with Temple and Grenville as "void of
gratitude." The King repelled and hated every statesman who advised him
to conciliate the colonists by recognising them as having the rights of
British subjects. He was the prompter of the most violent measures
against them, and seemed to think that their only rights and duties were
to obey whatever he might command and the Parliament declare.]

[Footnote 355: Dr. Franklin had been Postmaster-General for America.
When he assumed the office the expenditure exceeded the receipts by
L3,000 a year; under his administration the receipts gradually increased
so as to become a source of revenue. The day after his advocacy of the
American petitions before the Privy Council, he was dismissed from
office. Referring to the manner in which American petitions and their
agents were treated by the British Government, Dr. Franklin expressed
himself as follows, in a letter to the Hon. Thomas Cushing, Speaker of
the House of Representatives of Massachusetts:

"When I see that all petitions and complaints of grievances are so
odious to Government that even the mere pipe which conveys them becomes
obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace and union is to be
maintained or restored between the different parts of the empire.
Grievances cannot be redressed unless they are known; and they cannot be
known but through complaints and petitions. If these are deemed
affronts, and the messengers punished as offenders, who will henceforth
send petitions? and who will deliver them? It has been thought a
dangerous thing in any State to stop up the vent of griefs. Wise
governments have therefore generally received petitions with some
indulgence even when but slightly founded. Those who think themselves
injured by their rulers are sometimes, by a mild and prudent answer,
convinced of their error. But where complaining is a crime, hope becomes
despair." (Collections of Massachusetts Historical Society.)

(Yet the Government of Massachusetts, under the first Charter,
pronounced petitions a crime, and punished as criminals those who
petitioned against the governmental acts which denied them the right of
worship or elective franchise because they were non-Congregationalists.)]

[Footnote 356: Parliamentary Register for 1775, p. 134.]

CHAPTER XXII.

1775 CONTINUED--PARLIAMENT PROCEEDS TO PASS AN ACT TO PUNISH ALL THE NEW
ENGLAND COLONIES FOR SYMPATHISING WITH MASSACHUSETTS, BY RESTRICTING
THEIR TRADE TO ENGL