"You will learn the nature of my mission from the official despatches, which I have recommended to be forwarded by the same conveyance. Retaining all the earnestness, I ever expressed, to see our differences accommodated, I shall conceive, if I meet with the disposition in the colonies, which I was once taught to expect, the most flattering hopes of proving serviceable in the objects of the king's paternal solicitude, by promoting the establishment of lasting peace and union with the colonies but, if the deep rooted prejudices of America, and the necessity of preventing her trade from passing into foreign channels, must keep us still a divided people, I shall, from every private as well as public motive, most heartily lament that this is not the moment wherein those great objects of my ambition are to be attained; and that I am to be longer deprived of an opportunity to assure you personally of the regard with which I am," etc.

DR. FRANKLIN'S ANSWER.

I received safe the letters your lordship so kindly forwarded to me, and beg you to accept my thanks.

46

The official despatches, to which you refer me, contained nothing more than what we had seen in the act of parliament, viz.: "Offers of pardon upon submission; " which I am sorry to find, as it must give your lordship pain to be sent so far on so hopeless a business.

"Directing pardons to be offered to the colonies, who are the very parties injured, expresses indeed that opinion of our ignorance, baseness and insensibility, which your uninformed and proud nation has long been pleased to entertain of us; but it can have no other effect than that of increasing our resentments. It is impossible we should think of submission to a government that has, with the most wanton barbarity and cruelty, burned our defenceless towns in the midst of winter; excited the savages to massacre our peaceful farmers, and our slaves to murder their masters; and is even now bringing foreign mercenaries to deluge our settlements with blood. These atrocious injuries have extinguished every spark of affection for that parent country, that we once held so dear, but were it possible for us to forget and forgive them, it is not possible for you, I mean the British nation, to forgive the people you have so heavily injured. You can never confide again in those as fellow subjects, and permit them to enjoy equal freedom, to whom you know you have given such just

causes of lasting enmity; and this must impel you, were we again under government, to endeavor to break our spirit by the severest tyranny, and obstructing by every means in your power, our growing strength and prosperity.

Your lordship mentions the king's paternal solicitude for promoting the establishment of lasting peace and union with the colonies.' If, by peace, he here meant a peace, to be entered into by distinct states, now at war, and his majesty has given your lordship powers to treat with us of such a peace, I may venture to say, though without authority; that I think a treaty for that purpose not quite impracticable, before we enter into foreign alliances; but I am persuaded you have no such powers.-Your nation thought, by punishing those American governors, who have fomented the discord; rebuilding our burnt towns, and repairing, as far as possible, the mischiefs done us, she might recover a great share of our regard, and the greatest share of our growing commerce, with all the advantages of that additional strength to be derived from a friendship with us; yet, I know too well her abounding pride and deficient wisdom, to believe she will ever take such salutary measures. Her fondness for conquest, as a warlike nation; her lust of dominion, as an ambitious one; and her thirst for a gainful monopoly, as a commercial one, none of them legitimate causes of war, will join to hide from her eyes every view of her true interest, and continually goad her on, in these ruinous distant expeditions, so destructive both of lives and of treasure, that they must prove as pernicious to her in the end, as the crusades formerly were to most of the nations of Europe.

"I have not the vanity, my lord, to think of intimidating by thus predicting the effects of this war: for I know that it will, in England, have the fate of all my former predictions, not to be believed till the event shall verify it.

"Long did I endeavor, with unfeigned and unwearied zeal, to preserve from breaking that fine and noble porcelain vase, the British empire: for, I knew that, being once broken, the separate parts could not retain even their share of the strength and value that existed in the whole, and that a perfect re-union of those parts could scarce ever be hoped for. Your lordship may possibly remember the tears of joy that wetted my cheek, when, at your good sister's, in London, you once gave me expectations, that a reconciliation might take place. I had the misfortune to find these expectations disappointed, and to be treated as the cause of

"The well founded esteem, and permit me to say, affection, which I shall always have for your lordship, make it painful to me to see you engaged in conducting a war, the great ground of which, as described in your letter, is, 'the necessity of preventing the American trade from passing into foreign channels.' To me it seems that neither the obtaining or retaining any trade, how valuable soever, is an object for which men may justly spill each other's blood; that the true and sure means of extending and securing commerce are the goodness and cheapness of commodities: and that the profits of no trade can ever be equal to the expense of compelling it, and holding it by fleets and armies. I considered this war against us, therefore, as both unjust and unwise; and I am persuaded that cool and dispassionate posterity will condemn to infamy those who advised it and that even success will not save from some degree of dishonor those who have voluntarily engaged to conduct it.

"I know your great motive in coming hither was the hope of being instrumental in a reconciliation; and, I believe, when you find that to be impossible, on any terms given you to propose, you will then relinquish so odious a command, and return to a more honorable private station.

"With the greatest and most sincere respect, I have the honor to be," etc.

DR. FRANKLIN'S ADDRESS

TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND, WRITTEN WHILE AT VERSailles, France, OCTOBER 4, 1778.

TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF IRELAND.

