TO DAVID HARTLEY.
Passy, April 5th, 1782.
My Dear Friend,
I wrote a few lines to you the 31st past, and promised to write more fully. On perusing again your letters of the 11th, 12th, and 21st, I do not find any notice taken of one from me, dated February the 16th. I therefore now send you a copy made from it in the press. The uncertainty of free transmission discourages a free communication of sentiments on these important affairs; but the inutility of discussion between persons, one of whom is not authorised, but in conjunction with others, and the other not authorised at all, as well as the obvious inconveniences that may attend such previous handling of points, that are to be considered, when we come to treat regularly, is with me a still more effectual discouragement, and determines me to waive that part of the correspondence.
As to Digges, I have no confidence in him, nor in anything he says, or may say, of his being sent by Ministers. Nor will I have any communication with him, except in receiving and considering the justification of himself, which he pretends he shall be able and intends to make, for his excessive drafts on me, on account of the relief I have ordered to the prisoners, and his embezzlement of the money.
You justly observe in yours of the 12th, that the first object is to procure a "meeting of qualified and authorised persons," and that you understand the Ministry will be ready to proceed towards opening a negotiation as soon as the bill shall pass, and therefore it is necessary to consult time and place, and manner and persons, on each side. This you wrote while the old Ministry existed. If the new have the same intentions, and desire a general peace, they may easily discharge Mr Laurens from those engagements, which make his acting in the commission improper, and except Mr Jefferson, who remains in America, and is not expected here, we the Commissioners of Congress can easily be got together ready to meet yours, at such place as shall be agreed to by the powers at war, in order to form the treaty. God grant, that there may be wisdom enough assembled to make, if possible, a peace that shall be perpetual, and that the idea of any nations being natural enemies to each other, may be abolished for the honor of human nature.
With regard to those who may be commissioned from your government, whatever personal preferences I may conceive in my own mind, it cannot become me to express them. I only wish for wise and honest men. With such, a peace may be speedily concluded. With contentious wranglers the negotiation may be drawn into length, and finally frustrated.
I am pleased to see in the votes and Parliamentary speeches, and in your public papers, that in mentioning America, the word reconciliation is often used. It certainly means more than a mere peace. It is a sweet expression. Revolve in your mind, my dear friend, the means of bringing about this reconciliation. When you consider the injustice of your war with us, and the barbarous manner in which it has been carried on, the many suffering families among us from your burning of towns, scalping by savages, &c. &c., will it not appear to you, that though a cessation of the war may be a peace, it may not be a reconciliation? Will not some voluntary acts of justice, and even of kindness on your part, have excellent effects towards producing such a reconciliation? Can you not find means of repairing in some degree those injuries? You have in England and Ireland twelve hundred of our people prisoners, who have for years bravely suffered all the hardships of that confinement, rather than enter into your service, to fight against their country. Methinks you ought to glory in descendants of such virtue. What if you were to begin your measures of reconciliation by setting them at liberty? I know it would procure for you the liberty of an equal number of your people, even without a previous stipulation; and the confidence in our equity, with the apparent good will in the action, would give very good impressions of your change of disposition towards us. Perhaps you have no knowledge of the opinions lately conceived of your king and country, in America; the enclosed copy of a letter will make you a little acquainted with them, and convince you how impossible must be every project of bringing us again under the dominion of such a sovereign.
With great esteem, I am, dear Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
B. FRANKLIN.