Benjamin Franklin Scolds Boston
News of the Boston Tea Party reached Britain on January 19, 1774, and London newspapers printed colorful accounts of the destruction of the tea by “aboriginal” assailants. At first, King George III and Parliament dismissed it as an isolated incident, but then the full scope of colonial opposition to the tea tax became clear. The shipment of tea returned from Philadelphia a week later, followed by the news of the commandeered tea in Charlestown.
In his book, Carp quotes the Middlesex Journal, a British newspaper, which reported, “The whole Continent is in a flame, from Boston to Charles Town, and the whole of the inhabitants, to a man, appear unanimously resolved to dispute with their lives the right of taxation in the mother country.”
All of this put Benjamin Franklin in a difficult position. Franklin, who was born in Boston, was living in London as an agent for the Massachusetts House of Representatives. It was Franklin’s job to advocate with British leaders on behalf of the colonists. Franklin believed in diplomacy and hoped that the long-simmering tensions between Britain and the colonies could be resolved peacefully. The Boston Tea Party severely jeopardized those hopes.
In early February, Franklin sent an urgent letter to Patriot leaders in Boston, including Samuel Adams and John Hancock, advising them to repay the East India Company for the destroyed tea, worth roughly $2 million today.
“I am truly concern’d, as I believe all considerate Men are with you, that there should seem to any a Necessity for carrying Matters to such Extremity, as, in a Dispute about Publick Rights, to destroy private Property,” wrote Franklin, who saw only one natural consequence if the colonies failed to repay the debt. “[If] War is finally to be made upon us, which some threaten, an Act or violent injustice on our part, unrectified, may not give a colourable Pretence for it.”
When Franklin’s letter arrived in Boston, Samuel Adams dismissed the elder statesman’s plea to compensate the East India Company. According to the 1964 book The Boston Tea Party by the late historian Benjamin Woods Labaree, Adams commented that while Franklin was a great philosopher, he was a poor politician.
