Page 161 - Transcriptions d'actes notariés - Tome 20 - 1682-1686

Uni~ed Colonies, to Iirornole and form a union betweeu tlie said Colonies
and the people of Canada.(D'

On what score were tliese cornrnissioners and the fourth aeaociste
rnernber chosen ? What liad they to qualify them for such an uuder-
taking ?

Benjamin Franklin,!''' born in Boston in 1706, a printer by trade,
a Presbyterian by upliringing and an active Freernason, )vas first kuown
in the Colonies by hi5 almanae eciutaining rna~irns of prudence.'l1I
He rose gradually to proniineucc as a public servaut uutil he bccarne an
elected rnernber of the Penn~ylvania Assern bly wliere he proved Iiirnself
a first class politician. Altliouph he spcike seldom, he worked behind
the ecenes, shaping opinion, harinonking differenceji, and mmning up
in incomparable and irresistible _statenieni6."" Having eopoused tlie
popular intercsts he wa9 Pent by the Pennsrlvania hssembly to Englsud
in 1757 to present the eanee of ihe people.
Ely the time Franklin ivas eslablished in England, the wat in hrnerica
had been brilliantly dirccted by Pitt. so that the face of colonial affairs
wae changed. Louisbourg. then Qnebec, and finally, al1 Canada hv 1'760
had failen to the Britj~h. Franklin set himself at once to work to
convincc ihe authorities aud the public in Britain ihat Cenada innat be
permanently English.'l3) Already pamphlets hed been circulating in
London coneÎdering ~he relative advjsability of keeping Canada or
Guadeloupe which had been recently taken Iroin the French. To mauy
Englishnien Canada seemed a hopeless wilderness, while Guadeloupe was
a flourishing sugar-prndu cing islaud.
ln Franklin's imperial vision portrayed in a pamphlet, Canada must
be English so that Eugland could be eecure: the colonies were the weetern
frontier of the Dritifili Enipire. To secure them was to sccure the Empire.
The Stamp Act passed in 1765 by a Parliament in which they were
not rcpesented raised a grcat hue and ery in the Anierican Colonies
Iiecauw it was a dirwt tax. Though they still had a traditional affection
for the home land and the king, this did not extend in the same degree
to Patliament, which they eoiisidered a corrnpt oligarchy.(14i
On February 3, 1766. Franklin wafi ordered to attend the House of
Corn~nonu.('~' Tn the course of the ten foilowing days he was questioned
shout the tepesl of ~he Act and on the situation of America in general.(lB'

1bi.d.. p. 219.
Carl Van Doten, Benjamin Frnnklin (New York: The Viking Press, 1938),
1). 12. Thi3 is n good cornprchensive biogaphy of Franklin which gîves a
clesr picture of the tinies in vFhich he lived.
Ihid., pp. 107-115.
16id., p. 905.
Ibid., p. 288.
Ibid., p. 318-329.
ILirl., p. 335.
Iliirl., py. 336-352.