Benjamin Franklin Papers
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To Benjamin Franklin from Anthony Todd, 2 January 1765

From Anthony Todd

AL: Historical Society of Pennsylvania

General Post Office January 2d: 1765.

Mr. Todd presents his Compliments to Mr. Franklin, and is greatly distressed for want of the Clauses, and desires he would send them by the Bearer.9

Addressed: To / Mr. Franklin

Endorsed: Mauduit agt for the Massachusetts at the olive Tree near the Sun Tavern South Side of St Pauls1

Pump Court No. 4 two per Staim right hand S. Meredith2

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

9Anthony Todd (above, X, 217 n) was secretary of the Post Office. On Dec. 24, 1764, he invited BF to visit him and peruse “the proposed Clauses” of what became the Postal Act of 1765. BF evidently took the clauses home with him and thus prompted the present note. See above, XI, 534.

1This endorsement is in an unidentified hand. Jasper Mauduit (d. 1771), London woolen merchant and Dissenter, had been appointed Massachusetts agent in 1762 to succeed William Bollan. The appointment was made through the influence of the Otises and over the opposition of Thomas Hutchinson. Considered weak, Mauduit served only until 1765 and relied much on the help of his brother Israel (1708–1787), merchant and pamphleteer. What connection the Massachusetts agent may have had with the subject of this note is uncertain. For the Mauduit brothers, see Scots Mag., XXXIII (1771), 446; DNB (under Israel); Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, pp. 53, 58–9, 63; Jack M. Sosin, Agents and Merchants British Colonial Policy and the Origins of the American Revolution, 1763–1775 (Lincoln, Neb., 1965), pp. 18–19. Letters from Jasper to various Massachusetts politicians are published in Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., LXXIV (1918).

2In a different hand. This note may indicate the London lodgings of Samuel Meredith, for whom see below, p. 64 n.

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