From Benjamin Franklin to Pennsylvania Assembly Committee of Correspondence, [8 November 1766]
To Pennsylvania Assembly Committee of Correspondence
MS not found; abstract printed in Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania, Met at Philadelphia [October 14, 1766] (Philadelphia, 1767), p. 17.
[January 14, 1767]
Mr. Speaker laid before the House a Letter received from Benjamin Franklin, Esq; in London, dated November the 8th, 1766, acquainting the Committee of Correspondence, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer2 had given him Assurances, that he had ordered a short Bill to be drawn for amending the Clause in the late Act of Parliament requiring Commodities intended for Ireland, to be first landed in Britain; and that he would himself present it to Parliament, as soon as they met, having no Doubt of its passing.3 That with Respect to the Restraint laid by the late Act of Parliament on our making Paper Money a legal Tender, the Agents have Hopes of obtaining a Repeal of the said Act.4
2. Charles Townshend.
3. On September 18 the Committee of Correspondence, on orders from the Assembly, had instructed Jackson and BF to ask for an amendment of an act of June 1766, 6 Geo. III, c. 52, in which faulty wording would have the effect of stopping most exports from the colonies to Ireland. For these instructions and their background, see above, pp. 419–20, and accompanying notes. As indicated there, the amending bill received the royal assent on Dec. 16, 1766.
4. In spite of repeated efforts by BF and other agents, the Currency Act of 1764 was never repealed prior to the Revolution, though it was somewhat modified in 1773. For a general account, see Jack M. Sosin, “Imperial Regulation of Colonial Paper Money, 1764–1773”, PMHB, lxxxviii (1964), 174–98.