Note 152 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

See Vol. V. p. 612. For more than a century in the government of the colonies political considerations were subordinated to a commercial policy; New England was favored during the Protectorate, and Virginia after the Restoration, equally on political grounds. But with the beginning of the French War this commercial policy began to give way to an imperial policy. To the Congress of 1754 is due the distinction of being the only body, among similar gatherings before or since, which of its own motion seriously entertained and adopted a project of bringing the colonies, as a unit, into defined relations to the mother country, for general government in respect to their defence. Nobody saw more clearly than Franklin, or has more explicitly pointed out the necessity of some general government for the defence of the colonies (Works, by Sparks, iii. 32 et seq.); and to secure these ends he was willing to go further, in some respects, even than Hutchinson. He admitted the power and necessity of parliamentary action in the alteration of colonial charters (Works, iii. 36). He provided that the President-General should be appointed and his salary paid by the crown (3 Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 70); that the Speaker should be approved by the President-General, thus admitting the validity of the prerogative (Works, iii. 44; and see Plan, that the assent of the President-General should be requisite to all acts of the Grand Council, instead of all laws, as stated by Bancroft, iv. 123); and that the Grand Council should have power to "lay and levy such general duties, imposts, or taxes as to them shall appear most equal and just" (Works, iii. 50). Bancroft, in summarizing the Plan of Union, drawn by Franklin, says (Hist., iv. 124) the general government was empowered "to make laws and levy just and equitable taxes", thus giving the impression that the powers of the Council were limited by absolute justice and equity, or by what each colony should so judge. But this is what Franklin neither meant nor said. He lodged the powers in the sole discretion of the Council, which is quite a different thing. Grenville or Townshend asked no more for Parliament. The General Assembly of Connecticut knew what the words meant. In their reasons for rejecting the proposed plan (I Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. 212) they say, "The proposal, in said plan contained, for the President-General and Council to levy taxes, &c., as they please, throughout this extensive government, is a very extraordinary thing, and against the rights and privileges of Englishmen." Their objections to Franklin's Plan read like an answer of the Massachusetts General Court, drawn by Samuel Adams, to a message of Bernard. The governor and council of Rhode Island had similar fears. They said that they found it to be "a scheme which, if carried into execution, will virtually deprive this government, at least, of some of its most valuable privileges, if not effectually overturn and destroy our present happy constitution" (Rhode Island Hist. Tracts, ix. 61). And that sturdy patriot, Stephen Hopkins, who was associated with Franklin, Hutchinson, Pitkin, and Howard in the Albany Plan, was subjected to much worry for invoking the parliamentary authority in modifying the Rhode Island charter, and was driven to self-vindication in A True Representation (Ibid., I). Whatever modifications Franklin's opinions may have undergone in later years on other matters, "it was his opinion thirty years afterwards that his plan was near the true medium" (Works, iii. 24, Sparks's note).