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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History

CCXLVIII: TO JONATHAN WILLIAMS - Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. IV Letters and Misc. Writings 1763-1768 [1904]

Edition used:

The Works of Benjamin Franklin, including the Private as well as the Official and Scientific Correspondence, together with the Unmutilated and Correct Version of the Autobiography, compiled and edited by John Bigelow (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904). The Federal Edition in 12 volumes. Vol. IV (Letters and Misc. Writings 1763-1768).

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CCXLVIII

TO JONATHAN WILLIAMS

Philadelphia, 3 November, 1764.

Loving Kinsman:—

The case of the Armonica came home to-night, and the spindle, with all the rest of the work, seems well done. But on further consideration I think it is not worth while to take one of them to London, to be filled with glasses, as we intended. It will be better to send you one complete from thence, made under my direction, which I will take care shall be good. The glasses here will serve for these cases when I come back, if it please God that I live to return, and some friends will be glad of them.

Enclosed I send you that impostor’s letter. Perhaps he may be found by his handwriting.

We sail on Wednesday. The merchants here in two hours subscribed eleven hundred pounds, to be lent the publick for the charges of my voyage, &c. I shall take with me but part of it, five hundred pounds sterling. Any sum is to be had that I may want. My love to all. Adieu. Yours affectionately,

B. Franklin.1

[1 ]Dr. Franklin was appointed to this second mission to England by the Assembly of Pennsylvania, October 26, 1764. As the Assembly had not then in the treasury any money that could be appropriated for this purpose, they passed a resolve that the expense attending his voyage and the execution of the trust reposed in him should be provided for in the next bill prepared by the House for raising money to defray the public debts. On the strength of this pledge, the money was loaned by the merchants, although a party had made a considerable opposition to the appointment of an agent who was known to be hostile to the Proprietaries, and had been active in promoting petitions for a change of the Pennsylvania government.