Note (in a note) — Chapter XXI

[355] Dr. Franklin had been Postmaster-General for America. When he assumed the office the expenditure exceeded the receipts by £3,000 a year; under his administration the receipts gradually increased so as to become a source of revenue. The day after his advocacy of the American petitions before the Privy Council, he was dismissed from office. Referring to the manner in which American petitions and their agents were treated by the British Government, Dr. Franklin expressed himself as follows, in a letter to the Hon. Thomas Cushing, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts:

"When I see that all petitions and complaints of grievances are so odious to Government that even the mere pipe which conveys them becomes obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace and union is to be maintained or restored between the different parts of the empire. Grievances cannot be redressed unless they are known; and they cannot be known but through complaints and petitions. If these are deemed affronts, and the messengers punished as offenders, who will henceforth send petitions? and who will deliver them? It has been thought a dangerous thing in any State to stop up the vent of griefs. Wise governments have therefore generally received petitions with some indulgence even when but slightly founded. Those who think themselves injured by their rulers are sometimes, by a mild and prudent answer, convinced of their error. But where complaining is a crime, hope becomes despair." (Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society.)

(Yet the Government of Massachusetts, under the first Charter, pronounced petitions a crime, and punished as criminals those who petitioned against the governmental acts which denied them the right of worship or elective franchise because they were non-Congregationalists.)