21Credentials of the Massachusetts Delegates to the Continental Congress, 11 November 1775 (Adams Papers)
Watertown, 11 November 1775. (Misc. Papers of the Continental Congress, Reel No. 8). Although the credentials as passed by the house bear the date 10 November, the Journal of the House of Representatives Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts [1715- ], Boston, reprinted by the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1919- . (For the years for which reprints are not yet available,...
22To Benjamin Franklin from a Committee of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 13 July 1771 (Franklin Papers)
LS : University of Virginia Library For many years the Massachusetts General Court had passed annual legislation that taxed the income of all royal officials residing in and paid by the province. In 1768 the customs commissioners, created by one of the Townshend Acts, were also assessed as resident officials. Although they argued that their salaries were exempt as coming from the crown, not...
23To Benjamin Franklin from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 6 November 1770 (Franklin Papers)
DS : Massachusetts Historical Society These instructions introduced Franklin to the boiling cauldron of resentment in Massachusetts. Anger was directed at more than the troops in Boston—at what the colonists took to be the helplessness of the civil authority before the military, the secret and false reports sent home, the subordination of the legislature to an executive controlled by...
24To Benjamin Franklin from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 25 June 1771 (Franklin Papers)
LS : University of Virginia Library and Harvard University Library At the present Session of the General Court, Application has been made to the Court by some of the Grantees of Townships to the eastward of Penobscot River, praying that further Time may be allowed them to procure the King’s Approbation of the Grants that have been made to them. The General Court have divers Times already...
25To Benjamin Franklin from the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 29 June 1771 (Franklin Papers)
LS : University of Virginia Library Your Letter of the 5th. of Febry last has been laid before the House, the Contents are important, and claim our fixed Attention. We cannot think the Doctrine of the Right of Parliament to tax us is given up while an Act remains in Force for that Purpose, and is daily put in Execution, and the longer it remains the more Danger there is of the People’s...