less earnest and sincere; being with great truth, dear sir, your affectionate friend, and most obedient

servant,

B. FRANKLIN.

P.S. Please to present my respects to the club. I always remember with pleasure the agreeable hours. I had the happiness of spending with them.

TO THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ASA PH (DR. SHIPLEY). Passy, March 17, 1783.

I received with great pleasure my dear and respected friend's letter of the 5th instant, as it informed me of the welfare of a family I so much esteem and love.

The clamor against the peace in your parliament would almost alarm me for its duration, if I were not of opinion with you, that the attack is rather against the minister. I am confident none of the opposition would have made a better peace for England if they had been in his place; at least I am sure that Lord Stormont, who seems loudest in railing at it, is not the man that could have mended it. My reasons I will give you when I have what I hope to have, the great happiness of seeing you once more, and conversing with you. They talk much of there being no reciprocity in our treaty: they think nothing then of our passing over in silence the atrocities committed by their troops, and demanding no satisfaction for their wanton burnings and devastation of our fair towns and countries. They have heretofore confessed the war to be unjust, and nothing is plainer in reasoning than that the mischiefs done in an unjust war should be repaired. Can Englishmen be so partial to themselves, as to imagine they have a right to

plunder and destroy as much as they please, and then, without satisfying for the injuries they have done, to have peace on equal terms? We were favorable, and did not demand what justice entitled us to. We shall probably be blamed for it by our constituents and I still think it would be the interest of England voluntarily to offer reparation of those injuries, and effect it as much as may be in her power. But this is an interest she will never

see.

Let us now forgive and forget. Let each country seek its advancement in its own internal advantages of arts and agriculture, not in retarding or preventing the prosperity of the other. America will, with God's blessing, become a great and happy country; and England, if she has at length gained wisdom, will have gained something more valuable, and more essential to her prosperity, than all she has lost; and will still be a great and respectable nation, Her great disease at present is the number and enormous salaries and emoluments of office. Avarice and ambition are strong passions, and separately act with great force on the human mind; but when both are united, and may be gratified in the same object, their violence is almost irresistible, and they hurry men headlong into factions and contentions destructive of all good government. As long therefore as these great emoluments subsist, your parliament will be a stormy sea, and your public councils confounded by private interests. But it requires much public spirit and virtue to abolish them; more perhaps than can now be found in a nation so long corrupted.

B. FRANKLIN.

DEAR SIR,

TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS.

Passy, July 27, 1783.

I received your very kind letter by Dr. Blagden, and esteem myself much honored by your friendly remembrance. I have been too much and too closely engaged in public affairs since his being here, to enjoy all the benefit of his conversation you were so good as to intend me. I hope soon to have more leisure, and to spend a part of it in those studies that are much more agreeable to me than political operations.

I join with you most cordially in rejoicing at the return of peace. I hope it will be lasting, and that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats for in my opinion, there never was a good war, or a bad peace. What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the public money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility! What an extension of agriculture, even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices and improvements, rendering England a complete paradise, might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief; in bringing misery into thousands of families, and destroying the lives of so many thousands of working people, who might have performed the useful labor!

I am pleased with the late astronomical discoveries

made by our society.* Furnished as all Europe now is with academies of science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid, and discoveries made, of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known one hundred years hence.

I wish continued success to the labors of the Royal Society, and that you may long adorn their chair; being with the highest esteem,

Dr. Blagden will acquaint you with the experiment of a vast globe sent up into the air, much talked of here, and which, if prosecuted, may furnish means of new knowledge.

TO DR. PRICE.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Passy, near Paris, Sept. 16, 1783. All the conversation here at present turns upon the balloons filled with light inflammable air, and the means of managing them so as to give men the advantage of flying.-One is to be let off on Friday next at Versailles, which it is said will be able to carry up 1000 pounds weight, I know not whether inclusive or exclusive of its own. I have sent an account of the former to Sir Joseph Banks, our president, and shall be glad to hear if the experiment is repeated with success in England. Please to forward to him the enclosed print.

*THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, of which Dr. Franklin was gratuitously and without solicitation elected a Fellow, in consequence of his discoveries in Electricity. See Memoirs of his Life. PART II.

*

Inflammable air puts me in mind of a little jocular paper I wrote some years since in ridicule of a prize question given out by a certain academy on this side the water, and I enclose it for your amusement.-On second thoughts, as it is a mathematical question, and perhaps I think it more trifling than it really is, and you are a mathematician, I am afraid I have judged wrong in sending it to you. Our friend, Dr. Priestley, however, who is apt to give himself airs, and has a kind of right to every thing his friends produce upon that subject, may perhaps like to see it, and you can send it to him without reading it.

We have at length signed our preliminary articles as definitive; all the additions we have been so long discussing, being referred to a future treaty of commerce. I have now a little leisure, and long to see and be merry with the club, but doubt I cannot undertake the journey before spring. Adieu, and believe me ever, my dear friend, &c.

B. FRANKLIN.

P. S. They make small balloons now of the same materials with what is called gold-beaters leaf. Enclosed I send one which, being filled with inflammable air by my grandson, went up last night to the ceiling in my chamber, and remained rolling about there for some time.-Please to give it also to Sir Joseph Banks. If a man should go up with one of the large ones, might there not be some mechanical contrivance to compress the globe at pleasure, and

*The academy of Brussels.

+ i. e. Fixed, deflogisticated air, &c. &c.

tion.

This piece is a plaisanterie of too light a nature for publica