No. 97.]

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

I

SIR,

HAVE juft read in the Monthly Review, vol. 36, p. 357, that the late Mr. Pennant faid of Dr. Franklin, that, "living under the protection of our mild Goverament, he was fecretly playing the incendiary, and too fuccefsfully inflaming the minds of our fellow-fubjects in America, till that great explofion happened, which for ever difunited us from our once happy colonies.”

As it is in my power, as far as my tefimony will be regarded, to refute this charge, I think it due to our friendship to do it. It is probable that no perion now living was better acquainted with Dr. Farklin and his fentiments on ak fubjects of importance, than myself, for feveral years before the American war. I I think I knew him as well as one man can generally know another. At that time I fpent the winters in London, in the family of the Marquis of Lanfdown, and few days paffed without my feeing more or lets of Dr. Franklin; and the latt day that he paffed in England, having given out that he fhould depart the day before, we spent together, without any interruption, from morning till night.

Now he was fo far from wishing for a rupture with the Colonies, that he did more than most men would have done to pre. vent it. His conftant advice to his countrymen, he always faid, was "to bear every thing from England, however unjuft;" laying, that it could not laft long, as they would foon outgrow all their hardfhips." On this account Dr. Price, who then correfponded with fome of the principal perfons in America, faid, he began to be very unpopular there. He al. ways faid, "If there must be a war, it will be a war of ten years, and I fhall not live to fee the end of it." This I have heard him fay many times.

It was at his requeft, enforced by that of Dr. Fothergil, that I wrote an anonymous MONTHLY MAG, No. 97.

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pamphlet, calculated to fhew the injuftice and impolicy of a war with the Colonies, previous to the meeting of a new ParliaAs I then lived at Leeds, he corrected the prefs himfelf; and, to a passage in which I lamented the attempt to eftablifh arbitrary power in fo large a part of the British Empire, he added the following claufe," To the imminent hazard of our most valuable commerce, and of that national ftrength, fecurity, and felicity, which depend on union and on liberty."

The unity of the British Empire in all its parts was a favourite idea of his. He used to compare it to a beautiful China vafe, which, if once broken, could never be put together again and fo great an admirer was he at that time of the British Conftitution, that he faid he law no inconvenience from its being extended over a great part of the globe. With thefe fentiments he left England; but when, on his arrival in America, he found the war begun, and that there was no receding, no man entered more warmly into the interests of what he then confidered as his country, in oppofition to that of Great Britain. Three of his letters to me, one written immediately on his landing, and published in the collection of his Mifcellaneous Works, p. 365, 552, and 555, will prove this.

By many perfons Dr. Franklin is confidered as having been a cold-hearted man, fo callous to every feeling of humanity, that the profpect of all the horrors of a civil war could not affect him. This was far from being the cafe. A great part of the day above-mentioned that we spent together, he was looking over a number of American newfpapers, directing me what to extract from them for the English ones; and, in reading them, he was frequently not able to proceed for the tears literally running down his cheeks. To firangers he was cold and reserved; but where he was intimate, no man indulged to more pleafantry and good-humour. By this he was the delight of a club, to which he al

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