If you have received any thing in consequence of your answer by Digges, you will oblige me by communicating it. The ministers here were much pleased with the account given them of your interview by the ambassador.

&c.

With great respect, I am, Sir, your Excellency's, B. FRANKLIN.

FROM DAVID HARTLEY, ESQ. M. P. TO DR. FRANKLIN.
MY DEAR FRIend,
London, May 1, 1782.

As I shall probably have a safe opportunity of conveyance to you when Mr. Laurens leaves this country, I am now sitting down to write to you an omnium kind of letter of various matters as they occur. The late ministry being departed, I may now speak of things more freely. I will take a sentence in one of your letters for my text. Vide yours of April 13, 1782, in which you say, you was of opinion that the late ministry desired SINCERELY a reconciliation with America, and with that view a separate peace with us was proposed. I must qualify this sentence much, before I can adopt it as my opinion. As to reconciliation, I never gave much credit to them for that wish. It is a sweet expression. It certainly means MORE than peace. The utmost I ever gave the late ministry credit for, was a wish for peace. And I still believe that the wisest among them grew from day to day more disposed to peace or an abatement of the war, in proportion as they became more alarmed for their own situations and their responsibility. Had the war been more successful, I should not have expected much relenting towards peace or reconciliation. That this has always been the measure of my opinion of them, I refer you to some

words in a letter from me to you, dated January 5, 1780, for proof-" but for the point of sincerity; why as to that I have not much to say; I have at least expected some hold upon their prudence. My argument runs thus: It is a bargain for you (ministers) to be sincere now. Common prudence may hint to you to look to yourselves. It has amazed me beyond measure, that this principle of common selfish prudence has not had the effect which I expected." I have not been disposed to be deceived by any conciliatory professions which I considered only as arising from prudence, and I hope that I have not led you into any deception, having so fully explained myself to you on that head. Had the American war been more prosperous on the part of the late ministry, I do not believe the late resignation would have taken place. But it is evident from the proposition to the court of France which you have communicated to me, (and which I have communicated to the present ministry with your letter,) that even to the last hour, some part of the late ministry were still set upon the American war to the last extremity; and probably another more prudent part of the ministry would proceed no farther; which, if it be so, may reasonably be imputed as the cause of the dissolution of the late ministry. These have been the arguments which I have always driven and insisted upon with the greatest expectation of success, viz. prudential arguments from the total impracticability of the war; responsibility, &c. I have been astonished beyond measure, that these arguments have not sooner had their effect. If I could give you an idea of many conferences which I have had upon the subject, I should tell you, that many

times Felix has trembled. When reduced by the terror of responsibility either to renounce the American war, or to relinquish their places, they have chosen the latter; which is a most wretched and contemptible retribution either to their country or to mankind, for the desolation in which they have involved every nation that they have ever been connected with. Peace they would not leave behind them. Their legacy to their country, and to mankind has been--let darkness be the burier of the dead!

As to the proposal of a separate peace arising from a desire of reconciliation, it certainly was so on the part of the people of England, but on the part of the late ministry, it probably arose from the hopes of suggesting to France ideas of some infidelity on the part of America towards them. If you should ask me, why I have seemed to conspire with this, my answer is very plain. In the first place, if I could have prevailed with the late ministry to have actually made an irrevocable offer, on their own parts, of a separate peace to America, that very offer would in the same instant have become on their part also a consent to a general peace; because they never had any wish to a separate contest with France, and America being out of the question, they would have thought of nothing after that but a general peace. I never could bring them even to this. They wished that America should make the offer of a separate treaty (for obvious views). My proposal was, that they should offer irrevocable terms of peace to America. If they had meant what they pretended, and what the people of England did really desire, they would have adopted that proposition. Then the question would have come forward upon the fair

and honorable construction of a treaty between France and America, the essential and direct end of which was fully accomplished. When I speak of Great Britain offering irrevocable terms of peace to America, I mean such terms as would have effectually satisfied the provision of the treaty, viz. tacit independence. I send you a paper intitled a Breviate,* which I laid before the late ministry, and their not having acted upon it, was a proof to me that the disposition of their heart to America was not altered, but that all their relenting arose from the impracticability of that war, and their want of success in it. But desponding as they were at last, it was not inconsistent with my expectations of their conduct, that they should make great offers to France to abandon America. It was the only weapon left in their hands. In course of negotiating with the late ministry I perceived their courage drooping from time to time, for the last three or four years, and it was upon that ground I gave them credit for an increasing disposition towards peace. Some dropped off; others sunk under the load of folly; and at last they all failed. My argument ad homines to the late ministry might be stated thus: If you don't kill them, they will kill you. But the war is impracticable on your part; ergò, the best thing you can do for your own sake is to make peace. This was reasoning to men, and through men to things. But there is no measure of rage in pride and disappointment,

Spicula cæca relinquunt

Infixa venis, animasque in vulnere ponunt.

* Vide the same following this letter.

If

So much for the argument of the Breviate as far as it respected the late ministry. It was a test which proved that they were not sincere to their professions. If they had been in earnest to have given the war a turn towards the house of Bourbon, and to have dropped the American war, a plain road lay before them. The sentiment of the people of England was conformable to the argument of that breviate; or rather I should say, what is the real truth, that the argument of the breviate was dictated by the notoriety of that sentiment in the people of England. My object and wish always has been to strike at the root of the evil, the American war. the British nation have jealousies and resentments against the house of Bourbon, yet still the first step in every case would be to rescind the American war, and not to keep it lurking in the rear, to become hereafter, in case of certain events, a reversionary war with America for unconditional terms. This reversionary war was never the object of the people of England: therefore the argument of the breviate was calculated bona fide to accomplish their views, and to discriminate the fallacious pretences of the late administration from the real wishes of the country, as expressed in the circular resolution of many counties in the year 1780, first moved at York on March 28, 1780. Every other principle and every mode of conduct only imply, as you very justly express it, a secret hope that war may still produce success, and then-. The designs which have been lurking under this pretext could not mean any thing else than this. Who knows but that we may still talk to America at last? The only test of clear intentions would have been this, to have cut up the