Benjamin Franklin | "three Years Service as [Georgia's] Agent in England at 100£ Sterling per Ann.".

Benjamin Franklin

Autograph document signed (“Errors excepted per BFranklin,” with large paraph) as colonial agent for Georgia, signed a second time (“BFranklin”) in text, one page on a quarter sheet of paper (165 x 295 mm), Philadelphia, 7 October 1776, being an invoice to the Province of Georgia for “three Years Service as their Agent in England”; browned, laid down on heavier stock, closing some tiny losses and fold separations, with some abrasion and loss of surface paper but costing only a single letter of text and a few very short sections of rules. Half green morocco folding-case gilt, chemise.

Franklin’s long tenure as Colonial Agent in England for Pennsylvania (1757–1775) is well known and studied, and, because of his entanglement with the Hutchinson letters, so is his service in the same role for Massachusetts (1771–1775). But Franklin also represented the affairs of two other North American colonies in Parliament: New Jersey (1769–1775 [concurrent with his son William’s term as royal governor of that province]) and Georgia (1768–1774).

“The Doctor was appointed Georgia agent in the spring of 1768 as a compromise selection, in the hope that his appointment would end a two-year feud between the two houses of the Georgia legislature. For two years the lower house had attempted to appoint Charles Garth, who was already serving as South Carolina's agent. The upper house consistently refused to concur in the appointment of Garth, and Governor James Wright had backed the upper house by persuading officials in London not to receive Garth as Georgia's agent. Hoping to end the political stalemate, Wright responded positively in the early months of 1768 when the lower house proposed Franklin for the agency. Although the upper house exhibited little enthusiasm for the Doctor, its members went along. … The effective date of Franklin's appointment was 1 June 1768, and the ordinance by which it was made, called upon the new agent to ‘follow and pursue all such instructions, as he shall from time to time receive from the General Assembly’ or from the Assembly's Committee of Correspondence, which was to consist of nine men from the lower house and five from the upper house. Seven members of the committee constituted a quorum and could send instructions, as long as at least two members from the upper house were present when the committee met. The new agent's salary was to be £100 per year over and above expenses” (Morgan, pp. 136–37).

Franklin’s formal appointment as Agent for Georgia lapsed on 1 June 1771 and was never renewed, although he continued to represent the colony’s interests. In March 1774, Grey Elliott, a Georgia planter resident in London, was appointed as alternate Colonial Agent for Georgia, with power to act in Franklin’s absence. At the time Franklin sent this invoice, he had been back in America for more than a year and was shortly to sail the Atlantic again for Paris. He had evidently received no monies from Georgia for almost six years. Franklin’s neat statement of accounts is headed “Province of Georgia to BFranklin.” The left column lists his fees and expenses, which total £439.5.11:

“To three Years Service as their Agent in England at 100£ Sterling per Ann.} £300.0.0

“To Cash paid for a Mace, Gowns, &c.——107.12.9

“To Do. paid Thos. Life Esqr. Sollicetor 16.1.2

“To Coach & Chair hire, Fees at Offices, and other small Expenses————} 15.12.0”

In the right column, Franklin details his compensation received, which leaves him a “Balance” due of £219.5.11:

“1770 June 20. By a Bill of Exchange———£100.0.0

“Dec. 11. By Ditto2 Bills————£120.0.0”

Franklin’s claim for his agreed to annual salary is unremarkable, as are the charges for various “small Expenses” and for the lawyer Thomas Life, who was appointed to serve with Richard Jackson as London agent for Connecticut in 1760, but who frequently acted as Franklin’s lawyer, including during the Hutchinson letters affair. Less justifiable, perhaps, was the more than £107 charged for the ceremonial regalia required for his attendance at Parliament, which must assuredly already been part of his wardrobe.

The Franklin Papers record the final settlement for Franklin’s Massachusetts agency, £1,851 allocated by the colony’s House of Representatives on 23 October 1775 (Papers 22:243–244). Massachusetts had a particular motivation to stay in Franklin’s good graces, as he had been appointed, 30 September 1775, together with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia and Thomas Lynch of South Carolina, to a committee of the Continental Congress to meet at Cambridge with George Washington, recently appointed commander in chief of the newly formed Continental Army, and representatives of the New England colonies to address the commander’s concerns and determine “the most effectual method of continuing, supporting, and regulating a continental army.”

Indeed, the very day the committee was appointed, Massachusetts congressional delegate John Adams wrote to James Warren, speaker of the Massachusetts House, asking, “Will it not be excellent Politicks to make Dr Franklin welcome by making him a grant of what is due to him from the Province? if you grant it in your provisional Paper, I suppose you can change it for him into continental” (cf. Papers of John Adams 3:173 and Letters of Delegates to Congress 2:80–81 note). Interestingly, Adams’s letter was carried to Warren by Franklin.

Georgia may not have felt the same incentive to settle her debt to Franklin; at the least, there is no record in the Papers of Benjamin Franklin that she did so. On 25 October 1776, Franklin sent a copy of his invoice—almost certainly the present document—to Savannah doctor and statesman Noble Wimberly Jones, explaining, “Being just about to embark for Europe, I take the Liberty of troubling you with my Acct. and requesting you would be so good as to procure an Adjustment of it from your Government, and remit the Sum you receive to my Son-in-law Richard Bache, Secretary of the General Post Office Residing in this Place, whose Rect. shall be a Discharge” (Papers 22:670–671).

Franklin’s letter to Jones is now held by the Massachusetts Historical Society, but the enclosed accounting is no longer with it. In a note, the Papers point out that a transcription of the invoice “dated Philadelphia, Oct. 7, 1776, which may have been what he enclosed,” was published in The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America, vol. 1 (1857), p. 311, “and has since disappeared.” The note describing Franklin’s account with Georgia is signed “W. S. P.,” and the author stated that the document was in his possession. This may well have been William Stevens Perry (1832–1898), an Episcopal bishop and educator; see William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises (New York, 1886).

REFERENCES

David T. Morgan, The Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent: Benjamin Franklin’s Years in London (Mercer University Press, 1996), passim

PROVENANCE

Probably William Stevens Perry (see above) — Christie’s New York, 18 June 2020, lot 92 (undesignated consignor)