Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own WritingsBruce, Wiliam Cabell
History
Benjamin Franklin; Self-Revealed, Volume 2 (of 2): A Biographical and Critical Study Based Mainly on his own Writings
Bruce, Wiliam Cabell
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
In this Situation of our Affairs, we hope you will not
insist on our giving you a farther Credit with our
Banker, with whom we are daily in danger of having no
farther Credit ourselves. It is not a Year since you
received from us the sum of Two Thousand Guineas, which
you thought necessary on Acct of your being to set
out immediately for Florence. You have not incurr'd the
Expence of that Journey. You are a Gentleman of
Fortune. You did not come to France with any Dependence
on being maintained here with your Family at the
Expence of the United States, in the Time of their
Distress, and without rendering them the equivalent
Service they expected.
Izard seems to have had the kind of temper that heats as readily as iron
but cools off as slowly as a footbrick, wrapped up in flannels.[37]
Speaking of the indignity, to which Franklin had been subjected in his
sight before the Privy Council, he said: "When Dr. Franklin was so
unmercifully bespattered by Wedderburn, I sat upon thorns; and had it been
me that was so grossly insulted, I should instantly have repelled the
attack, in defiance of every consequence." It is not unlikely that he would
have been as good as his word, so prompt was the second, who had borne the
challenge from Temple to Whately, to give free play to his irascible and
imperious nature. But Graydon is our authority for the statement, too, that
as long as four years after Izard had returned in the _Alliance_ from
France to the United States, the name of Franklin could not be mentioned in
his presence without hurrying him into a state of excitement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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