To Benjamin Franklin from Jonathan Shipley, [on or before 13 October 1784]
From Jonathan Shipley
ALS: American Philosophical Society
[on or before October 13, 1784]1
My dear Friend
A few days ago I was surprisd & delighted by a kind Letter from You2 transmitted to me by your Grandson now in London, & flatterd myself I should soon have seen him & been able by the Kindness I wishd to show him, to express some part of the Reverence & Affection I have allways felt for You. Mrs Shipley & her Daughters were overjoy’d with the expectation of seeing a Grandson of yours, whom We should immediately have considerd as one of the Family. But our Disappointment was great when in answer to our Invitation He told us in a very polite & affectionate Letter, that his short leave of absence would not allow us the satisfaction of seeing him; & I fear it is now much more improbable that I should ever see his Grandfather. Whether Providence has that happiness in reserve for me or not, I still rejoice that You are still bless’d with a healthy & chearful Old Age, the natural reward of your Virtue & Prudence; & that even the Stone becomes tolerable under your Temper & Management. I was allways disposd to be a Quack & cannot help mentioning that I knew the late Sr Charles Howard,3 who had been long torturd with the Stone & felt excruciating pain from the motion of a Carriage; but by the use of Wild Carrot Tea was so relievd as to bear a long Journey. A very able & honest Country Physician assurd me that thinking himself relievd by accidentally drinking Lemonade he continued the use of it for some years with very great benefit. Honey is a produce of Hamshire that We are proud of, & most of us think there is no better Remedy for the Stone.4 Forgive my Impertinence for wishing to suggest something that may give ease & comfort to my most valuable Friend.
For my own part I have enjoyd a tolerable share of Health & Spirits & I learn to bear the infirmities of Age by their coming on gently like the gradual approach of Cold & Winter. My great affliction for the last Year & a half has been a criminal prosecution carried on against my Son5 for republishing a little Dialogue concerning the Principles of Government which was writ by my Son in Law Sr Wm Jones & I think in the Neighbourhood of Passy.6 If You saw it, I believe You must recollect that there was nothing in it, but the fundamental truths on which every free Government is built. The Prosecutor is Mr Fitzmaurice whom I think You know.7 The Provocation was that Fitzmaurice a few Years ago at a publick County meeting made a labourd Speech against petitioning the Crown for redress of Grievances; My Son answerd him upon the Spot & with so manifest a Superiority that upon a Division, which Fitzmaurice insisted upon, he was left alone. This He never forgave. This & some other parts of my Son’s Conduct for which I am sure You would applaud him, have made him an object of Ministerial Persecution! Twice they put of his Trial on the most frivolous & shameful Pretences but in truth because they did not dare to trust a Jury of the County where he livd. By some legal management they got the trial removd to Shrewsbury & sent a Judge to try him not inferior in manner or principles to Scroggs or Jeffreys But I will desire Mr Franklin to bring You the Trial.8
Adieu my ever honourd Friend
J S A
1. The date on which Shipley answered the “polite & affectionate” letter from WTF that he mentions here. In wishing WTF a safe trip home to France, expressing regret that they would not see one another, and admonishing WTF to be grateful for the advantages he had received by being BF’s grandson, Shipley asked WTF to purchase and give to BF a copy of the pamphlet published by Blanchard that is mentioned at the end of the present letter: Jonathan Shipley to WTF, Oct. 13, 1784, APS.
2. Of Aug. 22.
3. The army officer and M.P. for Carlisle who died in 1765: ODNB.
4. BF had been taking large quantities of honey; see XLII, 6–7.
5. William Davies Shipley, dean of St. Asaph: XXXIII, 433n.
6. Sir William Jones wrote The Principles of Government, in a Dialogue between a Scholar and a Peasant, after a conversation he had had with Vergennes and “Dr. ****” (undoubtedly BF) in June, 1782, during which Vergennes challenged his assertion that basic principles of government could be made comprehensible to anyone of “common understanding.” Jones wrote a Socratic-style dialogue in French and presented it to Vergennes; upon his return home in July, he translated it into English and sent a copy to the Society for Constitutional Information, which quickly printed it as an anonymous tract. In January, 1783, Jones’s brother-in-law, William Davies Shipley, read the work aloud at a meeting of the Welsh county of Flint, and had the pamphlet printed locally, substituting the words “gentleman” and “farmer” for “scholar” and “peasant,” and adding a prefatory advertisement defending the pamphlet against the recent accusations of sedition. Garland Cannon, ed., The Letters of Sir William Jones (2 vols., Oxford, 1970), II, 608–9; Bibliotheca Parriana. A Catalogue of the Library of the Late Reverend and Learned Samuel Parr, LL.D. … (London, 1827), p. 441; Peter Brown, The Chathamites: a Study in the Relationship between Personalities and Ideas in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century (London, Melbourne, Toronto, 1967), pp. 373–7.
7. Thomas Fitzmaurice (X, 348–9n), Shelburne’s brother, was high sheriff of Flint County for 1782–83. Earlier, he had been a part of BF’s circle of friends in London: XVII, 218–19, 246–8; XVIII, 18; George E. Cokayne et al., eds., The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant (rev. ed., 13 vols., London, 1910–59), X, 110.
8. William Blanchard, The Whole of the Proceedings at the Assizes at Shrewsbury, on Friday August the Sixth, 1784 … (London, 1784). The case commenced in April, 1783, when, as a result of a prosecution initiated by Fitzmaurice, a grand jury indicted Shipley for seditious libel on the grounds of his reprinting of Jones’s Principles of Government. When the case was removed from the Welsh court and finally tried before the assize court at Shrewsbury in August, 1784, Thomas Erskine (ODNB) argued effectively on Shipley’s behalf, but the presiding judge, Francis Buller (ODNB), instructed the jury that it could decide only on the facts, not on whether these facts amounted to a libel—a matter for the court. The jury rebelled by returning a verdict of “guilty of publishing only,” but Buller then forced them to declare that they were taking no stand on the question of the libel. For an account of the case see Blanchard’s report as well as Brown, The Chathamites, 377–80.