To Benjamin Franklin from Silas Deane, 8 June 1777
From Silas Deane
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Paris 8th June 1777.
Dear Sir
Inclosed I send you what Papers, and Intelligence came this day per post. The Letters from Hambourgh cost Us 19 Livres postage. We must answer these people, or be ruined with their Expence. I enclose a Letter for Mr. Bingham which if it meets Your approbation, please to return it, and I will forward the Duplicates by different Means.6 The Letter to Mr. Jay is one of which will shew you the Copy when I have the pleasure of seeing You here.7 The Man who proposed to engage for the Cloaths is to be here early Tomorrow Morning.8 I will either wait on You at Passy, or be happy in a Breakfast with You here. I prefer the Latter as I cannot go out untill after Ten. I am most respectfully Your most Obedient and Very Humble Servant
S. Deane
Addressed: To / The hon. / Benja Franklin Esq
6. The people in Hamburg we cannot identify. The commissioners’ letter to Bingham, dated June 7, has disappeared, but is referred to in the agent’s reply below, Aug. 11.
7. This reference and the one in the postscript are, we take it, to the same letter. If so, it must be the one of June 8, now lost, to which Jay referred in his note on the commissioners’ letter above, June 2.
8. Doubtless Coder, who on June 3 had written BF for an appointment.
9. Presumably the one from JW above, June 3 (that of the 5th could scarcely have arrived), and the one from John Ross of the 2nd printed in the Deane Papers, II, 63–6.
1. Which Deane, ever since his arrival, had used in corresponding with Jay: L. Bendikson, “The Restoration of Obliterated Passages and of Secret Writing in Diplomatic Missives,” Franco-American Rev., I (1936–7), 240–56.