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come sooner to such a resolution, when you find that personal flatteries, general cajolings, and panegyrics on our virtue and wisdom are not likely to have the effect you seem to expect; the persuading us to act basely and foolishly, in betraying our country and posterity into the hands of our most bitter enemies, giving up or selling our arms and warlike stores, dismissing our ships of war and troops, and putting those enemies in possession of our forts and ports.

This proposition of delivering ourselves, bound and gagged, ready for hanging, without even a right to complain, and without a friend to be found afterwards among all mankind, you would have us embrace upon the faith of an act of Parliament! Good God! an act of your Parliament! This demonstrates that you do not yet know us, and that you fancy we do not know you; but it is not merely this flimsy faith that we are to act upon; you offer us hope, the hope of PLACES, PENSIONS, and PEERAGES. These, judging from yourselves, you think are motives irresistible. This offer to corrupt us, sir, is with me your credential, and convinces me that you are not a private volunteer in your application. It bears the stamp of British court character. It is even the signature of your king. But think for a moment in what light it must be viewed in America. By PLACES, you mean places among us, for you take care by a special article to secure your own to yourselves. We must then pay the salaries in order to enrich ourselves with these places. But you will give us PENSIONS, probably to be paid too out of your expected American revenue, and which none

of us can accept without deserving, and perhaps obtaining, a sus-pension. PEERAGES! alas! sir, our long observation of the vast servile majority of your peers, voting constantly for every measure proposed by a minister, however weak or wicked, leaves us small respect for that title. We consider it as a sort of tar-and-feather honor, or a mixture of foulness and folly, which every man among us, who should accept it from your king would be obliged to renounce, or exchange for that conferred by the mobs of their own country, or wear it with everlasting infamy. I am, sir, your humble servant, B. FRANKLIN.

DCCXI

TO MR. GRAND

3 July, 1778.

Mr. Franklin presents his respects to Mr. Grand, and sends him the original letter of which he has spoken. In another, Mr. Bingham says that the slightest pretext suffices nowadays for the English to seize and condemn goods of French merchants, who cannot even transport the products of America from one island to another without running the greatest risks. In effect, many ships have been taken lately into Dominique for the sole reason that they were the productions of America.

It is to be remarked that before these difficulties the French merchants could purchase tobacco, rice, etc., from the Americans of the continent, to be taken into France. If I am not mistaken, it is

provided in the treaties that the ship of a friend protects the merchandise even of an enemy, much more ought it to guarantee your own merchandise previously purchased from this enemy.

Mr. Bingham also says that the Court of Admiralty at Dominique is constituted on such iniquitous principles that it encourages condemnations, the judges receiving a portion of the condemned merchandise, so that one can hardly hope to save his property, the fate of which depends upon their judgment.

DCCXII

TO DAVID HARTLEY

PASSY, 13 July, 1778.

DEAR SIR:-Enclosed is the list of our prisoners, which by an accident was long in coming to us. There are supposed to be about fifteen more remaining in the hospital, whose names we have not yet obtained, and about as many who being recovered of their wounds have been suffered to go home to England. If you continue in the opinion of making the exchange at Calais, you will send us the papers necessary to secure the vessel that shall transport the men from the ports where they are to that place against capture; as the marching them thither would be attended with great inconveniences, and many of them might desert on the way, from an apprehension of being put on board men-of-war on their arrival in England.

VOL. VII.-21.

DCCXIII

TO JAMES LOVELL

PASSY, 22 July, 1778.

SIR: I received your favor of May 15th, and was glad to find that mine of December 25th had come to hand. Mr. Deane's brother writes it was not signed, which was an accidental omission. Mr. Deane is himself, I hope, with you long before this time, and I doubt not every prejudice against him is removed. It was not alone upon the proceedings of Congress that I formed my opinion that such prejudices existed. I am glad to understand that opinion was groundless, and that he is likely to come back with honor in the commission to Holland, where matters are already so ripe for his operations that he cannot fail (with his abilities) of being useful.

You mention former letters of the Committee, by which we might have seen the apprehensions of the resentment of foreign officers, etc. Those letters never came to hand. And we, on our part, are amazed to hear that the Committee had had no line from us for near a year, during which we had written, I believe, five or six long and particular letters, and had made it a rule to send triplicates of each, and to replace those that we happened to hear were lost, so that of some there were five copies sent; and as I hear that Captain Young is arrived, who had some of them, I think it probable that one of each, at least, must have come to your hands before this time. Mr. Deane's information, however, may supply the want

of them, whose arrival, as he went with a strong squadron of men-of-war, is more likely than that of this vessel, or any other single one by which we might send more copies.

The affair with M. de Beaumarchais will be best settled by his assistance after his return. We find it recommended to us, but we know too little of it to be able to do it well without him.

There has been some inaccuracy in sending us the last despatches of the Committee. Two copies of the contract with M. Francy, and the invoices, came by the same vessel, Captain Niles. And though one of your letters mentions sending enclosed a resolution of Congress relative to two articles of the treaty, that resolution is not come to hand. There are circumstances in the affair of those articles that make them, in my opinion, of no consequence if they stand, while the proposing to abrogate them has an unpleasing appearance, as it looks like a desire of having it in our power to make that commercial kind of war, which no honest state can begin, which no good friend or neighbor ever did or will begin, which has always been considered as an act of hostility that provoked as well as justified reprisals, and has generally produced such as rendered the first project as unprofitable as it was unjust.

Commerce among nations, as well as between private persons, should be fair and equitable, by equivalent exchanges and mutual supplies. The taking of unfair advantages of a neighbor's necessities, though attended with temporary success, always breeds bad blood. To lay duties on a commodity exported,

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