforced, General Thomas Gage (1721–1787) was sent from England to America to serve as commander in chief of British forces. He was also appointed governor of Massachusetts in Hutchinson's place.

• Benjamin Franklin was so anxious to have peace restored between Great Britain and the colonies that he offered to pay the East India Company for the tea dumped into Boston Harbor at the Boston Tea Party.
• Benjamin Franklin grew up only six blocks from Thomas Hutchinson. Franklin's modest boyhood home in Boston was in sharp contrast to the Hutchinson family's elegant mansion.

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1974.

Boatner, Mark M. "Thomas Hutchinson" and "Hutchinson Letters Affair" in Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994.

Franklin, Benjamin. Writings. New York: Library of America, 1987.

Lemay, J. A. Leo, and P. M. Zall, eds. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986.

McFarland, Philip. The Brave Bostonians: Hutchinson, Quincy, Franklin, and the Coming of the American Revolution. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998.

Pencak, William. America's Burke: The Mind of Thomas Hutchinson. Washington, D.C. : University Press of America, 1982.

"Thomas Hutchinson" in Encyclopedia of World Biography. Volume 8. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

Walmsley, Andrew Stephen. Thomas Hutchinson and the Origins of the American Revolution. New York: New York University Press, 1999.