Benjamin Franklin Papers

From Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Digges, 15 February 1780

To Thomas Digges

Copy: Library of Congress

Passy, feb. 15. 1780

Dear sir

In Answer to yours relating to Capt. Cook,6 this may inform you that I sent Copies of the Enclos’d to all the American Cruizers then in the Ports of france and spain with orders to our Agents to communicate them to others that might touch there.7 I also sent it to holland to be printed in the Dutch Papers,8 as a means of making it more generally known to our Cruizers at sea, who might find it in those Papers in their Examination of neutral Vessels. It was accordingly printed there. I cannot now readily find one of Those Papers.

I think I Saw it also in some of the English Papers.9 With great Esteem, I am, sir, Your most obedient and most humble servant

BF.

Mr. Digges.

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

6Above, Feb. 4.

7Digges had BF’s safe conduct for Cook forwarded to Sir Joseph Banks who gave it an unenthusiastic reception: Digges to BF, March 3 (Elias and Finch, Letters of Digges, p. 168).

8Via Dumas, who placed a French translation in the supplement to the May 18, 1779, issue of the Gaz. de Leyde: XXIX, 86n, 424–5, 468n.

9A description of it did appear in the May 28 issue of the General Advertiser, and Morning Intelligencer.

Index Entries