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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO JOHN ADAMS. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 8 (Letters and State Papers 1782-1799) [1853]

Edition used:

The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 8.

Part of: The Works of John Adams, 10 vols.

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BENJAMIN FRANKLIN TO JOHN ADAMS.

Sir,

We duly received (Mr. Jay and I) the letters you did us the honor of writing to us the 27th of March and the 2d instant. We shall transmit, as you desire, the recommendation of Mr. Browne to congress; and inclosed we send a copy of the treaty with Sweden.

We expect Mr. Hartley here very soon to exchange the ratifications of the definitive treaty, when we shall endeavor to obtain an explanatory article relating to the limits and term of captures. The form used in the last treaty is precisely the same that has been used in all the treaties of peace since that of Nimeguen; and I therefore imagined that cases must have arisen at the end of every war, in which it was necessary to decide on the meaning of that form of words wherein the Canary Islands are mentioned; and I desired Mr. Barclay, when he went to London, to procure from the records of the admiralty court some of those cases as decided there; but he tells me none are to be found. May there not be some in Holland? I should suppose they must have been adjudged by the parallel of latitude of those islands; and I should be glad to have such a decision to produce to Mr. Hartley.

With great respect, &c.

B. Franklin.