One half of the advantages accruing from "General Burgoyne's capitulation to Mr. Gates"--such was the Tory euphemism, somewhat ill considered, since it implied that the gallant British commander had capitulated to a civilian--was to be reaped in Europe. The excellent Hartley was already benevolently dreaming of effecting an accommodation between the two contestants; and seeing clearly that an alliance with France must be fatal to any such project, he closed a letter on February 3, 1778, to Franklin, by "subjoining one earnest caution and request: Let nothing ever persuade America to throw themselves into the arms of France. Times may mend. I hope they will. An American must always be a stranger in France; Great Britain may for ages to come be their home." This was as kindly in intention as it was bad in grammatical construction; but it was written from a point of view very different from that which an American could adopt. Franklin promptly replied: "When your nation is hiring all the cut-throats it can collect, of all countries and colors, to destroy us, it is hard to persuade us not to ask or accept aid from any power that may be prevailed with to grant it; and this only from the hope that, though you now thirst for our blood, and pursue us with fire and sword, you may in some future time treat us kindly. This is too much patience to be expected of us; indeed, I think it is not in human nature." A few days later he transposed Hartley's advice, not without irony: "Let nothing induce [the English Whigs] to join with the Tories in supporting and continuing this wicked war against the Whigs of America, whose assistance they may hereafter want to secure their own liberties, or whose country they may be glad to retire to for the enjoyment of them." Hartley must have had a marvelous good temper, if he read without resentment the very blunt and severe replies which Franklin a little mercilessly made to the other's ever temperate and amiable letters.