minds of ministers; they fed the fancies of the King. They served to bolster up the singular system of ignorance and incapacity which went by the name of colonial administration. Of course Hutchinson and Oliver and their kind thought that they were only writing for ministerial eyes, that they were only whispering into royal ears. They no doubt assumed that their letters would be safely pigeon-holed, or still more safely destroyed. It did not occur to them that they ever could or would be made public, and by their publication thrust new weapons into the hands of the men whose liberties they were so zealous to suppress. But the unexpected often, if not always, happens. Whately died in the June of 1772, and after his death the letters he had received, and preserved, from Hutchinson and Oliver, were somehow stolen. We shall probably never know how they were stolen or by whom. It was claimed in later years, but not proved, that Dr. Hugh Williamson was the means of transmitting the letters to Franklin. All that we know for certain is that they came into the hands of Benjamin Franklin, and that Benjamin Franklin believed it to be his duty as agent for Massachusetts to make them known to the colony he represented. He was only allowed to do so under certain strict and definite conditions. The source from which they came was to be kept absolutely secret. They were only to be shown to a few leading colonists; they were to be neither printed nor copied, and they were to be returned promptly. Franklin accepted these conditions, and as far as was in his power observed them. The source from which they came was kept a secret, is still a secret. {155} But Franklin could not very well enforce, perhaps did not very greatly desire to enforce, those conditions upon his friends on the other side of the Atlantic. He pointed out that, though they might not be printed or copied, they might be talked about. And talked about they were. The knowledge of them set all Boston afire with excitement, filling the colonists with indignation and their opponents with dismay. The Massachusetts House of Assembly carried by a large majority a petition to the King, calling for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver as betrayers of their trust and enemies to the colony. Hutchinson, soon made aware of the publicity given to the correspondence, demanded to see the letters that were said to come from him. The Assembly permitted this, but accorded the permission with a show of distrust that was in itself the crudest affront. A small committee was appointed to take the letters to Hutchinson and to show him the letters in their presence, the implication being that Hutchinson was not to be trusted with the letters except in the presence of witnesses. Hutchinson had to submit to the insult; he had also to admit that the letters were genuine. He gave, or was understood to give, permission that the letters might be made public. The letters were promptly made public.