From Benjamin Franklin to Richard Jackson, 10 June 1763
To Richard Jackson
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Woodbridge, New Jerse June 10. 1763
Dear Sir,
I have your Favours of Mar. 10. and April 4.2 Your being in Parliament gives me great Pleasure;3 it will afford you many Opportunities of patronizing effectually the important Interests of your America. I rejoice to hear your Work is finished: and feel already the Obligations we shall all be under to you for it.4 You mention a Proposal to charge us here with the Maintenance of 10,000 Men.5 I shall only say, it is not worth your while. All we can spare from mere Living, goes to you for Superfluities. The more you oblige us to pay here, the less you can receive there. I thank you for your Congratulations on my Son’s Promotion. The People seem much pleas’d with him, and the Assembly have added £200 to the old Salary of £1000.6 I forget whether I mention’d to you, that Mr. Symmer, a Gentleman that lives in Mount Street, near Berkely Square, could give you some Information concerning Dr. Barker, Father of the Heir to the Land Mr. Hughes desires to purchase.7 In preceding Letters I mention’d to you the great Eagerness of the People to remove westward; I send you enclos’d two Letters I happen to have with me that show something of it.8 One is from a Projector, who has a Number of Adventurers engag’d. Ensign Webb’s crude Scheme is suppress’d by Order of Gen. Amherst; but even that, had a great Number of Subscribers.9 The Indians however ought to be previously and prudently prepar’d for such Things, or they cannot succeed. The Delawares have broke out again, and kill’d 14 or 15 People about the Ohio;1 if this is in consequence of any general Discontent in that Nation concerning their Lands, as I apprehend it is; we shall have more Trouble before they are quelled. I am here on a Journey to New England, to regulate and improve the Post Offices. If you or any Friend of yours can have a convenient Opportunity of speaking a few kind Things of me to my new Master Lord Egmont,2 who does not know me, it may be of Service to me, and I shall be greatly obliged. I am, Dear Friend, Yours most affectionately
B Franklin
I wrote you before of your being chosen our Agent with £200 Sterling Salary.3 I hope it will not be disagreable to you.
R Jackson Esq
Endorsed: Woodbridge N. Jersey 10 June 1763 B Franklin Esqr
2. Jackson’s letter of March 10 not found; for that of April 4, see above, pp. 241–5.
3. See above, pp. 241–2.
4. In the letter cited above Jackson said that he had found time to “complete but the Skeleton of my work.” BF was clearly too optimistic, for Jackson seems never to have completed and published this unidentified “work.”
5. This proposal must have been mentioned in Jackson’s letter of March 10. London Chron., March 5–8, 1763, reported that 10,000 men would be in America, to be paid for the first year by Great Britain and afterwards by the colonies. The next issue (March 8–10) listed the regiments stationed in America, amounting to 10,001 (sic) effective men.
6. WF reported to the Board of Trade, June 27, 1763, that he had persuaded the N.J. Assembly to increase his and some other officers’ salaries. “The Augmentation its true is small, and no ways adequate to the increas’d Expence of Living in America: But it was all I could at that time obtain.” I N.J. Arch., IX, 389.
7. Probably Robert Symmer (d. 1763), F.R.S., an electrical experimenter; see above, IV, 276–7 n. On Barker and the N.J. land that John Hughes wanted to buy, see above, pp. 156–8, 163–4.
8. The letters from James Lyon and W. Hick, above, pp. 256–7, 262–4; the originals are endorsed in Jackson’s hand.
9. See above, p. 256 n.
1. See above, pp. 273–4 n.
2. John Perceval, 2d Earl of Egmont (1711–1770), M.P. for various English constituencies, 1741–62, succeeded his father in the Irish peerage, 1748, and was created Baron Lovel and Holland in the peerage of the United Kingdom, May 7, 1762, and thereupon moved to the House of Lords. He was joint postmaster general from Nov. 27, 1762, to Sept. 10, 1763, when he was advanced to first lord of the Admiralty. He resigned that position in August 1766. Egmont was a successful pamphleteer, an able debater, and an ardent genealogist. DNB; Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, III, 266–8.
3. See above, pp. 246–7.