Benjamin Franklin Papers

Franklin and Silas Deane to [Ferdinand Grand], 13 January 1778

Franklin and Silas Deane to [Ferdinand Grand]7

Copy: Connecticut Historical Society

Paris 13 Jany 1778

Sir

We desire you would continue to honor Mr. Williams Draughts to the Amount of two hundred thousand Livres in Addition to the Five hundred thousand for which a Credit was before given him. We have the Honor to Remain with much Esteem Sir Your most Obedient &c. &c.

BF
SD

Mr Grand

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

7This note was BF’s and Deane’s reaction to Lee’s letter above, Jan. 10. Their colleague, they now believed, was losing his mind. BF had already said as much to JW. Deane saw the letter, which has unfortunately been lost. “It is very charitable,” he confided to JW on the 13th, “to impute to insanity what proceeds from the malignity of his heart; but the Doctor insists upon it that it is really his case, and I am every day more and more inclined to give in to it. Sure I am he cannot be far off from it if he pursues the track he is in. I pray you guard well that Letter. We may both of us have occasion for it, as you are as much the object of the malevolence of these Adelphi [the Lee brothers] as myself.” Deane Papers, II, 327. Arthur Lee may have been malevolent, but insane he was not.

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