Note 45 — Part I (continued 3)
Reading edition
"These letters first appeared in The London Chronicle, February 6 and 8, 1766. They were published again in The London Magazine, February, 1766, and in The Pennsylvania Chronicle, January 16, 1769. They were republished in Almon's 'Remembrancer' in 1766." (A. H. Smyth, Writings, III, 231 note.)
After the failure of his Albany Plan (for text see Writings, III, 197-226), Franklin, visiting Governor Shirley in Boston, was shown an English plan: it "was, that the governors of all the colonies, each attended by one or two members of his council, should assemble at some central town, and there concert measures of defense, raise troops, order the construction of forts, and draw on the British treasury for the whole expense; the treasury to be afterwards reimbursed by a tax laid on the colonies by an act of Parliament" (Parton, I, 340). The letters are a protest against this plan, a protest marking the first stages of the revolution.