Benjamin Franklin Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-40-02-0045

To Benjamin Franklin from David Hartley, 29 August [i.e., May?] 1783

From David Hartley

ALS: Library of Congress

August [i.e., May?]9 29 1783

My Dear friend

Will you be so good as to send me Mr Maddison’s pamphlet,1 the time is come for me to return. Be so good as to send me the memorials of the merchants trading to Carolina & Georgia.2 I must take copies in case of any future correspondence upon the Subject— Can you & Mr Franklin do me the favour to dine with me on Saturday next at 3 o’clock

D H

London Chronicle page 484 Sad Stuff—3

Addressed: A Son Excellence / Monsr Monsr Franklin / &c &c &c / Passy

Endorsed: By his insisting so much on the Impolicy of the Writings he proposes to refute, his Reader may be led to suspect Policy in his Refutation; and not give his State of Affairs all the Credit it deserves—

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

9Hartley’s dateline is both unmistakable and inexplicable. Immediately beneath it BF wrote, “recd May 29. 83.” The month of May is confirmed by Hartley’s references to the merchants’ memorials Fox had sent him in May and a newspaper article published later that month.

1We cannot identify this pamphlet. George Maddison (XIII, 545n), the newly appointed secretary to the British embassy in Paris, may have brought it with him when he accompanied Manchester to France at the end of April: XXXIX, 547, 566; General Evening Post, April 26–29, 1783. The comments BF wrote on the address sheet (see the endorsement) probably pertain to it.

2Which Fox forwarded to Hartley on May 9 to show the American commissioners; see our annotation of their July 27 letter to Livingston.

3That page, in the May 20–22 issue, contained a lengthy extract of an April 11 letter from New York which criticized the terms of the provisional peace treaty and predicted the downfall of the United States.

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