It gives me pleasure to inform you, that perfect unanimity has hitherto prevailed among your Commissioners here; and I do not recollect, that since we began to negotiate with Mr Oswald, there has been the least division or opposition between us. Mr Adams was particularly useful respecting the eastern boundary, and Dr Franklin's firmness and exertions on the subject of the tories did us much service. I enclose herewith a copy of a letter he wrote about that matter to Mr Oswald.[10] It had much weight, and is written with a degree of acuteness and spirit seldom to be met with in persons of his age.
I have the honor to be, with great regard and esteem, Dear Sir, &c.
[10] See Franklin's Correspondence. Vol. IV. p. 36.
I have before me your despatches of the 4th and 18th of September last, and the 13th of October. It gives me much uneasiness to find by them, that your health is not yet confirmed, particularly as the extreme shortness of your letters, compared with the importance of the matter, gives me reason to fear, that it has suffered more than you would have us believe.
I am under some anxiety relative to the fate of your letter of the 18th of September, as only the duplicate copy has arrived, and I find by that you have risked it without a cypher. Should it get into improper hands, it might be attended with disagreeable consequences.
It is of so much importance, that both you and we should judge rightly of the designs of the Court, to whom we have intrusted such extensive powers, that I most earnestly wish you had enlarged on the reasons which have induced you to form the opinion you intimate; an opinion, which, if well founded, must render your negotiations extremely painful, and the issue of them very uncertain. If on the other hand, it should have been taken up too hastily, it is to be feared, that in defiance of all that prudence and self-possession, for which you are happily distinguished, it will discover itself in a reserve and want of confidence, which may afford hopes to our artful antagonists of exciting jealousies between us and our friends. I so sincerely wish that your conjectures on this head may not be well founded, that I am led to hope you carry your suspicions too far, and the more so as Dr Franklin, to whom I dare say you have communicated them freely, does not (as you say) agree in sentiment with you. But I pretend not to judge, since I have not the advantage of seeing from the same ground. Perhaps some light may be thrown upon the subject by such facts as I have been able to collect here, and with which it is impossible you should be acquainted.