Unfortunately for Smith, his petition was opposed by the official agent of Pennsylvania’s assembly in London: Benjamin Franklin, the same Silence Dogood who had once argued that “freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government” without which a “free society dissolves” and “tyranny is erected on its ruins.” Struck by Milton’s Curse, he was now vigorously defending legislative privilege in a case that historian Leonard Levy denounced as a “mock trial before a kangaroo court” worse than Star Chamber justice.
