wishes for your health and prosperity, and that of your whole amiable fireside. You will allow an old friend of fourscore to say he loves your wife, when he adds, and children, and prays God to bless them all. Adieu! and believe me ever, yours most affectionately, B. FRANKLIN. * MY VERY BESt Friend, Philadelphia, April 22, 1787. I received, though long after they were written, your very agreeable favors of October 30, 1785, and February 9, 1786, with the pieces enclosed, productions of the Auteuilt academy of Belles Lettres. Your kind and friendly wishes and congratulations are extremely obliging. It gives me an infinite pleasure to find that I still retain a favorable 'place in the remembrance of the worthy and the good, whose delightful and instructive society I had the happiness of enjoying while I resided in France. But though I could not leave that dear nation without regret, I certainly did right in coming home. I am here in my niche in my own house in the bosom of my family, my daughter and grand-children all about me, among my old friends or the sons of my friends, who equally respect me, and who all speak and understand the same language with me; and you know that if a man desires to be useful by the exercise of his mental faculties, he loses half their force when in a foreign country, where he can only express himself in a language with which he is not • Member of the French Academy. + The residence of Madame Helvetius, with whom the Abbé Morellet, Cabanis, La Roche, and other literary friends passed much of their time. well acquainted. In short I enjoy here every opportunity of doing good, and every thing else I could wish for, except repose; and that I may soon expect either by the cessation of my office, which cannot last more than three years, or by ceasing to live. I am of the same opinion with you respecting the freedom of commerce, especially in countries where direct taxes are practicable. This will be our case in time, when our wide-extended country fills up with inhabitants. But at present they are so widely settled, often five or six miles distant from one another in the back country, that the collection of a direct tax is almost impossible, the trouble of the collectors' going from house to house amounting to more than the value of the tax. Nothing can be better expressed than your sentiments are on this point, where you prefer liberty of trading, cultivating, manufacturing, &c. even to civil liberty, this being affected but rarely, the other every hour. Our debt occasioned by the war being heavy, we are under the necessity of using imposts and every method we can think of to assist in raising a revenue to discharge it; but in sentiment we are well disposed to abolish duties on importation as soon as we possibly can afford to do so. Whatever may be reported by the English in Europe, you may be assured that our people are almost unanimous in being satisfied with the revolution. Their unbounded respect for all who were principally concerned in it, whether as warriors or statesmen, and the enthusiastic joy with which the day of the declaration of independence is every where annually celebrated, are indubitable proofs of this truth. In one or two of the states there have been some dis contents on partial and local subjects; these may have been fomented, as the accounts of them are exaggerated, by our ancient enemies; but they are now nearly suppressed, and the rest of the states enjoy peace and good order, and florish amazingly. The crops have been good for several years past, the price of country produce high, from foreign demand, and it fetches ready money: rents are high in our towns, which increase fast by new buildings; laborers and artisans have high wages well paid, and vast tracts of new land are continually clearing and rendered fit for cultivation. I am, &c. B. FRANKLIN. DEAR SIR, TO MR. JORDAIN, LONDON. Philadelphia, May 18, 1787. I received your very kind letter of February 27, together with the cask of porter you have been so good as to send me. the French call une assemblée des notables, a convention composed of some of the principal people from the several states of our confederation. They did me the honor of dining with me last Wednesday, when the cask was broached, and its contents met with the most cordial reception and universal approbation. In short the company agreed unanimously that it was the best porter they had ever tasted. Accept my thanks, a poor return, but all I can make at present. We have here at present what Your letter reminds me of many happy days we have passed together, and the dear friends with whom we passed them; some of whom, alas! have left us, and we must regret their loss, although our Hawkesworth* is become an adventurer in more happy regions; and our Stanley† gone, "where only his own harmony can be exceeded." You give me joy in telling me that you are " on the pinnacle of content." Without it no situation can be happy; with it, any. One means of becoming content with one's situation is the comparing it with a worse. Thus when I consider how many terrible diseases the human body is liable to. I comfort myself that only three incurable ones have fallen to my share, viz. the gout, the stone, and old age; and that these have not yet deprived me of my natural cheerfulness, my delight in books, and enjoyment of social conversation. I am glad to hear that Mr. Fitzmaurice is married, and has an amiable lady and children. It is a better plan than that he once proposed, of getting Mrs. Wright to make him a wax-work wife to sit at the head of his table. For after all, wedlock is the natural state of man. A bachelor is not a complete human being. He is like the odd half of a pair of scissars, which has not yet found its fellow, and therefore is not even half so useful as they might be together. I hardly know which to admire most, the wonderful discoveries made by Herschel, or the indefatigable ingenuity by which he has been enabled to make them. Let us hope, my friend, that when free from * John Hawkesworth, LL. D. author of the Adventurer, and compiler of the account of the Discoveries made in the South Seas, by Captain Cook. John Stanley, an eminent musician and composer, became blind at the age of two years. The astronomer. these bodily embarrassments, we may roam together through some of the systems he has explored, conducted by some of our old companions already acquainted with them. Hawkesworth will enliven our progress with his cheerful sensible converse, and Stanley accompany the music of the spheres. Mr. Watraaugh tells me, for I immediately inquired after her, that your daughter is alive and well. I remember her a most promising and beautiful child, and therefore do not wonder that she is grown, as she says, a fine woman. God bless her and you, my dear friend, and every thing that pertains to you, is the sincere prayer of yours most affectionately, B. FRANKLIN, in his 82d year. TO GEORGE WHEATLEY, ESQ. Philadelphia, May 18, 1787. I received duly my good old friend's letter of the 19th of February. I thank you much for your notes on banks, they are just and solid, as far as I can judge of them. Our bank here has met with great opposition, partly from envy, and partly from those who wish an emission of more paper money, which they think the bank influence prevents. But it has stood all attacks, and went on well notwithstanding the assembly repealed its charter. assembly has restored it; and the management is so prudent, that I have no doubt of its continuing to go on well the dividend has never been less than six per cent., nor will that be augmented for some time, as the surplus profit is reserved to face accidents. The dividend of eleven per cent. which was once made, was from a circumstance scarce avoidable. A |