drafts should be made on us without first learning from us that we shall be able to answer them. M. de Beaumarchais has been out of town ever since the arrival of your power to settle with him. I hope he will be able to furnish the supplies mentioned in the invoice and contract. The settlement may be much better made with the assistance of Mr. Deane, we being not privy to the transactions. We have agreed to give M. Dumas two hundred louis a year, thinking that he well deserves it. With great esteem, I have the honor to be, etc., B. FRANKLIN. DCCXIV TO DAVID HARTLEY PASSY, 3 September, 1778. DEAR SIR: I received duly your favors of July 14th and August 14th. I hoped to have answered them sooner by sending passport. Multiplicity of business has, I suppose, been the only occasion of delay in the ministers to consider of and make out the said passport. I hope now soon to have it, as I do not find there is any objection made to it. In a former letter I proposed to you that the exchange would, in my opinion, be preferable at or near Brest, and I expected some time your answer on that point. But perhaps you have not received my letter; you say nothing of it. I wish with you as much for the restoration of peace, as we both formerly did for the continuance of it. But it must now be a peace of a different kind. I was fond to a folly of our British connections, and it was with infinite regret that I saw the necessity you would force us into of breaking it. But the extreme cruelty with which we have been treated has now extinguished every thought of returning to it, and separated us for ever. You have thereby lost limbs that will never grow again. We, too, have suffered greatly, but our losses will soon be repaired by our good government, our industry, and the fertility of our country. And we now see the mischievous consequences of such a connection, and the danger of their being repeated if we should be weak enough to enter into it; we see this too plainly ever to listen in the least to any such proposition. We may therefore, with great propriety, take leave of you in those beautiful lines of Dante to the late mistress of his affection. DCCXV TO JOHN PAUL JONES PASSY, 6 September, 1778. DEAR CAPTAIN :-I received your favors of the 24th and 31st of August. I am told, by M. de C 2 that M. de S is sorry you did not go with M. d'Orvilliers. He had sent orders for that purpose, and your staying at L'Orient occasioned your missing I Probably de Chaumont. 2 Probably de Sartine. the opportunity. Your letter was sent to the Prince de Nassau. I am confident something will be done for you, though I do not yet know what. Dr. Bancroft has been indisposed, and I have not lately seen him; but I hear he is getting better, and suppose he has written. I go out of town early this morning for a few days, but the other Commissioners will answer your letter. I am glad you have procured a guard for the prisoners. It is a good piece of service. They have concluded in England to send us an equal number of ours, and we expect to-morrow to send the passport for their cartel ship, which is to bring them. If we are to deliver theirs at Calais, I should be for accepting thankfully the offer you mention. We have no news from America, but what comes through England. Clinton's letter is in the London Gazette, and for style and coloring is so like Keppel's that I cannot help thinking neither of them originals, but both the performance of some under-secretary, whose business it is to cook the news for the ministers. Upon the whole, we learn that the English army was well worried in its march, and that their whole fleet and forces are now blocked up in New York by Washington and Gates on the land side, and by Count d'Estaing by sea, and that they will soon be in want of provisions. I sympathize with you in what I know you must suffer from your present inactivity; but have patience. I am, etc., I B. FRANKLIN. I The march across New Jersey to New York, after the evacuation of Philadelphia. During this march was fought the battle of Monmouth. DCCXVI TO DAVID HARTLEY PASSY, 14 September, 1778. DEAR SIR:-I now send you the passport required. I postponed answering your last in hopes of obtaining it sooner, but though it was long since agreed to, much business in the Admiralty Department here has, I suppose, occasioned its delay. The port of Calais was not approved of, and I think the ports mentioned (Nantes or L'Orient) are better for you as well as for us, not only as being nearer to Plymouth, but as many of your sailors would probably have found opportunities of deserting in the long march from Brest to Calais, they being afraid of the press. I understand that upwards of eighty more of your people have been brought by ours prisoners into France since the list I sent you, but I cannot now send you their names. You have not mentioned whether the proposition of sending us the whole of those in your prisons was agreed to. If it is, you may rely on our sending immediately all that come to our hands for the future; or we will give you your option, an order for the balance to be delivered to your fleet in America. By putting a little confidence in one another, we may thus diminish the miseries of To make the expense of these exchanges more equal, if another cartel ship should hereafter be necessary, we hereby promise to send to England at our charge; and so it may continue to be done alternately as long as the war continues. war. DCCXVII FRANKLIN'S NOTES ON THE CONDITION OF HIS HEALTH FROM 1778-80 PASSY, 4 October, 1778. As my constitution appears to have undergone some considerable changes within the last three or four years, it may be of use to make some notes of the changes past, and to continue them, in order to ascertain what are hurtful or beneficial. I had enjoyed continued health for nearly twenty years, except once in two or three years a slight fit of the gout, which generally terminated in a week or ten days, and once an intermitting fever, got from making experiments over stagnate waters. I was sometimes vexed with an itching on the back, which I observed particularly after eating freely of beef. And sometimes after long confinement at writing, with little exercise, I have felt sudden pungent pains in the flesh of different parts of the body, which I was told was scorbutic. A journey used to free me of them. In 1773, being in Ireland, I was, after a plentiful dinner of fish the first day of my arrival, seized with a violent vomiting and looseness. The latter continued, though more moderate, as long as I stayed in that kingdom, which was four or five weeks. On my return I first observed a kind of scab or scurf on my head about the bigness of a shilling. Finding it did not heal, but rather increased, I mentioned it to my friend, Sir. J. P., who advised a |