A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland

flatly that Goddard had taken him into the firm because he owed him jour-
neyman's wages which he could not hope to pay otherwise than by giving
him a share in the business. Whatever may have been the true reason for
the new partnership, it turned out to be the unhappiest arrangement which
any two men ever formed for the conduct of a business enterprise. God-
dard hated Towne of all men second only to Galloway, and in the intervals
between his attacks on the latter, he assailed his new partner in a manner
the coarsest and most vindictive possible.¹ His great purpose in life after the
separation from his earlier partners, however, left him relatively little time
to devote to Towne's discomfiture, for his campaign to prevent Galloway's
re-election to the Pennsylvania Assembly took precedence of all lesser con-
tests. One of its first offensives, if the military figure may be carried out,
was the publication in 1770 of The Partnership, a pamphlet in which he left
unsaid nothing that could blacken the character of his former associates,
except probably a few unimportant things which he forgot to record. In the
seventy-two closely printed and frequently tedious pages of this pamphlet is
to be found a mixture of mockery, "appeals of injured innocence," and down-
right blackguardism, the whole composed in a voluble, exaggerated style
which at times is as shrill as a fish-wife's curse. How greatly he was in the
wrong or how greatly he had been wronged becomes a matter of little im-
portance in the face of the evidence which his defense presents of his lack
of mental balance, a quality, which, had he possessed it, would have com-
bined with his energy and talents to raise him to a high place in the life of
the nation then in gestation. Of this or of a later literary assault on Gallo-
way by the author of The Partnership, Franklin wrote to his son, "I cast
my eye over Goddard's Piece against our friend Mr. Galloway, and then
lit my fire with it. I think such feeble, malicious Attacks cannot hurt him."²
By leaving Philadelphia and standing for the Assembly from the county of

¹ Of the quarrel between Goddard and Towne, little need be said. It can be read in The Partnership; in the
sheet issued by Towne on July 31, 1770, entitled "To the Public, and particularly the kind customers of the
Pennsylvania Chronicle," in which Towne gives a sober account of his relations with one whom he considers to
have been mentally unbalanced; and in a broadside "Advertisement" of August 1, 1770, in which Goddard re-
plied to Towne's dignified paper of the day before. These broadsides are in the Franklin Collection of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, XII: 41 and X: 8, respectively. Goddard's language in the "Advertisement" was par-
ticularly rude. He seems to have been suffering under delusions of persecution at this time. Towne was a capable
man whose politics changed during the Revolution in accordance with the distance of the British troops from
Philadelphia. Isaiah Thomas gives an excellent sketch of him. The partnership lasted from May 19, 1769, until
soon after the death of Goddard's mother on January 5, 1770, when Towne brought suit for its dissolution. In
the meantime Goddard continued the Chronicle with his sister as silent partner. On the verso of the title-page
of volume 3 of the paper (photostat copy in New York Public Library), he announced under date of February
12, 1770, the continuance and improvement of his journal, and asserted that he had purchased "an elegant Ma-
hogany Press, made by an ingenious watchmaker, at New Haven," and that he was expecting by every ship fonts
of "a beautiful new Elzivir Type, made by an inimitable Founder in England."

¹ Franklin to William Franklin, January 30, 1772. In Smyth, A. H., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 5:378.

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