PAGE Dr. Franklin to Henry Laurens, Esq. July 6, 1783 The American Ministers to D. Hartley, Esq. July 17, DEFINITIVE TREATY between Great Britain and the United States of America, signed at Pa- David Hartley, Esq. to the American Ministers, Sept. 4, 1783 Answer to the foregoing, Sept. 5, 1783 Dr. Franklin to D. Hartley, Esq. Sept. 7, 1783 to Charles Thomson, Esq. Secretary of Con- gress, May 13, 1784 731161 114 D. Hartley, Esq. to Dr. Franklin, Paris, June 1, Dr. Franklin to D. Hartley, Esq. June 2, 1784 PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. PART III. LETTERS RELATING TO NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE, &c. TO DAVID HARTLEY, ESQ. M. P. DEAR SIR, Passy, near Paris, Oct. 14, 1777. I received duly your letter of May 2, 77, including a copy of one you had sent me the year before, which never came to hand, and which it seems has been the case with some I wrote to you from America. Filled though our letters have always been with sentiments of good will to both countries, and earnest desires of preventing their ruin and promoting their mutual felicity, I have been apprehensive that if it were known a correspondence subsisted between us, it might be attended with inconvenience to you. I have therefore been backward in writing, not caring to trust the post, and not well knowing who else to trust with my letters. But being now assured of a safe conveyance, I venture to write to you, especially as I VOL. II. A think the subject such a one as you may receive a letter upon without censure. Happy should I have been, if the honest warnings I gave of the well as tions, that must attend the measures commenced while I 9.890 1891 28,26 01EVOR DU V of affecwas in England, had been attended to, and the horrid mischief of this abominable war been thereby prevented. I should still be happy in any successful endeavours for restoring peace, consistent with the liberties, the safety and the honor of America. As to our submitting to the government of Great Britain, 'tis vain to think of it. She has given us by her numberless barbarities (by her malice in bribing slaves to murder their masters, and savages to massacre the families of farmers, with her baseness in rewarding the unfaithfulness of servants and debauching the virtue of honest seamen entrusted with our property) in Se the prosecution of the on of the war, and in the treatment of the prisoners, so deep an impression of her, depravity, that we never again can trust her in the management of our affairs and interests. It is now impossible to persuade our people, as I long endeavoured, that the war was merely ministerial, and that the nation bore still a good will to us. The infinite number of addresses printed in your Gazettes all approving the conduct of your government towards us, and encouraging our destruction by every possible means, the great majority in parliament constantly manifesting the same sentiments, and the popular public rejoicings on oc casion of any news news of the slaughter of an innocent and virtuous people fighting only in defence of their just rights; these, together with the recommendations of the same measures by even your celebrated moralists and divines in their writings and sermons, that are still approved and ap |