212 



midst of the most learned and appreciative scholars England 

 could boast, was not altogether destitute of attractions. Yet 

 the diplomatic gain — the admission in particular of the right 

 of the colonists to tax the lands of the proprietaries, soon to 

 be proprietaries no more — seems trifling in view of the great 

 events shortly to happen. And still the shrewd negotiator 

 had gained something valuable. He had gained an insight 

 into the cardinal doctrine of the current creed of the court. 

 For had he not heard a minister of state, Lord Granville, 

 propound the tenet that the king's instructions to his 

 governors in America were the law of the land, and that 

 the king himself must be regarded as " the legislator of the 

 colonies?" This was a strange view to Dr. Franklin, who 

 had always supposed that the right tc make the laws was 

 vested in the provincial assemblies, with the king's approval. 

 And he significantly tells us : " His lordship's conversation 

 having a little alarmed me as to what might be the sentiments 

 of the court concerning us, I wrote it down as soon as I re- 

 turned to my lodgings."* 



It was not many years before it was the turn of others to 

 take alarm at the practical assertion of the same dangerous 

 heresy. 



Eespecting Franklin's second period of residence in London 

 as a negotiator, it is not too much to say, that it brings into 

 the clearest relief the rare capacity of the great American 

 statesman. True, he did not attain the goal of his hopes. He 

 was not successful in bringing the crown and people of Great 

 Britain to a better mind, in settling the relations of the colonies 

 to the mother country upon a lasting basis of justice and 

 equality ; in obviating the necessity of that sundering of ties 

 which Dr. Franklin himself was reluctant to admit to be 



* Autobiography (continuation) in Works, i, 296. 



