on
growing louder, more eager, and more disputatious, until it was
swallowed up in the roar of the revolutionary cannon. Among others,
Shirley, governor of Massachusetts, concocted a scheme and showed it to
Franklin. By this an assembly of the governors of all the colonies,
attended by one or two members of their respective councils, was to have
authority to take such measures as should seem needful for defense, with
power to draw upon the English treasury to meet expenses, the amount of
such drafts to be "re-imbursed by a tax laid on the colonies by act of
Parliament." This alarming proposition at once drew forth three letters
from Franklin, written in December, 1754, and afterward published in
the "London Chronicle" in December, 1766. His position amounted to this:
that the business of self-defense and the expense thereof were matters
neither beyond the abilities of the colonies, nor outside their
willingness, and should therefore be managed by them. Their loyalty
could be trusted; their knowledge must be the best; on the other hand,
governors were apt to be untrustworthy, self-seeking, and ignorant of
provincial affairs. But the chief emphasis of his protest falls against
taxation without representation. He says:--

"That it is supposed an undoubted right of Englishmen not to be
taxed but by their own consent, given through their
representatives.

"That the colonists have no representative in Parliament.

"That compelling the colonists to pay money without their consent
would be rather like raising contributions in an enemy's country,
than taxing of Englishmen for their own public benefit.

"That it would be treating them as a conquered people, and not as
true British subjects."

And so on; traversing beforehand the same ground soon to be so
thoroughly beaten over by the patriot writers and speakers of the
colonies. In a very few years the line of argument became familiar, but
for the present Franklin and a very few more were doing the work of
suggestion and instruction for the people at large, teaching them by
what logic their instinctive convictions could be maintained.

He further ingeniously showed that the colonists were already heavily
taxed in ways from which they could not escape. Taxes paid by British
artificers came out of the colonial consumers, and the colonists were
compelled to buy only from Britain those articles which they would
otherwise be able to