FOOTNOTES:
[34] "Mrs. Shipley and her daughter Kitty, in their passion for you rival Georgiana." Letter from Jonathan Shipley to Franklin, Nov. 27, 1785.
[35] To a series of experiments, conducted by Sir John Pringle, we owe our knowledge of the fact that mosquito hawks are so whimsically constituted that they live longer with their heads off than on. One of these decapitated moths was so tenacious of his existence as to survive for 174 days.
[36] A letter from Franklin to Francis Maseres, dated Passy, June 26, 1785, suggests an additional reason why the antipathy of the American Whigs to the American loyalists was so unrelenting. "The war against us was begun by a general act of Parliament, declaring all our estates confiscated; and probably one great motive to the loyalty of the royalists was the hope of sharing in these confiscations. They have played a deep game, staking their estates against ours; and they have been unsuccessful. But it is a surer game, since they had promises to rely on from your government, of indemnification in case of loss; and I see your Parliament is about to fulfil those Promises. To this I have no objection, because, though still our enemies, they are men; they are in necessity; and I think even a hired assassin has a right to his pay from his employer."
[37] The business of Whitefoord as a wine-merchant was carried on at No. 8 Craven Street, and he enjoyed a considerable reputation for wit in his time. He served as Secretary to the Commission that settled the terms of peace with the United States. He was, Burke thought, a mere diseur de bons mots. Goldsmith deemed him of sufficient importance to make him the subject of an epitaph intended to be worked into the Retaliation, and reading as follows:
"Here Whitefoord reclines, deny it who can;
Tho' he merrily lived, he is now a grave man.
What pity, alas! that so lib'ral a mind
Should so long be to Newspaper Essays confined!
Who perhaps to the summit of science might soar,
Yet content if the table he set in a roar;
Whose talents to fit any station were fit,
Yet happy if Woodfall confessed him a wit."
His intimacy with Franklin, Whitefoord said on one occasion, had been the "pride and happiness" of his life.