It may not be necessary to discuss this point with you, as it will probably be laid before Congress, and they will form a proper judgment, both of the fact and your motives. My business with you at present respects your conduct previous to the departure of M. Gerard and Mr Deane, and I wish that neither your attention nor mine may be drawn from it. Mr Lloyd has informed me, that you told him there would be an opportunity of writing soon to America. I must request, that you will no longer attempt to amuse me with promises and excuses, but that you will give me the explanation, which you have so often bound yourself to give that it may be laid, by that opportunity, if necessary, before the representatives of my country, or that you will let me know in writing, that you will not give it me. I am, Sir, &c. RALPH IZARD. JOHN J. PRINGLE TO RALPH IZARD. Paris, April 26th, 1778. Sir, In compliance with your request I waited on Dr Franklin and delivered to him your letter; he had scarcely read it when he said, “Mr Izard has written me a very angry letter; please to tell him, that he has only made use of general assertions of my having done wrong, which I cannot otherwise answer than by denying. If I have given him any causes of offence, he should let me know what they are.” To this I replied, “that you had been kind enough to form so good an opinion of me, as to admit me into a share of your confidence, therefore I could take upon me to say, that you were persuaded you had clearly stated, in the several letters he had received from you, circumstances affording sufficient grounds of offence.” He said, “he should be glad to know what those circumstances were.” I answered in the first place, “that conceiving it your duty as a member of the States, having a considerable fortune there, and intrusted with a commission from Congress, to communicate as occasion offered all the intelligence you could, you found this communication greatly obstructed by a concealment on the part of Dr Franklin of proper opportunities, when it was quite unnecessary, or when the end of secrecy might be answered, though you had been intrusted with the knowledge of them.” Upon which Dr Franklin told me, “that you had only complained of this in the present letter, and as to the particular opportunity you mentioned by Monsieur Gerard, or Mr Deane, he had not himself looked upon it as a good or proper one, and had not himself made use of it to write.”