horse, to be transported or conveyed out of one county in the said island into another county, or to any other place whatsoever, by any person or persons whatsoever; on pain of forfeiting the same, with a penalty of five hundred pounds sterling for every offence. Nor shall any hat-maker, in any of the said counties, employ more than two apprentices, on penalty of five pounds sterling per month; we intending hereby, that such hatmakers, being so restrained, both in the production and sale of their commodity, may find no advantage in continuing their business. But, lest the said islanders should suffer inconveniency by the want of hats, we are farther graciously pleased to permit them to send their beaver furs to Prussia; and we also permit hats made thereof to be exported from Prussia to Britain; the people thus favored to pay all costs and charges of manufacturing, interest, commission to our merchants, insurance and freight going and returning, as in the case of iron.

"And, lastly, being willing farther to favor our said colonies in Britain, we do hereby also ordain and command, that all the thieves, highway and street robbers, housebreakers, forgerers, murderers, s-d-tes, and villains of every denomination, who have forfeited their lives to the law in Prussia; but whom we, in our great clemency, do not think fit here to hang; shall be emptied out of our gaols into the said Island of Great Britain, for the better peopling of that country.

"We flatter ourselves, that these our royal regulations and commands will be thought just and reasonable by our much-favored colonists in England; the said regulations being copied from their Statutes of 10th and 11th William III. c. 10, 5th George II. c. 22, 23d George II. c. 29, 4th George I. c. 11, and from other equitable laws made by their Parliaments; or

from instructions given by their princes; or from resolutions of both Houses, entered into for the good government of their own colonies in Ireland and America.

"And all persons in the said Island are hereby cautioned not to oppose in any wise the execution of this our Edict, or any part thereof, such opposition being high treason; of which all who are suspected shall be transported in fetters from Britain to Prussia, there to be tried and executed according to the Prussian law. "Such is our pleasure.

"Given at Potsdam, this twenty-fifth day of the month of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventythree, and in the thirty-third year of our reign. "By the King, in his Council.

"RECHTMAESSIG, Sec."

Some take this Edict to be merely one of the King's jeux d'esprit; others suppose it serious, and that he means a quarrel with England; but all here think the assertion it concludes with, "that these regulations are copied from acts of the English Parliament respecting their colonies," a very injurious one; it being impossible to believe, that a people distinguished for their love of liberty, a nation so wise, so liberal in its sentiments, so just and equitable towards its neighbours, should, from mean and injudicious views of petty immediate profit, treat its own children in a manner so arbitrary and tyrannical!

AN ACCOUNT

OF THE

TRANSACTIONS RELATING TO GOVERNOR HUTCHINSON'S LETTERS.

The affair of Hutchinson's Letters made much noise at the time, by reason of the political consequences emanating from them, and subjected Dr. Franklin to unmerited obloquy. It seems, that while acting in London as agent for the colony of Massachusetts, certain original letters were put into his hands, which had been written in Boston by Governor Hutchinson, Lieutenant-Governor Oliver, Charles Paxton, Nathaniel Rogers, and G. Rome, and directed to Thomas Whately, a member of Parliament, and private secretary to Mr. Grenville, one of the ministers. After Mr. Whately's death the above letters were obtained by some unknown person, and communicated to Dr. Franklin, with permission that he might send them to his correspondents in Massachusetts. As the contents of the letters were of a very extraordinary character, and in their political tendency deeply interesting to the people of Massachusetts, and indeed to those of all the colonies, Dr. Franklin thought it his duty to transmit them without delay. He enclosed them to Thomas Cushing, Speaker of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts, and at length they were made public. Although this was done without the consent or knowledge of Dr. Franklin, he did not disapprove the act, considering it not only a proper but necessary step for exposing the insidious designs of eminent public men in America, whose secret counsels were hostile to the liberties of his country.

His agency in the matter caused a loud clamor to be raised against him by the ministerial partisans in England. It was made the occasion of unmeasured abuse through the channel of the press, and particularly from Mr. Wedderburn, the King's solicitor-general, when the petition of the Massachusetts legislature for the removal of Governor Hutchinson, in consequence of these letters, was brought before the Council. Conscious of having acted

a part honorable in itself, and of the utmost importance to his .country, Dr. Franklin suffered the tide of obloquy to pass by without attempting to oppose or divert its course. A short time before he returned to America, however, he wrote the following paper, which affords a triumphant vindication of his conduct, but which was not published during his lifetime, nor till it appeared in William Temple Franklin's edition of his works. - EDITOR.

HAVING been from my youth more or less engaged in public affairs, it has often happened to me in the course of my life to be censured sharply for the part I took in them. Such censures I have generally passed over in silence, conceiving, when they were just, that I ought rather to amend than defend; and, when they were undeserved, that a little time would justify me. Much experience has confirmed my opinion of the propriety of this conduct; for, notwithstanding the frequent, and sometimes the virulent attacks which the jostlings of party interests have drawn upon me, I have had the felicity of bringing down to a good old age as fair a reputation (may I be permitted to say it?) as most public men that I have known, and have never had reason to repent my neglecting to defend it.

I should therefore (persisting, as old men ought to do, in old habits) have taken no notice of the late invective of the solicitor-general, nor of the abundant abuse in the papers, were I not urged to it by my friends, who say, that the first being delivered by a public officer of government before a high and most respectable court, the Privy Council, and countenanced by its report, and the latter having that for its foundation, it behoves me, more especially as I am about leaving this country, to furnish them with the knowledge of such facts as may enable them to justify to others their good opinion of

me.

This compels me to the present undertaking; for otherwise, having for some time past been gradually losing all public connexions, declining my agencies, determined on retiring to my little family, that I might enjoy the remainder of life in private repose, indifferent to the opinion of courtiers, as having nothing to seek or wish among them, and being secure that time would soon lay the dust which prejudice and party have so lately raised, I should not think of giving myself the trouble of writing, and my friends of reading, an apology for my political conduct.

That this conduct may be better understood, and its consistency more apparent, it seems necessary that I should first explain the principles on which I have acted. It has long appeared to me, that the only true British policy was that, which aimed at the good of the whole British empire, not that which sought the advantage of one part in the disadvantage of the others; therefore all measures of procuring gain to the mother country arising from loss to her colonies, and all of gain to the colonies arising from or occasioning loss to Britain, especially where the gain was small and the loss great, every abridgment of the power of the mother country, where that power was not prejudicial to the liberties of the colonists, and every diminution of the privileges of the colonists, where they were not prejudicial to the welfare of the mother country, I, in my own mind, condemned as improper, partial, unjust, and mischievous; tending to create dissensions, and weaken that union, on which the strength, solidity, and duration of the empire greatly depended; and I opposed, as far as my little powers went, all proceedings, either here or in America, that in my opinion had such tendency. Hence it has often happened to me, that