To Benjamin Franklin from Thomas Townshend, 23 October 1782
From Thomas Townshend
Two copies and draft: Public Record Office; copies: Library of Congress, William L. Clements Library
Whitehall, 23d. October 1782.
Sir,
As Mr. Strachey is going from hence to Paris with some particulars for Mr Oswald, which were not to be easily explained in Writing, I take the liberty of introducing him to your acquaintance, though I am not sure, that he is not already a little known to you.9
The confidential Situation in which he stands with me, makes me particularly desirous of presenting him to you.
I believe, Sir, I am enough known to you for you to believe me when I say that there has not been from the beginning a single Person more averse to the unhappy War, or who wishes more earnestly than I do for a return of Peace and mutual Amity between Great Britain & America.
I am &ca.
T: Townshend
Doctor Franklin
9. Henry Strachey, whom BF had met in 1776, was now Townshend’s undersecretary: XXII, 598–9; Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, III, 487–9. He was sent to work with Oswald in the negotiations, and delivered to Oswald the cabinet’s Oct. 17 instructions (for which see our annotation of BF to Livingston, Oct. 14). Shelburne’s notes of verbal instructions for Strachey and his letter of introduction of Strachey to Oswald, are in Giunta, Emerging Nation, I, 619–20, 623. He arrived in Paris on Oct. 28: Morris, Jay: Peace, p. 450.