To Benjamin Franklin from Samuel Vaughan, Jr., 3 April 1783
From Samuel Vaughan, Jr.
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Paris, 3 April, 1783.
Dear Sir,
I should be much obliged if you could with convenience lend me three hundred Livres Tournois, for which, I have the honor to inclose you a Bill on my Brother William.2
With respect to the 600 Livres you was so good as to advance on my note the 26 Feby: last,3 I have written to my Brother Ben; who says, that he has a demand upon you, for about £30, on account of money expended in pamphlets & glass, or advanced to Mrs Stewart;4 & that he will shortly take the liberty of troubling you with the particulars: It should, therefore, seem more proper to leave this debt unsettled, till the above particulars are received. With the utmost respect I remain, Dear Sir, Your very obliged & humble servt.,
Samuel Vaughan Junr.
Addressed: A Son Excellence / Monsieur Franklin, / Ministre Plenipotentiare des Etats Unis &c, / a Passy, / pres de Paris.
2. BF advanced him this sum the same day. He advanced another 1,000 l.t. on May 1: Account XVII (XXVI, 3).
3. Recorded on Feb. 27: Account XVII.
4. Margaret Stewart (XXIII, 302n) had appealed to BF for financial help in January and April of 1782: XXXVI, 410; XXXVII, 229–30. On March 8, 1783, Benjamin Vaughan loaned her 12 guineas on BF’s account, which she promised to either repay in one month’s time or send 12 copies of her brother’s publication The Senator’s Remembrancer. (Her receipt is at the APS.) She eventually gave Vaughan the 12 copies, though in her only other letter to BF, written five years later, she did not know whether he received them: Stewart to BF, Aug. 3, 1788, APS.