As to the Friends and Enemies you just mention [he declared in one of them], I have hitherto, Thanks to God, had Plenty of the former kind; they have been my Treasure; and it has perhaps been of no Disadvantage to me, that I have had a few of the latter. They serve to put us upon correcting the Faults we have, and avoiding those we are in danger of having. They counteract the Mischief Flattery might do us, and their Malicious Attacks make our Friends more zealous in serving us, and promoting our Interest. At present, I do not know of more than two such Enemies that I enjoy, viz. Lee and Izard. I deserved the Enmity of the latter, because I might have avoided it by paying him a Compliment, which I neglected. That of the former I owe to the People of France, who happen'd to respect me too much and him too little; which I could bear, and he could not. They are unhappy, that they cannot make everybody hate me as much as they do; and I should be so, if my Friends did not love me much more than those Gentlemen can possibly love one another. Every ugly witch is but a transfigured princess. This idea is one that was readily adopted by Franklin's amiable philosophy of life. The thought that enemies are but wholesome mortifications for the pride of human flesh is a thought that he often throws out in his letters to other persons besides Hopkinson. In one to the gallant Col. Henry Bouquet, who was also, it may be said in passing, a warm friend of Franklin, the pen of the latter halts for a moment to parenthesize the fact that God had blessed him with two or three enemies to keep him in order. But there were few facts in which Franklin found more satisfaction than the fact that all his enemies were mere political enemies, that is to say, enemies like Dr. William Smith, who shot poisoned arrows at him, when he was living, and fired minute guns over his grave, when he was dead. You know [he wrote to his daughter Sally from Reedy Island, when he was leaving America on his second mission to England], I have many enemies, all indeed on the public account (for I cannot recollect that I have in a private capacity given just cause of offence to any one whatever), yet they are enemies, and very bitter ones; and you must expect their enmity will extend in some degree to you, so that your slightest indiscretions will be magnified into crimes, in order the more sensibly to wound and afflict me. The same distinction between personal and political hostility is drawn by him in a letter to John Jay of a much later date in which he uses the only terms of self-approval, so far as we can recollect, that a biographer might prefer him never to have employed.