The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Equally unsurprising, this mixed outcome left a certain sour taste. Many in America remained unreconciled to Parliament’s authority; many in Britain resented the Americans’ ability to flout the law with impunity. The latter feeling gave rise to a demand that the colonies compensate the home government for the cost of stamping all that paper, which was never used. Franklin registered a sardonic judgment on this demand. In an anonymous letter to a London journal he wrote that the affair put him in mind of a Frenchman who used to accost English visitors on the Pont-Neuf in Paris, with effusive compliments in his mouth and a red-hot poker in his hand. “Pray Monsieur Anglais,” says he, “Do me the favour to let me have the honour of thrusting this hot iron into your backside?” “Zoons, what does the fellow mean! Begone with your iron, or I’ll break your head!” “Nay, Monsieur,” replies he, “if you do not choose it, I do not insist upon it. But at least you will in justice have the goodness to pay me something for the heating of my iron.”