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CCCCXCV: TO M. LE ROY - Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. VI Letters and Misc. Writings 1772-1775 [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. VI (Letters and Misc. Writings 1772-1775).

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CCCCXCV

TO M. LE ROY

London, 30 March, 1773.

Dear Sir:—

You punish my delay of writing to you very properly by not writing to me. It is long since I have had the pleasure of hearing from you. But it is my fault, and I must for my own sake write to you oftener, though I have little to say, or you will quite forget me.

I thank you for your advice to send an English copy of my writings to the Academy, and shall do it as soon as the new edition now in hand here is finished.

I am glad you see some weight in the experiments I sent you concerning pointed rods. Mr. Wilson is grown angry that his advice was not followed in making them blunt for the public magazines of gunpowder, and has published a pamphlet reflecting on the Royal Society, the committee, and myself, with some asperity, and endeavoring to alarm the city with the supposed danger of pointed rods drawing the lightning into them and blowing them up. I find it is expected from me that I make some answer to it, and I shall do so, though I have an extreme aversion to public altercation on philosophic points, and have never yet disputed with any one who thought fit to attack my opinions. I am obliged to you for the experiment of the point and ring.

There is no being sure of any thing before it happens; but, considering the weight of your reputation, I think there is little reason to doubt the success of your friends’ endeavors to procure from our Society here the honor of adding you to their number at the next election. In the meantime will you for my sake confer the same kind of honor on our young Society at Philadelphia. When I found that our first volume of American Transactions was favorably received in Europe, and had procured us some reputation, I took the liberty of nominating you for a member, and you were accordingly chosen at a full meeting in Philadelphia on the 15th of January last. I sent a copy of that volume to the Academy of Sciences at Paris when it first came out, but I do not remember to have heard that they ever received it. I think it was Mr. Magalhaens1 who undertook to convey it. If it miscarried I will send another, and by the first opportunity one for yourself.

Two ships are now fitting out here by the Admiralty, at the request of the Royal Society, to make a voyage to the north pole or to go as near to it as the ice will permit. If they return safe we shall probably obtain some new geographical knowledge and some addition to natural history.

With the greatest esteem and respect, I am, etc.,

B. Franklin.

[1 ]John Hyacinth de Magalhaens, a Portuguese by birth, who resided a large part of his life in England. His name frequently occurs in Franklin’s letters. He is said to have been “an able linguist, and well versed in chemistry and natural philosophy,” and to have published respectable treatises on mineralogy and some other branches of science. He was a member of the Royal Society. This is the same person (whose name is sometimes printed Magellan) that gave to the American Philosophical Society a donation of two hundred guineas, which was to be invested in a secure fund, and the interest disposed of annually in premiums to the author of the best discovery, or most useful invention, relating to navigation, astronomy, or natural philosophy.—Sparks.