Believe me, I sympathise most cordially and sincerely with you in every anxiety of yours for peace. I hope things are tending (although not without rubs) yet in the main, to that end—soon! as soon as the course of human life may be expected to operate on the great scale and course of national events, or rather in the creation and establishment of a new world. I am sometimes tempted to think myself in patient expectation the elder sage of the two; I say the elder, not the better.
Yours, &c.
D. HARTLEY.
T. DIGGES TO B. FRANKLIN.
Amsterdam, March 22d, 1782.
Sir,
I left England a few days back, and until my conversation and some consultations with Mr Adams, on a matter which will be mentioned to you by him, and more particularly explained in this letter, my determination was to have seen you, as well on that business as on a matter of much consequence to my private reputation. I feel the disadvantages under which I labor, when writing to you on a matter, which cannot be explained or cleared up but by personal conversation. I do not give up my intended purpose of personally speaking to you; but it being found better and more convenient to my purpose to return immediately hence to England, and from thence to Paris, in preference to going first to Paris, it must be unavoidably delayed for some days.
It would take up more than the length of a letter to explain the whole opening and progression of a matter I am here upon, which was and is meant to be jointly communicated to you with Mr Adams; I will therefore take the liberty to give you an abbreviation of it in as few words as I can.
About a fortnight ago a direct requisition from the Ministry, through Lord Beauchamp, was made to Mr R. Penn, to know if he could ascertain that any person or persons in Europe were commissioned by Congress to treat for peace, whether they were now willing to avail themselves of such commission, and of the present sincere disposition in the Ministry to treat, and whether they would receive an appointed Commissioner to speak for a truce, and mention a place for the meeting, &c.