From Benjamin Franklin to William Franklin, [8 November 1766]
To William Franklin
MS not found; reprinted from extract in [Jared Sparks, ed.,] A Collection of the Familiar Letters and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Franklin (Boston, 1833), pp. 279–80.
[November 8th, 1766]
Mr. Jackson is now come to town. The ministry have asked his opinion and advice on your plan of a colony in the Ilinois,8 and he has just sent me to peruse his answer in writing,9 in which he warmly recommends it, and enforces it by strong reasons; which gives me great pleasure, as it corroborates what I have been saying on the same topic,1 and from him appears less to be suspected of some American bias.
8. See above, p. 330 n.
9. Jackson’s report of November 1766 deals with several proposed plans for Indian trade and western settlement. It is printed in Alvord and Carter, The New Régime 1765–1767, pp. 422–30. In a brief passage on “The Plan of a Settlement on the Mississippi from Philadelphia, approved by Sir Wm. Johnson,” Jackson commented that it was “certainly well framed, and that by Persons too well acquainted with the Country and with the Indians to be deceived by others, and too much interested in the Success of their Scheme, to attempt to deceive the King’s Ministers in such a Case as the present, I have no doubt of its practicability or Utility, Improvements perhaps it may receive, but I dare not undertake to make any.. . .” Ibid., pp. 425–6.
1. See above, pp. 424–5, 446–7.