Benjamin Franklin Papers
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To Benjamin Franklin from Michel-René Hilliard d’Auberteuil, 10 April 1782

From Michel-René Hilliard d’Auberteuil5

ALS: American Philosophical Society

A Paris le 10e. Avril 1782

Monsieur

Je prends la liberté d’Envoyer à votre éxcellence la premiere épreuve de la 3e. partie de mes Essais6 d’après la permission que vous m’en avez donnée et la promesse que vous avez bien voulu me faire de m’avertir des erreurs involontaires dans les quelles je pourrais tomber.

J’ai lu avec autant de plaisir que d’attention et de respect, la collection de vos memoires politiques.7 Heureux les Americains d’avoir trouvé tant de lumieres, de zêle et de vertus dans un seul de leurs concitoyens!

Recevez je vous prie les temoignages de ma reconnaissance pour toutes les bontés que vous m’accordez.

Je suis avec une profonde veneration de votre Excellence Le très humble & trés Obéissant serviteur

D’auberteuil
Rue st. Louis au Marais

P.S. Je prie V. E. de renvoyer l’Epreuve le plus tot possible

Notation: D’auberteuil paris 10. avril 1782.

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

5Hilliard d’Auberteuil, historian and economist, was best known at this time as the author of Considérations sur l’état présent de la colonie française de Saint-Domingue … (2 vols., Paris, 1776–77). This work, based on Hilliard’s experience as a barrister in the colony, was sharply critical of the colonial administration and after publication was suppressed by order of the Conseil d’Etat. Hilliard escaped prosecution by traveling to North America, but was back by July, 1779, when he published a prospectus for a history of the American revolution through 1778 (the subject of the present letter), a work said to have been subsidized by Sartine. After one arrest in 1784 and a near-arrest in 1786, Hilliard returned to Saint Domingue and is rumored to have been assassinated: DBF; Tourneux, Correspondance littéraire, XIII, 155–6; Jour. de Paris, issue of July 29, 1779; Durand Echeverria and Everett C. Wilkie, Jr., comps., The French Image of America (2 vols., Metuchen, N. J. and London, 1994), I, 451, 496; Max Bissainthe, Dictionnaire de bibliographie haïtienne (Washington, D.C., 1951), pp. 529–30.

Though this is the first extant letter from Hilliard to BF, the two may have met years earlier through the Neuf Sœurs. Hilliard was a member of the lodge from 1777 through 1779: Louis Amiable, Une Loge maçonnique d’avant 1789 … (Paris, 1897), pp. 280, 391–2; Le Bihan, Francs-maçons parisiens.

6Essais historiques et politiques sur les Anglo-Américains (2 vols., Brussels and Paris, 1781–82), comprised four parts published in two volumes. The first volume, which concluded with the declaration of independence, was reviewed at length in the Jour. de Paris on May 11, when the second volume was announced as imminent. That estimate was optimistic, as Hilliard’s correspondence with BF indicates. Volume II, beginning with June, 1776, traced both the military action in America and the diplomatic efforts in France up through the treaties of alliance and commerce. Hilliard summarized the constitutions of many of the states and provided, in one of the appendices, a list of French officers who had served in America. The volume was published around Aug. 15, the day a lengthy review appeared in the Jour. de Paris, praising Hilliard as the best-qualified historian to have treated the topic.

7For BF’s Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces (London, 1779), see XXXI, 210–18.

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