The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Repeal had more fathers than Strahan conceded, but Franklin’s performance was indeed inspired. The opponents of repeal could rouse indignation against the rabble who tore down Thomas Hutchinson’s house and defied king and Parliament, but indignation dissolved in the sweet reason of Dr. Franklin. If that sweet reason included some tenuous reasoning—Franklin’s distinction between internal and external taxes, for example, was more his own invention than a reflection of opinion in America—none present was placed to refute him. (When one unfriendly questioner tried to do so, Franklin rebuffed him with a clever riposte. This member suggested that the Americans might use the same arguments Franklin deployed against internal taxes to reject external taxes. “They never have hitherto,” Franklin responded. “Many arguments have been lately used here to shew them that there is no difference, and that if you have no right to tax them internally, you have none to tax them externally, or make any other law to bind them. At present they do not reason so, but in time they may possibly be convinced by these arguments.”)