Wedderburn reiterated the argument made by the government (and by Hutchinson and Oliver) that the unrest in America was not the work of ordinary people—“these innocent, well-meaning farmers, which compose the bulk of the Assembly,” Wedderburn said—but of self-serving conspirators, of whom Franklin was the “first mover and prime conductor” (Wedderburn liked this phrase enough to repeat it), the “actor and secret spring,” and the “inventor and first planner.”
