Benjamin Franklin Papers
Documents filtered by: Recipient="Franklin, Benjamin" AND Date="1782-01-01"
sorted by: date (ascending)
Permanent link for this document:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-37-02-0233

To Benjamin Franklin from Jean-Louis Giraud Soulavie, [before 20 May 1782]

From Jean-Louis Giraud Soulavie

ALS: University of Pennsylvania Library

[before May 20, 1782]5

Monsieur

Je n’ai pas voulu me distraire; mais j’ai L’honneur de vous adresser par ecrit vos profondes meditations. Laissant en blanc Les lieux & mesures, car on imprime dans Ce moment lobjet de ces questions et je desirerois Si vous l’agrées de publier vos observations à coté.6

Je suis penetré de veneration la plus Tendre pour vous & me felicite d’avoir vu le philosophe incomparable qui traite egalement les secrets de la nature & les interets De leurope et de l’amerique: Mr. De Vergennes ne m’a pas ordonnè de publier mes recherches sur nos rebellions fomentées par les Anglois, il ne me l’a pas defendu; mais il me dit de choses Très flateuses; Si vous jugès que je doive m’en occuper je quitterai tout genre de Travail par le seul zéle que j’ai pour Le Bienfaiteur de L’humanité qui sera Toute ma vie l’objet de mes hommages, que la seule posterité pourra juger, a qui on dressera des statues ou des autels et que je me crois heureux d’avoir vu.

Je suis penetré du profond respect avec lequel je me dis Monsieur Votre tres humble & tres obeissant serviteur

L’abbé Soulavie

Notation: L’abbé Soulavie

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

5At the conclusion of Soulavie’s account of his 1781 conversation with BF (XXXV, 354–60) he mentioned delivering to Vergennes a memoir revealing British activities in the south of France that he and BF thought ought to be published: XXXV, 360–1n. The present letter, written after Vergennes’ receptive response, predates Soulavie’s submission of his findings to the Jour. de Paris; see the document immediately below. The Jour. de Paris published Soulavie’s work in four installments, beginning on May 20 and continuing on June 6, 24, and 26. It consisted primarily of a catalogue raisonné of 44 pieces documenting his discoveries. See also Soulavie’s undated letter published in XXXV, 360.

6Soulavie was at this time preparing the fifth volume of his Histoire naturelle de la France méridionale (Paris, 1784). He intended to include in it an account of the 1781 conversation with BF cited above, or at least the portion of it that pertained to geology: Soulavie to BF, Oct. 21, 1782 (University of Pa. Library). While the account Soulavie enclosed with the present letter is now missing, it evidently misrepresented BF’s views. On Sept. 22, BF sent Soulavie a corrected version of his theories (Hist. Soc. of Pa.). For reasons that remain obscure, the conversation with BF did not appear in vol. V of Histoire naturelle. … When it was published in 1801, however, in Mémoires historiques et politiques du règne de Louis XVI, the observations Soulavie attributed to BF (XXXV, 356–7) accorded with BF’s corrected version.

Index Entries