The misery and distress which your ill-fated country has been so frequently exposed to, and has so often experienced, by such a combination of rapine, treachery, and violence, as would have disgraced the name of government, in the most arbitrary country in the world, has most sincerely affected your friends in America, and has engaged the most serious attention of congress; the ministry of Britain have seen the extreme meanness and folly of the attempt to establish a supreme authority in parliament, as

restriction; but it is evident to all the world, that such doctrine is incompatible with every idea of a civil constitution, for all compacts, bills of right, nay, the solemn obligation of their king to govern according to the statutes in parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same, would have been all nugatory trumpery, were such a supremacy admitted; for this supreme authority having no rule or law to direct its operations, or limit its power, it must necessarily become arbitrary and absolute; for ceasing to be a government by force, and it will appear fully evident that this unnatural war, in which we have been unavoidably engaged, has been begun and supported for no other purpose than to establish this supreme or arbitrary power, for they are individually the same; nor is it in the power of sophistry to draw a line of separation; the flimsy and contradictory speech of lord North, introductory to his conciliatory motion, furnishes the fullest conviction on this point. He says, "before the war broke out, he offered a conciliatory proposition. The ground upon which he made it was, That it was just the colonies should contribute to the support of government." And almost in the same breath he says "he thought necessary to shew the colonies we were not fighting for taxation, for he never thought taxation would be beneficial to us." He farther says, "he never proposed any tax, his maxim was to say nothing about America, neither to propose or repeal laws, neither to advance nor recede, but to remain in total silence." His lordship, I hope, will excuse me, if I presume to look beyond the acknowledged indolence of his disposition, to explain this stupor of a first minister, and the case is very obvious; for as soon as their five regiments should have completed the conquest of America, it should lie with the lives and properties of its inhabitants, at the mercy of the conqueror's sword. The very names of assemblies, conventions, or charters, those odious appendages of democratical power, should be finished, and the tyrant's fiat should henceforth become the law of the land, and hence sprung the torpedo that benumbed the minister's faculties.

His lordship says, his proposition was misinterpreted or misunderstood, and was rendered suspicious by a supposition of a variety of cases; the congress treated it as unreasonable and insidious, and rejected it. War began, and his intention was, from the beginning, at the moment of victory, to propose the same proposition in terms obviating all the misrepre

sentations and misunderstandings concerning it. Here it is confessed, that this wise and virtuous administration at every hazard, and at a certain expense, has almost annihilated public credit, have been looking for victory which has never come, and I trust never will come, and which, if it did come, must have been accomplished by the murder of fellow citizens, sooner than clear their own propositions of their ambiguity and suspicion. And what deprives them of the color of excuse, for the horrid barbarities of the war, the city of London, in the most respectful language, petitioned the throne to declare clearly and explicitly before the war commenced, what they wished to have done on the part of America; but all to no purpose; they would not, they dare not declare their true object. The solemn appeal was made, and, for the honor of virtue, the comfort of human nature, and the terror of oppression, it will be indelibly recorded in the historic page, that a few virtuous citizens could effectually resist the most vigorous efforts of the most powerful tyranny, and thereby establish the freedom of the western world forever. To arrive at power, Gustavus like, by a bold effort of courage, proves at least the existence of one virtue, at the same time we detest the treachery; but to sacrifice the public treasure, to devote every effort of rapacious taxation, and the fruits of an ever-growing excise, to this idol of madness and folly, to establish a system of venality, by which the price of every man's integrity and abilities was to be determined, to stipulate the precise condition for which he shall treacherously betray the interest of his country, and violate every obligation of private friendship and public virtue, to beat down every fence to honor and principle, to destroy the very bond and frame of civil society, to make the pillage of property the means to accomplish the plunder of liberty, and to drive the people into all the miseries of a civil war, in pursuit of this dream of power, are instances of such determined depravity as are not to be described even in the language of a country where new villainy adds to the catalogue of crimes almost every day. The perfect similarity of the declaratory act of supremacy, and that relating to your country, viz., That Ireland should be subordinate to and depend on the imperial crown of Great Britain, is very obvious; but this declaration ex parte can avail nothing, at the same time that it furnishes the most incontestible and decisive proofs, that no such subordination or dependence was ever understood before, or there would have been no necessity for such an act.

The navigation act, which had been framed for the sole purpose of securing to the British subjects, all the advantages to be derived from the commerce of their own settlements, has, by subsequent acts, been framed into the most odious and impolitic monopoly that could be devised: creating local distinctions and commercial schisms, giving privilege to one set of subjects to the injury of others, and operating on all the indicted provinces as an oppressive tax, comprehending all the taxes of Britain, however variously modified or compounded. And we wish to have it forever fixed on your minds, that by a monopoly of trade every pretence to internal taxation is given up; for were you even without a constitution of your own, and as dependent as usurpation has endeavored to make you, the monopoly of your trade is more than a full and equitable compensation for all other taxes, and it will not appear paradoxical to futurity, that the rise and fall of the British empire have been owing to this act: and the engine by which the wise politician, who framed it, designed to wind up and connect the British interest all over the world, we' have seen employed as the wheel on which British liberty and grandeur have disgracefully expired.

The anticipation of public revenue has fixed the crisis of Britain, the labor of their people for all succeeding generations being engaged to pay the interests of their public debts. I cannot suppose it an unfair deduction to say they are all born in a state of slavery, for an obligation to work for any other purpose than one's own advantage, is truly the condition of a slave, and every new tax adds a link to the chain. But even in this gloomy picture there is a dawn of hope; all bodies are capable of refraction to a certain degree, beyond which it is impossible to expand them ever so little, without absolute destruction. It is evident to all the world, that the nerves of public credit in England are on the rack of extension, and the dreadful explosion must follow of course; and can it be supposed that the system of weakness and folly, that has so long usurped the name of constitution, can survive the shock; and their people may yet hope to see a vigorous young one grow out of the ruins of the old.

I have it in my commission to repeat to you, my good friends, the cordial concern that congress takes in every thing that relates to the happiness of Ireland; they are sensibly affected by the load of oppressive pensions on your establishment, the arbitrary and illegal exactions of public money by king's letters; the