9. When Hynson stole the commissioners’ dispatches (below, pp. 48–49), he overlooked BF’s private letters. Two of them, which have since disappeared, survive in brief extracts. This is one. In an open letter that attempted to lay the theft at Deane’s door Paine quoted this single sentence; the letter was to the Pa. Packet and is reprinted in the Deane Papers, III, 361–75. The date of BF’s letter is supplied from the paraphrase of the sentence in the committee for foreign affairs to the commissioners below, March 24, 1778. The other letter of which a fragment survives was BF to Hillegas of Oct. 7; two phrases from it are quoted in the reply below of March 17, 1778.