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LETTER LIV.: Dr. Franklin Hume's Guest. - David Hume, Letters of David Hume to William Strahan [1756]

Edition used:

Letters of David Hume to William Strahan, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888).

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LETTER LIV.

Dr. Franklin Hume's Guest.

Dear Strahan

Your remarks are always very judicious and just; and I am much obligd to you. You see I have adopted all of them this sheet. Dr. Franklin left me a few days ago for the west; but I expect him again in a few days1 .

Yours &c.

D. H.

12 of Novr. [1771].

[1]Note 1. Franklin, writing from London on Jan. 13, 1772, says:—‘I have now been some weeks returned from my journey through Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the North of England.’ Franklin's Works, ed. 1887, iv. 428. He had visited Edinburgh also in the autumn of 1759. See ib. iii. 39; Thomson's Life of Cullen, i. 139; and ante, p. 30, n. 3.

Hume wrote to Adam Smith on Feb. 13, 1774:—‘Pray, what strange accounts are these we hear of Franklin's conduct? I am very slow in believing that he has been guilty in the extreme degree that is pretended; though I always knew him to be a very factious man, and faction, next to fanaticism, is of all passions the most destructive of morality. How is it supposed he got possession of these letters? I hear that Wedderburne's treatment of him before the Council was most cruel, without being in the least blameable. What a pity!’ Burton's Hume, ii. 471.

Franklin had ‘obtained and transmitted to Boston’ some letters ‘written,’ to use his own words, ‘by public officers to persons in public stations on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures.’ Ann. Reg. 1773, i. 152. He was accused, altogether falsely he maintained, of having got possession of these letters by treachery. He used them to show that the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts Bay were enemies to the Colony. The Assembly petitioned the King for their removal. The petition was referred to the Privy Council, before which Franklin was ordered to attend with counsel on Jan. 29. Wedderburne, the Solicitor-General, attacked him with great severity. He concluded his invective by saying:—‘Amidst these tranquil events here is a man who, with the utmost insensibility of remorse, stands up and avows himself the author of all. I can compare him only to Zanga in Dr. Young's Revenge:—

  • “Know, then, ‘twas I— I forged the letter—I dispo’d the picture—
  • I hated—I despis’d—and I destroy.”

I ask, my Lords, whether the revengeful temper attributed to the bloody African is not surpassed by the coolness and apathy of the wily American.’ Chatham Corresp. iv. 323. Franklin was dismissed from his office of Deputy Postmaster-General for the Colonies.

Dr. Priestley says that when Franklin appeared before the Privy Council, ‘he was dressed in a suit of Manchester velvet; and Silas Dean told me, that when they met at Paris to sign the treaty between France and America, he purposely put on that suit.’ Priestley's Works, xxv. 395.