xxv AN INDIGNANT LETTER 321 



order to overawe the disobedient colonies, the so-called 

 " Massacre " took place on March 8, 1770. The Americans 

 retaliated by again boycotting goods from the home 

 country. This had at first little effect in England : the 

 merchants trading to America were indeed great sufferers, 

 but British commerce was flourishing and expanding 

 elsewhere. New York seceded from the boycott : this, 

 Fothergill thought, would undo them. " I often re- 

 member," he writes,. " the motto of a noble English 

 family, Aut nunquam tentes aut perfice." * 



The temper of the colonists was rising. In 1773 

 Franklin took the audacious step of sending out to the 

 Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly Governor Hutchin- 

 son's and Oliver's private letters to England, which had 

 in some way come into his hands, and which revealed 

 their underhand tactics. It should be said that interfer- 

 ence with private correspondence was common in those 

 days and often practised by the government. The tea 

 was spilt in Boston harbour in December. In the follow- 

 ing month, January 1774, Wedderburn, Solicitor-General, 

 denounced Franklin in his presence before the Committee 

 of the Privy Council, delivering that famous invective, 

 whose scurrilous words were echoed by the open laughter 

 of the councillors, except Lord North. Franklin would 

 be known, cried the minister, as homo trium litterarum 

 f-u-r, a thief : but " vir " was substituted by his French 

 admirers. The American was then dismissed from the 

 office of Colonial Postmaster-General. This ill day's 

 work struck a heavy blow at his love of England, from 

 which it never recovered. 



As the obstinacy of the king and Tory government yielded 

 nothing to reason, and the contest became more formidable 

 in aspect, FothergilTs habitually cautious and judicial mind 

 was much stirred, and we find him writing in trenchant 

 language to a friend in India. The measures of the govern- 

 ment, he says, have been uniformly oppressive, not by system 



1 J. F. to Thomas Fisher, 20. ix. 1770, J. M. Fox MSS. "'Aut non tentes 

 aut perfice," the motto of the extinct dukedom of Dorset, and of the present 

 family of Magrath : it is derived from Ovid. 



Y 



