right to risk it for a fancy. I pray God this may reach you in time, and have some effect towards changing your design; being ever, my dear friend, yours affectionately, B. FRANKLIN.

FROM FRANCIS MASERES TO B. FRANKLIN.

Policy of restoring the confiscated Estates to the Loyalists. -National Debt.

SIR,

Inner Temple, 20 June, 1785.

I have this day received by the hands of M. Du Calvet the favor of your letter, which gave me a very singular pleasure after so long and so unfortunate an interruption of our correspondence. The event of the late contest has brought great misfortunes upon both countries, or, at least, upon Great Britain, by increasing the national debt to at least double its former quantity, as well as very much reducing the extent of its dominions. But, melancholy as this event is, it is less displeasing than the contrary event of a total subjugation of the revolted colonies by force of arms, and a consequent government of them by military power, by erecting forts and citadels, and altering the charters, and governing them by governors and other officers depending entirely on the pleasure of the crown, and in a manner disagreeable to the people, which I conjecture from the Archbishop of York's sermon, of February 21st, 1777, (of which I sent you a paraphrase with the book of Annuities,) would have been the government established over them, if they had been thoroughly subdued in the year 1776.

But, if they could have been reconciled to Great Britain by fair means, and governed, as formerly, with

out force or soldiers, and with their own consent and good will, I own, I think it would have been for the benefit of all parties. But these views are now at an end, and the new States are, I presume, likely to continue for ever independent of, and consequently foreign to Great Britain. And I am amongst those, who wish them happy in their new condition, and feel no satisfaction from the reports that prevail here, that, from the anarchy and confusion that prevail among them, they have still more reason than we to lament the separation. On the contrary, I sincerely wish, that, as they have been founded on the purest principles of liberty, they may enjoy all the blessings that should result from those principles, and prove a refuge to mankind from the slavery which prevails in almost every part of Europe.

They seem, however, at present to be too much actuated by a spirit of revenge against those of their countrymen, who adhered to their first allegiance, whom they call Tories, and we call Loyalists. After the complete attainment of their desired independence, it would surely have been more agreeable to policy, as well as justice, to have restored to those persons their estates, upon their taking the new oaths of allegiance to the several new governments, which they would have no longer scrupled to do, when the King had absolved them from their allegiance to him, by consenting to the independence of the new States.

When the Commonwealth Parliament of England had cut off King Charles's head, in the year 1649, and set up a republican government, they did not confiscate the estates of the Cavaliers, but left those, who had not been in arms for the King, in the full and quiet possession of all their property, and restored the estates of those who had been in arms for the

King, upon the payment of a composition of only two years' rent, with the exception of a very few persons, whom they considered as very deep malignants (as they called them), or very great offenders, such as the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl of Derby, and four or five persons more, whose estates they did confiscate. Nothing, I apprehend, would tend more to introduce settlement and good order in the States, than the imitation of this gentle and moderate conduct; and I suppose it would produce likewise the surrender of the posts on the lakes Ontario and Erie to the new States, agreeably to the treaty of peace, till which event, the peace can hardly be considered as firmly established; and God forbid we should have any more war about these posts, or indeed any thing else.

My view, in the observations on the national debt, was not so much to recommend my particular method of diminishing it, in preference to other methods, as to show, that most methods were nearly equally useful for this purpose, provided the same sum of money was applied every year to that purpose, for the same number of years, without any interruption; and that those methods were the fittest to be adopted, which were least likely to be interrupted.

Your old friend, Mr. Jackson, is pretty well in health, but is not in Parliament; and Lord John Cavendish, and Mr. John Yorke, and many other gentlemen of respectable character and condition, are not so now. I should have been very happy to have seen you again in England, and so, I am persuaded, would have been many of your friends, notwithstanding the late unfortunate contentions. But, since that cannot be, and you are returning to America, I heartily wish you health and strength to bear the journey with ease, and to

I owe you my most cordial acknowledgments for the very friendly letter, with which you favored me last summer by Mr. Smeathman. Your ingenious manuscript concerning the cause of the severe cold in the winter of 1783-4 I delivered to our Philosophical Society, and it is ordered by the committee of papers to be inserted in a volume of Memoirs, which is now in the press.* I am commissioned to return the thanks of the Society to you for this communication, to request your future correspondence, and to acquaint you, that we have honored our Institution by electing you an extraordinary member.

The gentleman, who took charge of your diploma, conveys it with a little tract of mine on the Perceptive Power of Vegetables. To the whimsical doctrine contained in this jeu d'esprit, you will readily believe I can hardly be a convert. Yet, the further we carry our researches into the comparative nature of animals and vegetables, the more shall we find that they elucidate the economy of each other, and reciprocally discover principles, which are common to both. Late observations have evinced, that animals have the power of resisting, to a certain point, such degrees of heat or cold as are injurious to them. It is obvious, that vegetables must be endued with the same faculty, because they are found to flourish in climates where the

* See this paper in the present work, Vol. VI. p. 455.

circumambient air varies considerably from their proper temperature. And the fact has been fully illustrated by Mr. John Hunter's experiments.

Your very kind acceptance of the volume of Moral and Literary Dissertations, which I sent to you by Mr. Thomas White, afforded me the sincerest satisfaction; and the honor you did me, by perusing the whole of it before you slept, is more flattering to me than the approbation of a hundred critics.

I have lately received a very valuable present from my friend Dr. Watson, Bishop of Landaff. It is a collection of tracts on the Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, selected from the works of churchmen, laymen, and dissenters, systematically arranged in six octavo volumes, so as to form a complete library for the junior and inferior clergy. I am charmed with the candor, the liberality, and the spirit of catholicism, which his Lordship has avowed with the utmost energy and freedom in his Preface. The true Christian charity of a bishop, thus manifested, will promote the interest of the Church of England far more honorably and permanently, than creeds, tests, or anathemas. He has proved himself the generous minister of peace, and, if his brethren follow so laudable an example by offering the olive branch, instead of brandishing the sword, or throwing down the gauntlet, I hope and trust an end will be put to theological contention and hostility.

Is there any prospect of your revisiting England? Few events would give me more delight, than to have an opportunity of assuring you in person, with what cordial esteem and respect, I have the honor to be, dear Sir, &c. THOMAS PERCIVAL.

VOL. X.

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