1Franklin’s Public Statement about the Hutchinson Letters, 25 December 1773 (Franklin Papers)
Printed in The London Chronicle , Dec. 23–25, 1773 By the late summer of 1773 the furor aroused by the Hutchinson letters had spread from Boston to London. Franklin’s role in the affair was still unknown; attention focused on who had obtained the correspondence from Thomas Whately’s papers, and a long controversy on this point began in the pages of the Public Advertiser . On September 4 an...