Almost exactly three years earlier, on January 20, 1768, Lord Hillsborough had become Secretary of State for the American Colonies. Franklin’s initial attitude toward the new office and the man who filled it had been favorable, but disillusionment had soon set in.3 Hillsborough had ordered troops to Boston, had opposed total repeal of the Townshend Acts, and until his volte-face at the end of 1769 had blocked the ambitions of the Walpole Company.4 Although his personal relations with Franklin remained at least polite until the interview described below, the two men were poles apart. When the American called to present his credentials as agent of the Massachusetts House, politeness disappeared.

Franklin’s account of the scene between them does not clarify the Secretary’s position. Hillsborough had been concerned ever since coming to office with regularizing colonial administration, and one of the outstanding irregularities was the agencies. The traditional view of them in Whitehall was clear enough. Although a branch of the legislature, such as the Massachusetts House, might appoint an agent to act for it in a specific matter within its bailiwick, the general rule until recently had been, despite some exceptions, that an agent who acted for the colony at large was appointed by both houses and the governor.5 This rule had been largely disregarded since 1765, and Hillsborough was attempting to revive it. Dennys DeBerdt, Franklin’s predecessor for Massachusetts, had had his status questioned: he had been chosen to represent the House in working for repeal of the Stamp Act, Hillsborough had suggested, and had no standing once that objective had been achieved.6 Although DeBerdt had nevertheless been tolerated, Franklin might have guessed that whoever succeeded him on the same basis would not be welcomed with open arms at the American Department.

Massachusetts was rapidly becoming a thorn in the side of administration, and so was Franklin. His letters to America in 1770, favoring nonimportation, had recently appeared in England;7 and their thinly veiled references to the incompetence of the ministry could scarcely have endeared their author to the minister chiefly concerned. Hillsborough also, whatever he might say, was no friend to the Walpole Company, of which Franklin was a leading promoter; the Earl’s opposition to its schemes was what forced him from office in 1772. He probably did not welcome any development that increased Franklin’s influence, and least of all one that gave the American a claim to be what he said he was, “an Agent for the People” of the most explosive British colony.8

Franklin’s account of the interview leaves much unexplained, not only about Hillsborough’s conduct but also about his own. Why did he take the unusual step of presenting his credentials to the Secretary of State, rather than to the secretary of the Board of Trade? Had he really convinced himself that those credentials were valid enough to secure his official acceptance as agent? If so, he showed much less awareness of the governmental position than he had on other occasions. If not, he chose the one method that virtually ensured a confrontation, and so precluded a working relationship based on the kind of unofficial recognition that DeBerdt had had. Neither Franklin nor his constituents in Massachusetts stood to gain, it would seem, from a complete breach; yet he took the initiative in seeking an interview that achieved precisely that. Hillsborough refused to see him again, except for one extraordinary outburst of hospitality in Ireland.9 A principal channel of communication with the government was consequently closed, and remained so for a year and a half.

All we know about the course of the interview is what Franklin tells us. Hillsborough, he says, received him graciously and even cordially. At the mention of Massachusetts, however, the Earl’s well known courtly manners suddenly evaporated; he turned waspish and showed himself to be a mixture of ignorance, arrogance, and insecurity. The agent’s mild attempts to pacify stopped as his own anger mounted; on leaving he said in effect that the Secretary himself was the barrier to any reconciliation with the colonies. This is the dialogue as Franklin recorded it. He may well have been accurate, or he may not have been. He had a constituency in Massachusetts, it is worth remembering, that had been divided about selecting him because his loyalty to the American cause was suspect; and his account of the interview was intended for that constituency. His situation may have influenced him, consciously or unconsciously, to retouch the picture he was drawing, in order to portray himself as the champion of colonial rights and the Minister as their inveterate enemy.