The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Franklin did not deal in stolen goods without compunction. But Hutchinson and Oliver had crossed the line. For years they had been “bartering away the liberties of their native country for posts”—it was not lost on Franklin, nor did he want it lost on Cushing and the others in Massachusetts, that Hutchinson and Oliver had gained their present positions after these letters reached Britain. As part of the bargain the two received increases in their salaries and pensions, “for which the money is to be squeezed from the people.” The people naturally resisted; to suppress the resistance, and preserve their ill-gotten gains, Hutchinson and Oliver summoned British troops, conjuring “imaginary rebellions” and “exciting jealousies in the Crown, and provoking it to wrath against a great part of its faithful subjects.” In sum, the malign pair had shown themselves “mere time-servers, seeking their own private emolument through any quantity of public mischief; betrayers of the interest, not of their native country only, but of the Government they pretend to serve, and of whole English Empire.”