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time, was much impressed by the business of the Privy Council, appeared from this circumstance. When he attended there, he was dressed in a suit of Manchester velvet; and Silas Deane told me, that, when they met at Paris to sign the treaty between France and America, he purposely put on that suit."

In reference to this account, after it appeared in print, the following particulars were communicated to William Temple Franklin by Dr. Bancroft, who was for many years one of Dr. Franklin's intimate friends, and was present during the whole transaction before the Privy Council.

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"Dr. Franklin did not stand in a corner of the room,'" says Dr. Bancroft; "he stood close to the fireplace, on that side which was at the right hand of those, who were looking toward the fire; in the front of which, though at some distance, the members of the Privy Council were seated at a table. I obtained a place on the opposite side of the fireplace, a little further from the fire; but Dr. Franklin's face was directed towards me, and I had a full, uninterrupted view of it, and his person, during the whole time in which Mr. Wedderburn spoke. The Doctor was dressed in a full dress suit of spotted Manchester velvet, and stood conspicuously erect, without the smallest movement of any part of his body. The muscles of his face had been previously composed, so as to afford a placed, tranquil expression of countenance, and he did not suffer the slightest alteration of it to appear during the continuance of the speech, in which he was so harshly and improperly treated. In short, to quote the words which he employed concerning himself on another occasion, he kept his countenance as immovable as if his features had been made of wood.' This was late on Saturday afternoon. I called on him in Craven Street, at an early hour on Monday morning, and, immediately after the usual salutation, he put into my hands a letter, which had just been delivered to him. It was from the postmaster-general, and informed him, that the King had no further occasion for his (Dr. Franklin's) services, as deputy postmaster-general in America.

"It is a fact, that he, as Dr. Priestley mentions, signed the treaties of commerce and eventual alliance with France, in the clothes which he had worn at the Cockpit, when the preceding transaction occurred. It had been intended, as you may recollect, that these treaties should be signed on the evening of Thursday, the 5th of February; and when Dr. Franklin had dressed himself for the day, I observed that he wore the suit in question; which I thought the more extraordinary, as it had been laid aside for

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many months. This I noticed to Mr. Deane; and soon after, when a messenger came from Versailles, with a letter from Mr. Gerard the French plenipotentiary, stating that he was so unwell, from a cold, that he wished to defer coming to Paris to sign the treaties, until the next evening, I said to Mr. Deane, Let us see whether the Doctor will wear the same suit of clothes to-morrow; if he does, I shall suspect that he is influenced by a recollection of the treatment which he received at the Cockpit.' The morrow came, and the same clothes were again worn, and the treaties signed. After which, these clothes were laid aside, and, so far as my knowledge extends, never worn afterwards. I once intimated to Dr. Franklin the suspicion, which his wearing these clothes on that occasion had excited in my mind, when he smiled, without telling me whether it was well or ill founded. I have heard him sometimes say, that he was not insensible to injuries, but that he never put himself to any trouble or inconvenience to retaliate."

The affair having been gone through with by the Privy Council, in the manner above stated, it is easy to imagine what was the fate of the Assembly's petition. In their report, after the usual matters of form, and an enumeration of the several charges, the Committee proceed as follows.

"The Lords of the Committee cannot but express their astonishment, that a charge of so serious and extensive a nature against the persons, whom the said House of Representatives acknowledge by their said petition to have heretofore had the confidence and esteem of the people, and to have been advanced by your Majesty, from the purest motives of rendering your subjects happy, to the highest places of trust and authority in that province, should have no other evidence to support it but inflammatory and precipitate resolutions, founded only on certain letters, written respectively by them (and all but one before they were appointed to the posts they now hold) in the years 1767, 1768, and 1769, to a gentleman then in no office under the government, in the course of familiar correspondence, and in the confidence of private friendship, and which it was said (and it was not denied by Mr. Franklin) were surreptitiously obtained after his death, and sent over to America, and laid before the Assembly of the Massachusetts Bay; and which letters appear to us to contain nothing reprehensible or unworthy of the situation they were in; and we presume, that it was from this impropriety, that the Council did disclaim on behalf of the Assembly any intention of bringing a crimina charge against the governor and lieutenant-governor; but said, that the petition was

founded solely on the ground of the governor and lieutenantgovernor being, as they alleged, now become obnoxious to the people of the province; and that it was in this light only that the said petition was presented to your Majesty. And there being no other evidence now produced, than the said resolutions and letters, together with resolutions of a similar import by the Council of the said province, founded, as it was said, on the same letters;

"The Lords of the Committee do agree humbly to report, as their opinion, to your Majesty, that the said petition is founded upon resolutions formed upon false and erroneous allegations; and that the same is groundless, vexatious, and scandalous; and calculated only for the seditious purposes of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the said province. And the Lords of the Committee do further humbly report to your Majesty, that nothing has been laid before them which does or can, in their opinion, in any manner, or in any degree, impeach the honor, integrity, or conduct of the said governor or lieutenant-governor; and their Lordships are humbly of opinion, that the said petition ought to be dismissed."

"February 7th. His Majesty, taking the said report into consideration, was pleased, with the advice of his Privy Council, to approve thereof; and to order, that the said petition of the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay be dismissed the Board, as groundless, vexatious, and scandalous; and calculated only for the seditious purpose of keeping up a spirit of clamor and discontent in the said province.""

Such was the language in which the King and his counsellors thought proper to reply to the respectful petition of the Representatives of a whole province. Who can wonder at the indignation of the people, or that the battle of Bunker's Hill was fought in less than eighteen months afterwards? Dr. Franklin was immediately dismissed from his office of deputy postmaster-general for the colonies. The whole proceeding was not more insulting and oppressive, than it was impolitic.

EMBLEMATICAL REPRESENTATION.

W. T. Franklin gives the following account of this device, and the use made of it by its author. "During the disputes between the two countries, Dr. Franklin invented a little emblematical design, intended to represent the supposed state of Great Britain and her colonies, should the former persist in her oppressive measures, restraining the latter's trade, and taxing their people by laws made by a legislature in which they were not represented. It was engraved on a copper plate. Dr. Franklin had many of them struck off on cards, on the back of which he occasionally wrote his notes. It was also printed on a half-sheet of paper, with the explanation and moral."-EDITOR.

EXPLANATION.

GREAT BRITAIN is supposed to have been placed upon the globe; but the colonies, (that is, her limbs,) being severed from her, she is seen lifting her eyes and mangled stumps to Heaven; her shield, which she is unable to wield, lies useless by her side; her lance has pierced New England; the laurel branch has fallen from the hand of Pennsylvania; the English oak has lost its head, and stands a bare trunk, with a few withered branches; briers and thorns are on the ground beneath it; the British ships have brooms at their topmast heads, denoting their being on sale; and BRITANNIA herself is seen sliding off the world (no longer able to hold its balance), her fragments overspread with the label, DATE OBOLUM BELISARIO.

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