States have elected their Senators. The people are soon to elect their representatives. It is in March next they should meet. There is but one voice for the PresidentGeneral, the illustrious Washington. In respect to the Vice President, opinions are shared between General Knox, Messrs. Hancock, Adams, &c. My grandfather having served the three years as President of this State, Genl. Mifflin has been elected in his place. My grandfather now calls himself a free man, and I believe it would be difficult to induce him to change his condition. No one could more enjoy his liberty and repose. He is now occupied in writing the continuation of his life, which you have so urgently desired of him. His health improves every day. Farewell, my friend. Recall me to the recollection of all our common friends, and say a thousand tender things to all your family. I write to your son. "W. T. F."* In three other letters to M. le Veillard, written during the year 1788, Dr. Franklin alludes to his promise and his reasons for not having hitherto been able to keep it. Under date of February 17, 1788, he writes: "I should have proceeded in the history you mention, if I could well have avoided accepting the chair of President for this third and last year; to which I was again elected by the unanimous voice of the Council and General Assembly in November. If I live to see this year expire, I may enjoy some leisure, which I promise you to employ in the work you do me the honor to urge so earnestly."ϯ *Le Veillard Collection. See Appendix, No. 4. ϯ Sparks' Works of Franklin, vol. x. p. 336. Scarcely two months later, and under date of April 22, he writes again : "I received but a few days since your favor of Nov. 30, 1787, in which you continue to urge me to finish the Memoirs. My three years of service will expire in October, when a new President must be chosen, and I had the project of retiring then to my grandson's estate, in New Jersey, where I might be free from the interruption of visits, in order to complete that work for your satisfaction; for in this city my time is so cut to pieces by friends and strangers, that I have sometimes envied the prisoners in Bastille. But considering now the little remnant of life I have left, the accidents that may happen between this and October, and your earnest desire, I have come to the resolution to proceed in that work to-morrow, and continue it daily till finished, which, if my health permits, may be in the course of the ensuing summer. As it goes on I will have a copy made for you, and you may expect to receive a part by the next packet."* About six weeks after the foregoing, and under date of June 6, he writes again : "Eight States have now agreed to the proposed new Constitution; there remain five who have not yet discussed it, their appointed times of meeting not having yet arrived. Two are to meet this month; the rest later. One more agreeing, it will be carried into execution. Probably some will not agree at present, but time may bring them in; so that we have little doubt of its becoming general, perhaps with some corrections. As to your friend's taking a share in the management of it; his * Sparks' Works of Franklin, vol. x. p. 345. age and infirmities render him unfit for the business, as the business would be for him. After the expiration of the term of his Presidentship, which will now be in a few months, he is determined to engage no more in public affairs even if required; but his countrymen will be too reasonable to require it. You are not so considerate. You are a hard taskmaster. You insist on his writing his life, already a long work, and at the same time would have him continually employed in augmenting the subject, while the term shortens in which the work is to be executed."* The Doctor did resume the Memoirs in 1788, and probably wrote about this time all of the remainder that has hitherto been published in English. It appears, however, from the following passage in a letter to M. le Veillard, dated September 5, 1789, that he had then abandoned all hope of completing the Memoirs, and was making arrangements to transmit a copy of what was done, to M. le Veillard and to Mr. Vaughan. Whether he intended one for each or for both is not quite certain: "I hope you have perfectly recovered of your fall at Madame Helvetius's, and that you now enjoy perfect health; as to mine, I can give you no good account. I have a long time been afflicted with almost constant and grievous pain, to combat which I have been obliged to have recourse to opium, which indeed has afforded me some ease from time to time, but then it has taken away my appetite, and so impeded my digestion that I am become totally emaciated, and little remains of me but a skeleton covered with a skin. In this situation, I have *Sparks' Works of Franklin, vol. x. p. 349. not been able to continue my Memoirs, and now I suppose I shall never finish them. Benjamin has made a copy of what is done for you, which shall be sent by the first safe opportunity." Shortly before this letter was written on the 3d of June of that year—the Doctor wrote to his friend Vaughan, who, it appears, had been urging him to go on with the Memoirs : "I received your kind letter of March 4th, and wish I may be able to complete what you so earnestly desire— the Memoirs of my life. But of late I am so interrupted by extreme pain, which obliges me to have recourse to opium, that, between the effects of both, I have but little time in which I can write anything. My grandson, however, is copying what is done, which will be sent to you for your opinion by the next vessel; and not merely for your opinion, but for your advice; for it is a difficult task to speak decently and properly of one's own conduct; and I feel the want of a judicious friend to encourage me in scratching out." + On the 2d of November he writes again to Mr. Vaughan in the same desponding strain of his health, though still more hopeful of continuing the Memoirs than he appeared when he wrote the letter last cited to M. le Vcillard: "I thank you much for your intimations of the virtues of hemlock; but I have tried so many things with so little effect that I am quite discouraged, and have no longer any faith in remedies for the stone. The palliating system * Le Veillard Collection, Appendix, No. 5. is what I am now fixed in. Opium gives me ease when I am attacked by pain, and by the use of it I still make life tolerable. Not being able, however, to bear sitting to write, I now make use of the hand of one of my grandsons, dictating to him from my bed. I wish, indeed, I had tried this method sooner; for so I think I might by this time have finished my Memoirs, in which I have made no progress for these six months past. I have now taken the resolution to endeavor completing them in this way of dictating to an amanuensis. What is already done I now send you, with an earnest request that you and my good friend, Dr. Price, would be so good as to take the trouble of reading it, critically examining it, and giving me your candid opinion whether I had best publish or suppress it; and if the first, then what parts had best be expunged or altered. I shall rely upon your opinions; for I am now grown so old and feeble in mind, as well as body, that I cannot place any confidence in my own judgment. In the mean time, I desire and expect that you will not suffer any copy of it, or of any part of it, to be taken for any purpose whatever."* This was the last allusion to the Memoirs of which I find any trace in the Doctor's correspondence. The only evidence, beyond the promise contained in his letter of the 3d of June, that he sent a copy to Mr. Vaughan, is a statement made by the Due de la Rochefoucault in a eulogium which he pronounced before a society in Paris on the 13th of June, 1789. In this discourse he says: "The most voluminous of his works is the history of *Sparks' Works of Franklin, vól. x. p. 397. |