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together in his company! I must soon follow him, being now in my seventy-seventh year; but you have yet a prospect of many years of usefulness still before you, which I hope you will fully enjoy; and I am persuaded you will ever kindly remember your truly affectionate friend,

(EXTRACT.)

To MISS ALEXANDER.

B. FRANKLIN.

Passy, June 24, 1782.

"I am not at all displeased that the thesis and dedication with which we were threatened are blown over, for I dislike much all sorts of mummery. The republic of letters has gained no reputation, whatever else it may have gained, by the commerce of dedications: I never made one, and I never desired that one should be made to me. When I submitted to receive this, it was from the bad habit I have long had of doing every thing that ladies desire me to do there is no refusing any thing to Madame la Marck, nor to you. I have been to pay my respects to that amiable lady, not merely

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because it was a compliment due to her, but because I love her, which induces me to excuse her not letting me in; the sane reason I should have for excusing your faults, if you had any. I have not seen your papa since the receipt of your pleasing letter, so could arrange nothing with him respecting the carriage. During seven or eight days I shall be very busy after that you shall hear from me, and the carriage shall be at your service. How could you think of writing to me about chimneys and fires, in such weather as this! Now is the time for the frugal lady you mention to save her wood, obtain plus de chaleur, and lay it up against winter, as people do ice against summer. Frugality is an enriching virtue; a virtue I never could acquire in myself: but I was once lucky enough to find it in a wife, who thereby became a fortune to

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Let us now forgive and forget. Let each country seek its advancement in its own internal advantages of arts and agriculture, not in retarding or preventing the prosperity of the other. America will, with God's blessing, become a great and happy country; and England, if she has at length gained wisdom, will have gained something more valuable, and more essential to her prosperity, than all she has lost; and will still be a great and respectable nation. Her great disease at present is the number and enormous salaries and emoluments of office. Avarice and ambition are strong passions, and separately act with great force on the human mind; but when both are united, and may be gratified in the same object, their violence is almost irresistible, and they hurry men headlong into factions and contentions dstructive of all good government. As long therefore as these great emoluments subsist, your parliament will be a stormy sea, and your public councils confounded by private interests. But it requires much public spirit and virtue to abolish them; more perhaps than can now be found in a nation so long corrupted. B. FRANKLIN,

DEAR SIR,

To SIR JOSEPH BANKS.

On the return of peace.

Passy, July 27, 1783. I received your very kind letter by Dr. Blagden, and esteem myself much honored by your friendly remembrance. I have been too much and too closely engaged in public affairs since his being here, to enjoy all the benefit of his conversation you were so good as to intend me. I hope soon to have more leisure, and to spend a part of it in those studies that are much more agreeable to me than political. operations.

to destroy their fellow-creatures. Some of the Indians may be supposed to have cominitted sins, but one cannot think the little children had committed any worthy of death. Why has a single man in England, who happens to love blood, and to hate Americans, been permitted to gratify that bad temper by hiring German murderers, and joining them with his own, to destroy in a continued course of bloody years, near 100,000 human creatures, many of them possessed of useful talents, virtues, and abilities, to which he has no pretension? It is he who has furnished the savages with hatchets and scalping knives, and engages them to fall upon our defenceless farmers, and murder them with their wives and children, paying for their scalps, of which the account kept in America already amounts, as I have heard, to near two thousand! Perhaps the people of the frontiers, exasperated by the cruelties of the Indians, have been induced to kill all Indians that fall into their hands without distinction; so that even these horrid murders of our poor Moravians may be laid to his charge. And yet this man lives, enjoys all the good things this world can afford, and is surrounded by flatterers who keep even his conscience quiet by telling him he is the best of princes! I wonder at this, but I cannot therefore part with the comfortable belief of a divine Providence; and the more I see the impossibility, from the number and extent of his crimes, of giving equivalent punishment to a wicked man in this life, the more I am convinced of a future state, in which all that here appears to be wrong shall be set right, all that is crooked made straight. In this faith let you and I, my dear friend, comfort ourselves; it is the only comfort in the present dark scene of things that is allowed us.

I shall not fail to write to the government of America, urging that effectual care may be taken to protect and save the remainder of those unhappy people.

Since writing the above, I have received a Philadelphia paper, containing some account of the same horrid transac tion, a little different, and some circumstances alleged as excuses or palliations, but extremely weak and insufficient. I send it to you enclosed. With great and sincere esteem, I am ever, my dear friend, yours most affectionately,

B. FRANKLIN.

TO THE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE UNITED STATES.

The birth of the Dauphin-Capt. Asgill-M. Tousard— Allowances to Mr. Temple Franklin-Contingent expenses-Enclosures.

SIR,

Passy, Sept. 3, 1782.

I have just received your No. 13, dated the 23d of June. The accounts of the general sentiments of our people respecting propositions from England, and the rejoicings on the birth of the Dauphin, give pleasure here; and it affords me much satisfaction to find the conduct of congress approved by all that hear or speak of it, and to see all the marks of a constantly growing regard for us, and confidence in us, among those in whom such sentiments are most to be desired.

I hope the affair of Captain Asgill was settled as it ought to be, by the punishment of Lippincut. Applications have been made here to obtain letters in favor of the young gentleman. Enclosed I send you a copy of the answer I gave to that made to me.

I had before acquainted M. Tousard, that his pension would be paid in America, and there only, it being unreasonable to expect that the congress should open a pay-office in every part of the world where pensioners should choose to reside. I shall communicate to him that part of your letter..

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You wish to know what allowance I make to my private secretary. My grandson, W. Temple Franklin, came over with me, served me as private secretary during the time of the commissioners, and no secretary to the commission arriving, though we had been made to expect one, he did business for us all, and this without any allowance for his services, though both Mr. Lee and Mr. Deane at times mentioned it to me as a thing proper to be done, and a justice due to him. When I became appointed sole minister here, and the whole business which the commissioners had before divided with me came into my hands, I was obliged to exact more service from him, and he was indeed, by being so long in the business, become capable of doing more. At length, in the beginning of the year 1781, considering his constant close attention to the duties required of him, and his having thereby missed the opportunity of studying the law, for which he had been intended, I determined to make him some compensation for the time past, and fix some appointment for the time to come, till the pleasure of congress respecting him should be taken. I accordingly settled an account with him; allowing him from the beginning of December 1776, to the end of 1777, the sum of 3400 livres; and for the year 1778, the sum of 4000 livres; for 1779, 4300 livres; and for 1780, 6000 livres since that time, I have allowed him at the rate of 500 louis per annum, being what I saw had been allowed by congress to the secretary of Mr. William Lee, who could not have had, I imagine, a fourth part of the business to go through; since my secretary, besides the writing and copying the papers relative to my common ministerial transactions, has had all those occasioned by my acting in the various employments of judge of admiralty, consul, purchaser of goods for the public, &c. besides that of the acceptor of the congress bills, a business that requires being always at home; bills coming

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