Philadelphia, July 30, 1776.
My Lord,
I received safe the letters your lordship so kindly forwarded to me, and beg you to accept my thanks.
The official dispatches to which you refer me, contain nothing more than what we had seen in the act of parliament, viz. "Offers of pardon upon submission;" which I was sorry to find; as it must give your lordship pain to be sent so far on so hopeless a business.
Directing pardons to be offered to the colonies, who are the very parties injured, expresses indeed that opinion of our ignorance, baseness, and insensibility, which your uninformed and proud nation has long been pleased to entertain of us; but it can have no other effect than that of encreasing our resentments.——It is impossible we should think of submission to a government, that has, with the most wanton barbarity and cruelty, burned our defenceless towns in the midst of winter; excited the savages to massacre our (peaceful) farmers; and our slaves to murder their masters; and is even now[154] bringing foreign mercenaries to deluge our settlements with blood. These atrocious injuries have extinguished every spark of affection for that parent country we once held so dear: but were it possible for us to forget and forgive them, it is not possible for you (I mean the British nation) to forgive the people you have so heavily injured; you can never confide again in those as fellow-subjects, and permit them to enjoy equal freedom, to whom you know you have given such just causes of lasting enmity; and this must impel you, were we again under your government, to endeavour the breaking our spirit by the severest tyranny, and obstructing by every means in your power our growing strength and prosperity.
But your lordship mentions "the king's paternal solicitude for promoting the establishment of lasting peace and union with the colonies." If by peace is here meant, a peace to be entered into by distinct states, now at war; and his majesty has given your lordship powers to treat with us of such a peace, I may venture to say, though without authority, that I think a treaty for that purpose not quite impracticable, before we enter into foreign alliances. But I am persuaded you have no such powers. Your nation, though, by punishing those American governors who have fomented the discord, rebuilding our burnt towns, and repairing as far as possible the mischiefs done us, she might recover a great share of our regard; and the greatest share of our growing commerce, with all the advantages of that additional strength, to be derived from a friendship with us; yet I know too well her abounding pride and deficient wisdom, to believe she will ever take such salutary measures. Her fondness for conquest as a warlike nation; her lust of dominion as an ambitious one; and her thirst for a gainful monopoly as a commercial one (none of them legitimate causes of war) will join to hide from her eyes every view of her true interest, and continually goad her on in these ruinous distant expeditions, so destructive both of lives and of treasure, that they must prove as pernicious to her in the end, as the Croisades formerly were to most of the nations of Europe.
I have not the vanity, my lord, to think of intimidating, by thus predicting the effects of this war; for I know it will in England have the fate of all my former predictions; not to be believed till the event shall verify it.
Long did I endeavour, with unfeigned and unwearied zeal, to preserve from breaking that fine and noble porcelaine vase——the British empire; for I knew that being once broken, the separate parts could not retain even their share of the strength and value that existed in the whole; and that a perfect re-union of those parts could scarce ever be hoped for. Your lordship may possibly remember the tears of joy that wetted my cheek, when, at your good sister's in London, you once gave me expectations, that a reconciliation might soon take place. I had the misfortune to find these expectations disappointed, and to be treated as the cause of the mischief I was labouring to prevent. My consolation under that groundless and malevolent treatment was, that I retained the friendship of many wise and good men in that country; and among the rest, some share in the regard of lord Howe.
The well-founded esteem, and permit me to say affection, which I shall always have for your lordship, make it painful to me to see you engaged in conducting a war, the great ground of which (as described in your letter) is "the necessity of preventing the American trade from passing into foreign channels." To me it seems, that neither the obtaining or retaining any trade, how valuable soever, is an object for which men may justly spill each other's blood; that the true and sure means of extending and securing commerce are the goodness and cheapness of commodities; and that the profits of no trade can ever be equal to the expence of compelling it, and holding it by fleets and armies. I consider this war against us, therefore, as both unjust and unwise; and I am persuaded, that cool and dispassionate posterity will condemn to infamy those who advised it; and that even success will not save from some degree of dishonour, those who have voluntarily engaged to conduct it.
I know your great motive in coming hither, was the hope of being instrumental in a reconciliation; and I believe, when you find that to be impossible, on any terms given you to propose, you will then relinquish so odious a command, and return to a more honourable private station.
With the greatest and most sincere respect, I have the honour to be,
My lord,
Your lordship's most obedient, humble servant,
B. FRANKLIN[155].
[154] About this time the Hessians, &c. had just arrived from Europe, at Staten Island and New York. B. V.
[155] It occurs to me to mention that Dr. Franklin was supposed to have been the inventor of a little emblematical design at the commencement of our disputes, representing the state of Great Britain and her colonies, should the former persist in restraining the latter's trade, destroying their currency, and taxing their people by laws made by a legislature in which they were not represented.—Great Britain was supposed to have been placed upon the globe: but the colonies, her limbs, being severed from her, she was seen lifting her eyes and mangled stumps to heaven; her shield, which she was unable to wield, lay useless by her side; her lance had pierced New England; the laurel branch was fallen from the hand of Pensylvania; the English oak had lost its head, and stood a bare trunk with a few withered branches; briars and thorns were on the ground beneath it; our ships had brooms at their topmast heads, denoting their being upon sale; and Britannia herself was seen sliding off the world, no longer able to hold its balance; her fragments overspread with the label date obolum Belisario.—This in short, was the fable of the belly and the members reversed. But I tell the story chiefly for the sake of the moral, which has the air of having been suggested by Dr. Franklin[156]; and is as follows.—"The political moral of this picture is now easily discovered. History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of its people. The ordaining of laws in favour of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is intitled to, and ought to enjoy; it being a matter of no moment to the state, whether a subject grows rich and flourishing on the Thames or the Ohio, in Edinburgh or Dublin. These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favoured and the people oppressed: from whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manners of connections, necessarily ensues; by which the whole state is weakened and perhaps ruined for ever."
This language is part of the same system with the following fragment of a sentence, which Dr. Franklin inserted in a political publication of one of his friends. "The attempts to establish arbitrary power over so great a part of the British empire, [are] to the imminent hazard of our most valuable commerce, and of that national strength, security, and felicity, which depend on union and liberty;"—The preservation of which, I am told, he used to say, had been the great object and labour of his life; the whole being such a thing as the world before never saw. B. V.
[156] This design was printed on a card, and Dr. Franklin at the time I believe occasionally used to write his notes on such cards. It was also printed on a half sheet of paper, with an explanation by some other person, and the moral given above. The drawing was but moderately executed.