Jane Franklin Mecom

By the time seventeen seventy-three came around, Benjamin Franklin had spent years trying to reason with the British government.

But as he wrote to his sister in November of that year, Jane Mecom, he finally realized that being polite, well, polite to politicians, is really a waste of time.

He said, "I had used all the smooth words I could muster, and I grew tired of meekness when I saw it without effect.

Of late, therefore, I have been saucy." Two months earlier, on September eleventh, seventeen seventy-three, this is just months after the passage of the Tax on Tea, that sauciness took the form of an anonymous and brilliant essay published in a London paper.

That's the mathematical abbreviation for what we could say today is case closed.

This is a done deal.

The essay hit London like a sledgehammer, and as he wrote to Jane Mecom, his sister, he was ready for the backlash.

He said, "Those papers have been much taken notice of.