be a settled point at present that the minister must govern the parliament, who are to do every thing he would have done; and he is to bribe them to do this, and the people are to furnish the money to pay these bribes. The parliament appears to me a very expensive machine for government; and I apprehend the people will find out in time, that they may as well be governed, and that it will be much cheaper to be governed, by the minister alone; no parliament being preferable to the present. Your newspapers are full of fictitious accounts of distractions in America. We know nothing of them. Mr. Jefferson, just arrived here, after a journey through all the states from Virginia to Boston, assures me that all is quiet, a general tranquillity reigns, and the people well satisfied with their present forms of government, a few insignificant persons only excepted. These accounts are I suppose intended as consolatory, and to discourage emigrations. I think with you, that our revolution is an important event for the advantage of mankind in general. It is to be hoped that the lights we enjoy, which the ancient governments in their first establishment could not have, may preserve us from their errors. this the advice of wise friends may do much good, and I am. sure that which you have been so kind as to offer us will be of great service. In Mr. Jay is gone to America; but Mr. Adams is just arrived here, and I shall acquaint him with your remembrance of him. Many thanks for your kind wishes respecting my health and happiness, which I return fourfold; being ever, with the sincerest esteem, my dear friend, your most affectionate B. FRANKLIN, TO THE RIGHT HON. LORD VISCOUNT HOWE; On receiving Capt. Cook's Voyage, by order of the King. I received lately the very valuable voyage of the TO WILLIAM STRAHAN, ESQ. KING'S PRINTER, LONDON. Invites him to Passy-Annihilation of profitable places— American congress and British parliament-The late war-General Clarke, &c. &c. DEAR FRIEND, Passy, Aug. 19, 1784. I received your kind letter of April 17. You will have the goodness to place my delay in answering to the account of indisposition and business, and excuse it. I have now that letter before me; and my grandson, whom you may formerly remember a little scholar at Mr. Elphinston's, purposing to set out in a day or two on a visit to his father in London, I set down to scribble a little to you, first recommending him as a worthy young man to your civilities and counsels. You press me much to come to England. I am not with out strong inducements to do so; the fund of knowledge you promise to communicate to me is an addition to them, and no small one. At present it is impracticable. But when my grandson returns, come with him. We will talk the matter over, and perhaps you may take me back with you. I have a bed at your service, and will try to make your residence, while you can stay with us, as agreeable to you, if possible, as I am sure it will be to me. You do not " approve the annihilation of profitable places ; for you do not see why a statesman who does his business well, should not be paid for his labor as well as any other workman." Agreed. But why more than any other workman? The less the salary the greater the honor. In so great a nation there are many rich enough to afford giving their time to the public; and there are, I make no doubt, many wise and able men who would take as much pleasure in governing for nothing, as they do in playing chess for nothing. It would be one of the noblest amusements. That this opinion is not chimerical, the country I now live in affords a proof; its whole civil and criminal law administration being done for nothing, or in some sense for less than nothing, since the members of its judiciary parliaments buy their places, and do not make more than three per cent. for their money, by their fees and emoluments, while the legal interest is five; so that in fact they give two per cent. to be allowed to govern, and all their time and trouble into the bargain. Thus profit, one motive for desiring place, being abolished, there remains only ambition; and that being in some degree balanced by loss, you may easily conceive that there will not be very violent factions and contentions for such places; nor much of the mischief to the country that attends your factions, which have often occasioned wars, and overloaded you with debts impayable I allow you all the force of your joke upon the vagrancy of our congress. They have a right to sit where they please, of which perhaps they have made too much use by shifting too often. But they have two other rights; those of sitting when they please, and as long as they please, in which methinks they have the advantage of your parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the breath of a minister, or sent packing as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together. You"fairly acknowledge that the late war terminated quite contrary to your expectation." Your expectation was ill-founded; for you would not believe your old friend, who told you repeatedly that by those measures England would lose her colonies, as Epictetus warned in vain his master that he would break his leg.. You believed rather the tales you heard of our poltroonery and impotence of body and mind. Do you not remember the story you told me of the Scotch serjeant who met with a party of forty American soldiers, and though alone, disarmed them all, and brought them in pri soners a story almost as improbable as that of the Irishman, who pretended to have alone taken and brought in five of the enemy by surrounding them. And yet, my friend, sensible and judicious as you are, but partaking of the general infa‐ tuation, you seemed to believe it. The word general puts me in mind of a general, your General Clarke, who had the folly to say in my hearing at Sir John Pringle's, that with a thousand British grenadiers he would undertake to go from one end of America to the other, and geld all the males, partly by force and partly by a little coaxing. It is plain he took us for a species of animals very little superior to brutes. The parliament too believed the stories of another foolish general, I forget his name, that the Yankies never felt bold, Yankey was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and the par liament did not think the petitions of such creatures were fit to be received and read in so wise an assembly. What was the consequence of this monstrous pride and insolence? You first sent small armies to subdue us, believing them more than sufficient, but soon found yourselves obliged to send greater; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our country beyond the protection of their ships, were either repulsed, and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten, and taken prisoners. An American planter who had never seen Europe, was chosen by us to command our troops, and continued during the whole war. This man sent home to you, one after another, five of your best generals baffled, their heads bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their employers. Your contempt of our understandings in comparison with your own, appeared to be not much better founded than that of our courage, if we may judge by this circumstance, that in whatever court of Europe a Yankey negociator appeared, the wise British minister was routed, put in a passion, picked a quarrel with your friends, and was sent home with a flea in his ear. But after all, my dear friend, do not imagine that I am vain enough to ascribe our success to any superiority in any of those points. I am too well acquainted with all the springs and levers of our machine, not to see, that our human means were unequal to our undertaking, and that if it had not been for the justice of our cause, and the consequent interposition of Providence, in which we had faith, we must have been ruined. If I had ever before been an atheist, I should now have been convinced of the being and government of a Deity! It is he who abases, the proud and favors the humble. May we never, forget his goodness to us, and may our future conduct manifest our gratitude! But let us leave these serious reflections and converse with |