1. The letters were furnished (from a source never divulged) by Benjamin Franklin, London
agent of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, in a letter to Speaker Thomas
Cushing, London, 2 Dec. 1772 (
Franklin, Writings, ed. Smyth, 6:265–268; a variant version, copied in
JA's hand, is in the
Adams Papers, Microfilms, April 1773, and is printed in
JA's Works, 1:647–648).
JA also made a copy of the Hutchinson letter that gave greatest offense to whig feelings.
It was originally written, as we now know all the purloined letters were, to Thomas
Whately, dated at Boston, 20 Jan. 1769, and contained the following passage as copied
and attested by
JA:
“This is most certainly a Crisis. I really wish that there may not have been the least
degree of Severity, beyond what is absolutely necessary to maintain, I think I may
say to you, the dependance which a Colony ought to have upon the Parent State, but if no measures shall have
been taken to secure this dependance or nothing more than some Declaratory Acts or
Resolves, it is all over with Us. The Friends of Government will be utterly disheartned and the friends of Anarchy
will be afraid of nothing be it ever so extravagant. . . .
“I never think of the measures necessary for the Peace and good Order of the Colonies
without pain. There must be an Abridgment of what are called English Liberties. I
relieve myself by considering that in a Remove from the State of nature to the most
perfect State of Government there must be a great restraint of natural Liberty. I
doubt whether it is possible to project a System of Government in which a Colony 3000
miles distant from the parent State shall enjoy all the Liberty of the parent State.
I am certain I have never yet seen the Projection. I wish the Good of the Colony,
when I wish to see some further Restraint of Liberty rather than the Connection with
the parent State should be broken for I am sure such a Breach must prove the Ruin
of the Colony.”
The letters were handed about too freely and over too long a time to be kept a secret,
and on 15 June they were by order of the House turned over to the printers (
Mass., House Jour., 1773–1774, p. 56). They appeared in a pamphlet published by Edes and Gill under
the title
Copy of Letters Sent to Great-Britain, by His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, the Hon.
Andrew Oliver, and Several Other Persons, Born and Educated Among Us, 1773, which was several times reprinted in America and England, and they ran all summer
serially in Thomas'
Massachusetts Spy. They led to a petition by the Massachusetts House for the removal of Hutchinson and
Oliver from their posts, to a duel in London, to the famous denunciation of Franklin
by Alexander Wedderburn in the Privy Council, and to Franklin's loss of his office
as postmaster general in America.
Franklin's account of the affair, published posthumously, is in his
Writings, ed. Smyth, 6:258–289; Hutchinson's in his
Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo, 3:282–298, supplemented by “Additions to Thomas Hutchinson's
History of Massachusetts Bay,” Amer. Antiq. Soc,
Procs., 59 (1949):60–65. Mr. Malcolm Freiberg in an article entitled “Missing: One Hutchinson
Autograph Letter” points out and discusses the significance of the variations between
the texts of the critical paragraphs in Hutchinson's letter quoted above as on the
one hand printed by his adversaries and as on the other hand preserved in his letterbook
in the Massachusetts Archives (
Manuscripts, 8:179–184 [Spring 1956]). But it should be noted that Hutchinson himself did not
raise questions about the validity
{ 81 } of the printed text and indeed quoted the most controversial passage of all from that
text (
Massachusetts Bay, ed. Mayo, 3:293–294).