Note 251 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

Mahon (v. 323) thinks it strange that any American of high standing should care to justify or palliate the conduct of Franklin. Goldwin Smith (Study of History, N. Y., 1866, p. 213) says: "Franklin alone, perhaps, of the leading Americans, by the dishonorable publication of an exasperating correspondence, which he had improperly obtained, shared with Grenville, Townshend, and Lord North the guilt of bringing this great disaster on the English race." Lecky (England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 380, 416) alleges rather hastily that Hutchinson had once been concerned in using Franklin's letters with a certain disregard of rights. (Cf. Sparks's Franklin, iv. 450.) Some memoranda of Chalmers are in the Sparks MSS. (x. vol. iv.) Cf. Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors (vi. 105); Massey's England (vol. ii.); Adolphus's England (vol. ii. 34); Walpole's Last Journals, i. 255, 289.