From Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price, 13 September 1784
To Richard Price
ALS: University of Glasgow
Passy, Sept. 13. 1784.
Dear Friend,
You have a kind of Right to receive from me every thing that appears here on the Subject of Finance. I therefore send you herewith the late Edict for establishing a new Sinking Fund, which seems to give great Satisfaction to the Public Creditors here.—4 No one is better if so well qualified as your self to make a sound Judgment of it, and at some leisure Moment I could wish you would drop me a few Lines of your Opinion. I wrote to you lately by my Grandson.5 I hope you continue well, being ever, my dear Friend, Yours most affectionately
B. Franklin
Revd Dr Price
4. In August, 1784, the French minister of finance, Charles-Alexandre de Calonne (XXXIII, 140n), issued the royal edict establishing a sinking fund that would pay off the national debt over 25 years. The principles of Price’s sinking fund had been conveyed to Calonne by the banker Jean-François Panchaud (XXVII, 37n): Henri Martin, The Decline of the French Monarchy, trans. Mary L. Booth (2 vols., Boston, 1866), 11, 490; A. Goodwin, “Calonne, the Assembly of French Notables of 1787 and the Origins of the ‘Révolte Nobiliaire,’” English Hist. Rev, LXI (1946), 207–8; Wilma J. Pugh, “Calonne’s ‘New Deal,’” Jour. of Modern History, XI (1939), 290n.
5. On Aug. 16, above.