the conquest of the Gulph of St. Lawrence, the coasts of Labrador and Nova Scotia, and the fisheries possessed by the French there and on the banks of Newfoundland, so far as they were more extended than at present, was made by the joint forces of Britain and the colonies, the latter having nearly an equal number of men in that service with the former; it follows that the colonies have an equitable and just right to participate in the advantage of those Fisheries. I do therefore, in the behalf of the colony of the Massachusetts Bay, protest against the act now under consideration in parliament, for depriving that province, with others, of that fishery, (on pretence of their refusing to purchase British commodities) as an act highly unjust and injurious: And I give notice, that satisfaction will probably one day be demanded for all the injury that may be done and suffered in the execution of such act; and that the injustice of the proceeding is likely to giv ch umbrage to all the colonies, that in no future war, wherein other conquests may be meditated, either a man or a shilling will be obtained from any of them to aid such conquests, till full satisfaction be made as aforesaid.

B. FRANKLin.

Given in London this 16th day of March, 1775.

DEAR SIR,

TO DR. FRANKLIN.

I return you the memorial which it is

thought might be attended with dangerous consequences to your person, and contribute to exasperate the nation.

I heartily wish you a prosperous voyage, a long health, and am, with the sincerest regard, your most faithful and obedient servant,

*

THOMAS WALPOLE.

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 16th March, 1775.

Mr. Walpole called at my house the next day, and hearing I was gone to the house of lords, came there to me, and repeated more fully what was in his note; adding, that it was thought my having no instructions directing me to deliver such a protest, would make it appear still more unjustifiable, and be deemed a national affront: I had no desire to make matters worse, and, being grown cooler, took the advice so kindly given me.

The evening before I left London, I received a note from Dr. Fothergill, with some letters to his friends in Philadelphia. In that note he desires me to get those friends," and two or three more together, and inform them, that whatever specious pretences are offered, they are all hollow; and that to get a larger field on which to fatten a herd of worthless parasites, is all that is regarded. Perhaps it may be proper to acquaint them with David Barclay's and our united endeavors, and the effects. They will stun at least, if not convince, the most worthy, that nothing very favorable is intended, if

more unfavorable articles cannot be obtained." The doctor in the course of his daily visits among the great, in the practice of his profession, had full opportunity of being acquainted with their sentiments, the conversation everywhere turning upon the subject of America.

Here, unfortunately, Dr. Franklin's interesting narrative closes, and the Editor is forced to

resume.

During the passage to America, Dr. Franklin not only occupied himself in writing the preceding narrative of his noble efforts to prevent a war, which the rapacity and infatuation of the British ministry utterly defeated, but he likewise employed himself in making experiments and observations on the waters of the ocean, by means of the thermometer, in order to ascertain the exact course of the gulph stream; by the knowledge of which, mariners might hereafter avoid or avail themselves of its current, according to their various destinations." These experiments and observations will be found in their appropriate place-his philosophical works;

1

It is ascertained by Dr. Franklin's experiments, that a navigator may always know when he is in the gulph stream, by the warmth of the water, which is much greater than that of the water on either side of it. If, then, he is bound to the westward, he should cross the stream to get out of it as soon as possible; and if to the eastward, endeavor to remain in it.

but the following general reflections connected therewith, by this friend of the human race, may with propriety be here introduced.

Navigation, when employed in supplying necessary provisions to a country in want, and thereby preventing famines, which were more frequent and destructive before the invention of that art, is undoubtedly a blessing to mankind. When employed merely in transporting superfluities, it is a question whether the advantage of the employment it affords is equal to the mischief of hazarding so many lives on the ocean. But when employed in pillaging merchants and transporting slaves, it is clearly the means of augmenting the mass of human misery. It is amazing to think of the ships and lives risked in fetching tea from China, coffee from Arabia, sugar and tobacco from America, all which our ancestors did well without. Sugar employs near one thousand ships, tobacco almost as many. For the utility of tobacco there is little to be said; and for that of sugar, how much more commendable would it be, if we could give up the few minutes' gratification afforded once or twice a day by the taste of sugar in our tea, rather than encourage the cruelties exercised in producing it. An eminent French moralist says, that when he considers the wars we excite in Africa to obtain slaves, the numbers necessarily slain in those wars, the many captives who perish at sea by sickness, bad provisions, foul air, &c. in the transportation, and

how many afterwards die from slavery, he cannot look on a piece o

ithout

conceiving it stained with spots of human blood! had he added the consideration of the wars we make o take and retake the sugar islands from one another, and the fleets and armies that perish in those expeditions, he might have seen his sugar not merely spotted, but thoroughly dyed scarlet in grain! It is these wars that make the maritime powers of Europe, the inhabitants of London and Paris, pay dearer for sugar than those of Vienna, a thousand miles from the sea; because their sugar costs not only the price they pay for it by the pound, but all they pay in taxes to maintain the fleets and armies that fight for it."

END OF PART III. AND VOL. I.