TO THE PRINTER OF THE PUBLIC ADVERTISER:"
_Sir_,--Finding that two gentlemen have been unfortunately engaged in a duel about a transaction and its circumstances of which both of them are totally ignorant and innocent, I think it incumbent upon me to declare (for the prevention of further mischief, as far as such a declaration may contribute to prevent it) that I alone am the person who obtained and transmitted to Boston the letters in question. Mr. Whately could not communicate them, because they were never in his possession; and for the same reason they could not be taken from him by Mr. Temple. They were not of the nature of _private_ letters between friends. They were written by public officers to persons in public stations on public affairs, and intended to procure public measures; they were therefore handed to other public persons, who might be influenced by them to produce those measures. Their tendency was to incense the mother country against her colonies, and, by the steps recommended, to widen the breach which they effected. The chief caution expressed with regard to privacy was, to keep their contents from the colony agents, who, the writers apprehended, might return them, or copies of them, to America. That apprehension was, it seems, well founded, for the first agent who laid his hands on them thought it his duty to transmit them to his constituents.
_Agent for the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay_.
The petition, forwarded by the House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay, after they had read the famous letters, recited that the petitioners had "very lately had before them _certain papers_," and it was upon the strength of the contents of these papers that they humbly prayed that his majesty would be "pleased to remove from their posts in this government" Governor Hutchinson and Lieutenant-Governor Oliver. Immediately upon receipt of this petition Franklin transmitted it to Lord Dartmouth, with a very civil and conciliatory note, to which Lord Dartmouth replied in the same spirit. This took place in August, 1773; the duel followed in December, and in the interval Franklin had heard nothing from the petition. But when his foregoing letter was published and conned over it seemed that the auspicious moment for the ministry was now at hand, and that it had actually been furnished to them by the astute Franklin himself. There is no question that he had acted according to his conscience, and it seems now to be generally agreed that his conscience did not mislead him. But he had been placed in a difficult position, and it was easily possible to give a very bad coloring to his conduct. There was in this business an opportunity to bring into discredit the character of the representative man of America, the man foremost of Americans in the eyes of the world, the man most formidable to the ministerial party; such an opportunity was not to be lost.[31]