Benjamin Franklin Papers

From Benjamin Franklin to ———, 10 February 1775

To———

ALS: Henry E. Huntington Library

Cravenstreet [Feb:10] 10. 1775.

Sir

In Compliance with your Request I this Morning applied to a Virginia Merchant for Information, Whether the Courts of Virginia are now shut? and if so, from what Causes? particularly whether from any Resolutions of the People there to avoid Payment of their English Debts, as you told me had been insinuated by a Person in Administration.11 Inclos’d I send you the Answer I have just received; and am, with great Esteem, Sir, Your most obedient humble Servant

B Franklin

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

10The MS is defaced, and the month is written in another hand.

11A short note could scarcely raise more unanswerable questions: it contains no clue for identifying the recipient, the Virginia merchant, or the government official. Since the previous summer the Virginia courts had been closed for civil actions, because the legislature had failed to renew the provision for collecting fees. The effect, but apparently not the reason, was to halt the machinery for recovering debts. See Gipson, British Empire, XII, 203–7.

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