To Benjamin Franklin from Benjamin Vaughan, 23 February 1785
From Benjamin Vaughan
AL: American Philosophical Society
London. Feby. 23, 1785.
My dearest sir,
It is long since I have heard from you.7 The present is the first opportunity I have had for writing to you by a private hand, & my ignorance of the party still prevents my being particular.
You will receive herewith a parcel of books. I am sorry not to have another copy of the Cincinnati at hand,8 with one or two other pamphlets, but these shall come by another occasion.
I have given Count M——some notes; And in the greater part of them I had named you, or alluded to your principles. He has made alterations, some of which I am not content with. You will see he has been hard at work here in the literary,9 and unfortunately in the legal way.—1 He is a good-hearted man, diligent, acquainted with many good principles, and possessing a ready stile, but too warm not to have many enemies & many accidents.
I have often felt pleased that I had no means of writing you, because I had no means of giving you pleasure by the contents of my letters.— Public matters that have lately reached you will explain this sentiment fully.— There is a sensible agitation in the interior of things, which I am inclined to suppose will not long remain concealed from all the world.
Your wisdom will lead you to see the tendency of the Westminster scrutiny2 & the Irish concern,3 besides which there are two India matters that rankle here,4 to say nothing of the reform of parliament.5
I cannot suppose my judgment of the minister here has proved a very mistaken one. Two centuries ago he would have been the first school disputant in Europe, though I cannot recollect that either these disputants or the antient sophists have added much to the real science of mankind.— But these are invidious topics.
Dr. Priestley has delivered in a paper to the Royal Society which will be read tomorrow in part. He has made some valuable experiments, which plainly shew that more must be made, before we can speak with certainty on either side of the subject now discussing between him & Mr Lavosier & Mr Meusnier.—6 At a future time I will detail these experiments, or the chief of them.
Your trouble with your lamp will, I hope, cease by the adoption of the invention here for raising & sinking the wick.—7 I have tried my old scheme for having four wicks (very thin) in one tallow candle, & with a great increase of light. In wax, I presume two wicks would answer. I mean to try three in a tallow candle that is dipped, & four in a mould candle. I have found no inconvenience in my (single) experiment but that of gutturing, which might be remedied perhaps.— I use no perforation.— Having lately read Kæmpfer’s Acct. of Japan, found in the second Vol (folio English) an account of a candle with a perforation, which I wish you to refer to.8 Some of our philosophers here, to whom I have made it known, talk of its being badly translated.
I am much alarmed at your late severe indisposition.— I hope the letter I so often teized Mr. Nairne to write you, and which he says he [did] write you, came safe to hand.—9 How happy [am] I to think my poor castor oil stood you in stead in the moment of your agony.1
Your son has never once done me the favor of a visit, since your grandson left me, which astonishes me, & sometimes with your & your grandson’s silence alarms me very much. I hope I have not offended the last family in the world I desire to be separated from.
Your present of the “Testament” to Dr. Price2 strikes us all very much. It is full of humor & sense, which either come from you we suppose, or has been imitated from you.— There is a hope that Dr. Price may add it, or an acct. of it, to the pamphlet for America, which he is republishing here.3
I am, ever my dearest sir, Your devoted, grateful, & affect.
Addressed: A son Excellence / Monsr Franklin, / &c &c &c / a Passy, / pres Paris.
7. We find no record of a letter from BF since his recommendation of Mirabeau, dated Sept. 7 (above).
8. Mirabeau’s Considérations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus, published in December, 1784.
9. After Considérations was published, Mirabeau wrote Doutes sur la liberté de l’Escaut. Réclammée par l’Empereur … (London, [1785]), in which he supported the Dutch position in the conflict with Austria over access to the Scheldt River. Vaughan was believed to have contributed significantly to the writing of this work: W. R. Fryer, “Mirabeau in England, 1784–85,” Renaissance and Modern Studies, X (1966), 50–2; Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, Written by Himself … (3 vols., London, 1840), I, 111.
1. In January, 1785, Mirabeau dismissed his two French employees, a maid and a secretary, for stealing. He prosecuted the secretary, Jacques-Philip Hardy, who immediately filed a suit for outstanding wages. Hardy stood trial at the Old Bailey on Feb. 26. At the direction of the court, the jury found him not guilty: Morning Herald, and Daily Advertiser, Feb. 12, 1785; Morning Post, and Daily Advertiser, Feb. 28, 1785; The Whole Proceedings of the King’s Commission of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and Gaol-Delivery for the City of London; … Held at Justice Hall in the Old Bailey, On Wednesday the 23d of February 1785, and the following Days … (London, 1785), Part III, pp. 385–96; Fryer, “Mirabeau in England,” pp. 43n, 47.
2. In the general election of 1784, Charles James Fox narrowly won the second of Westminster’s two seats in the House of Commons. As the defeated candidate in the three-way race, Sir Cecil Wray, an ally of Prime Minister William Pitt, successfully demanded a “scrutiny,” or recount. Pitt continued to defend the inquiry as it dragged on for almost a year. Finally, the House of Commons brought it to an end on March 3, 1785, and Fox was allowed to take his seat: John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt (3 vols., New York and Stanford, 1969–96), I, 217–23.
3. Pitt’s ill-fated effort to negotiate a trade agreement with Ireland; see the annotation of John Coakley Lettsom’s letter of March 1.
4. Possibly a reference to the controversies over the settlement of debts owed by the nawab of Arcot to British creditors and the appointment in February, 1785, of George Macartney as governor-general of Bengal in place of Warren Hastings: Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, I, 193–4; J. Holland Rose et al., eds., The Cambridge History of the British Empire (8 vols., Cambridge, 1929–59), IV, 355–6.
5. Since December, 1784, Pitt had been preparing to introduce a bill for moderate parliamentary reform. This was his second attempt after the defeat of a similar bill in May, 1783 (XL, 339n). However, the other controversies mentioned here by Vaughan delayed the motion planned for February until mid-April. The bill failed due to Pitt’s inability to rouse public opinion and gain the king’s backing. Moreover, Pitt had antagonized the reformers among Fox’s supporters: Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, I, 223–8.
6. The paper was “Experiments and Observations relating to Air and Water,” Phil. Trans., LXXV (1785), 279–309. It contested Lavoisier’s findings on the chemical composition of water (for which see XL, 78n). The engineer and mathematician Jean-Baptiste Meusnier had assisted Lavoisier in his experiments: Robert E. Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley: a Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 (University Park, 2004), pp. 173–5; Gillispie, Montgolfier Brothers, pp. 31–2, 99.
7. According to contemporaries, BF had tinkered since the 1770s with an oil lamp whose wick formed a hollow cylinder so that air could flow through it. Ami Argand developed a similar lamp and in 1783 traveled to London to find a manufacturer and have his invention patented. By the summer of 1784, Argand had added a wick raiser to his design: XLI, 143–4n; XLII, 93–4; John J. Wolfe, Brandy, Balloons, & Lamps: Ami Argand, 1750–1803 (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill., 1999), pp. 32, 34.
8. Engelbert Kaempfer, The History of Japan … (2 vols., London, 1727), II,, 444–5. Vaughan transcribed the passage in his letter of March 15, below, as BF did not own a copy of the book.
9. Nairne wrote a letter on Oct. 8, 1784, now missing, and another on Nov. 19, 1784, above.
1. Vaughan praised the benefits of castor oil in a letter of June 24, 1783, but we have no record of his sending a sample to BF: XL, 236.
2. See BF to Price, Feb. 1.
3. Price did, as he informed BF in a letter of March 21: Peach and Thomas, Price Correspondence, II, 267.