Charles
Townshend was a repealer, yet all England did not hold a man who was
more wedded than was Townshend to the idea of levying internal taxes in
the colonies by act of Parliament. The notion had been his own
mischievous legacy to Grenville, but he now felt that it had been
clumsily used by his legatee. Many men agreed with him, and the
prevalence of this opinion was made obvious by the passage, almost
simultaneously, of the resolution declaratory of the right of
parliamentary taxation. But the solace of an empty assertion was wholly
inadequate to heal the deep wound which English pride had received. The
great nation had been fairly hounded into receding before the angry
resistance of a parcel of provincials dwelling far away across the sea;
the recession was not felt to be an act of magnanimity or generosity or
even of justice, but only a bitter humiliation and indignity. Poor
Grenville, the responsible adviser of the blundering and unfortunate
measure, lost almost as much prestige as Franklin gained. It was hard
luck for him; he was as honest in his convictions as Franklin was in the
opposite faith, and he was a far abler minister than the successor
charged to undo his work. But his knowledge of colonial facts was very
insufficient, and the light in which he viewed them was hopelessly
false. Franklin had a knowledge immeasurably greater, and was almost
incapable of an error of judgment; of all the reputation which was won
or lost in this famous contest he gathered the lion's share; he was the
hero of the colonists; his ability was recognized impartially by both
the contending parties in England, and he was marked as a great man by
those astute French statesmen who were watching with delight the opening
of this very promising rift in the British Empire.

Anger, like water, subsides quickly after the tempest ceases. As each
day in its flight carried the Stamp Act and the repeal more remotely
into past history, the sanguine and peaceably minded began to hope that
England and the colonies might yet live comfortably in union. It only
seemed necessary that for a short time longer no fresh provocation
should revive animosities which seemed composing themselves to slumber.
The colonists tried to believe that England had learned wisdom;
Englishmen were cautious about committing a second blunder. In such a
time Franklin was the best man whom his countrymen could have had in
England. His tranquil temperament, his warm regard