To John Jay from David Hartley, 2 March 1784
From David Hartley
London March 2 1784
My Dear Sir
I return you my best thanks for your much esteemed favour of the 22d of february last and particularly for those very friendly sentiments wh you are so good as to express towards me. I assure you that similar sentiments are most sincerely reciprocal on my part. Your public & private conduct has impressed me with unalterable Esteem for you as a public and private friend.— I shall be very sorry to be deprived of any opportunity of seeing [you] before your departure for America but I am in hopes that your ratifications may arrive time enough to give me an opportunity of exchanging the British ratifications with you personally as well as with our other friends. The real pleasure that it wd give me to see you again before your departure is an additional motive of anxiety to me to wish the speedy arrival of the American ratification. Upon the earliest notice of such arrival I shall immediately apply for the dispatch of our ratification.1 If I shd not have the good fortune to see you again I hope you will always think of me as eternally & unalterably attached to the principles of renewing & establishing the most intimate connexions of amity intercourse and alliance between our two Countries. I presume that the Subject of American intercourse will soon be resumed in Parliamnt as the term of the present act approaches to its expiration.2 Resumption of this Subject in Parli[amen]t. will probably give ground for some specific negotiation— You know my sentiments already. As to the little matters of money wh you mention in your letter I will take & settle them. I thank you for your enquiries concerning my Sister. She continues much in the same way as when you were at Bath that is to say as we hope in a fair way of final recovery tho very slowly. My Brother is very well and returns you thanks for your obliging remembrance of him He joins with me in sincere good wishes to yourself and family, and to the renovation of all those ties of consanguinity and friendship wh have for ages been interwoven between our two Countries. I am Dear Sir your very sincere & obliged friend,
D Hartley
PS I beg my particular compliments & good wishes may be expressed for me to Mrs Jay & for all her present & future family connexions & concerns in life and to our old venerable friend— Moses3
To John Jay Esqr &c &c &c
ALS, UkWC-A (EJ: 38). Endorsed: “ . . . Red. 8 March 1784”. CS, MiU-C: Hartley (EJ: 4943); C, NHi: Misc. Mss: Hartley (EJ: 719).
1. On the exchange of ratifications, see the President of Congress to the American Peace Commissioners, 14 Jan. 1784, note 1, above.
2. Parliament periodically renewed the Order in Council of 2 July 1783 until 1788, when it was made permanent. See 437–39; and the editorial note “Negotiating a Trade Agreement” on pp. 373–86.
3. “Moses” was a pseudonym or nickname applied to Benjamin Franklin in his British circle before the revolution and was possibly occasionally employed as a British code name for BF. See , 27: 85–87; Cecil B. Currey, Code Number 72: Ben Franklin: Patriot or Spy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972), 12, 38, 291n.