f
Parliament and the king? Had Otis, Adams, Henry, Gadsden, and the rest
seen with their bodily eyes what Franklin was seeing every day, their
words might have been more tempered. Even a year later, in talk with a
gentleman who said that so far back as 1741 he had expressed an opinion
that the colonies "would one day release themselves from England,"
Franklin answered, "with his earnest, expressive, and intelligent face:"
"Then you were mistaken; the Americans have too much love for their
mother country;" and he added that "secession was impossible, for all
the American towns of importance, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia,
were exposed to the English navy. Boston could be destroyed by
bombardment." Near the same time he said to Ingersoll of Connecticut,
who was about departing for the colonies: "Go home and tell your
countrymen to get children as fast as they can." By no means without
forebodings for the future, he was yet far from fancying that the time
had come when physical resistance was feasible. It seemed still the day
for arguments, not for menaces.

To Franklin in this frame of mind, never doubting that the act would be
enforced, there was brought a plausible message from Grenville. The
minister desired "to make the execution of the act as little
inconvenient and disagreeable to America as possible," and to this end
he preferred to nominate as stamp distributers "discreet and reputable"
residents in the province, rather than to send over strangers from Great
Britain. Accordingly he solicited a nomination from Franklin of some
"honest and responsible" man in Philadelphia. Franklin readily named a
trustworthy merchant of his acquaintance, Mr. Hughes. The Stamp Act
itself hardly turned out a greater blunder for Grenville than this
well-meant suggestion was near turning out for Franklin. When the
Philadelphians got news of the passage of the act, the preparations for
its enforcement, the nomination of Mr. Hughes, and the fact that he had
been suggested by Franklin, the whole city rose in a wild frenzy of
rage. Never was such a sudden change of feeling. He who had been their
trusted companion was now loudly reviled as a false and truckling
traitor. He was said to have deserted his own, and to have gone over to
the minister's side; to have approved the odious law, and to have asked
that a position under it might be given to his friend. The mobs ranging
the streets threatened to destroy the new house, in which he ha