Golden Square [London] June 5 1778
Dear Sir
I hope we shall at length get forward with the Exchange of the poor prisoners wch has been for so many months in negotiation. I am authorized by the administration and the board of admiralty to make the following proposition. That you shd send to me the number and rank of the prisoners wch you have on your side to deliver, upon the receipt of wch an equal number shall be prepared on this side for the Exchange. It is proposed that each party shall send their prisoners to Calais and that the Exchange be made there. The port of Calais is chosen as the most unexceptionable for the admission of an English Ship upon such an occasion. Be so good as to send me your answer upon this proposition, wch I will lay before the board of Admiralty and will contribute all that is in my power to facilitate the Exchange1 I am [&c.]
D Hartley
L, PPAmP, Benjamin Franklin Papers, vol. 10, fol. 12. Addressed below close: “To Dr Franklin.” Docketed: “Mr Hartley/June 5. 78/answer’d.” Notation: “Hartley June 5. 1778.”
1. Franklin replied on behalf of the American Commissioners in France on 16 June, below. In a letter to Lord North, tentatively dated 6 June by the editors of the Franklin Papers and the Adams Papers but never sent, the commissioners proposed an exchange similar to what Hartley spells out here. In that letter, the commissioners also wrote that they had information that American prisoners had been sent to “hardest Labour” in Senegal and threatened retaliation unless those prisoners were brought back and exchanged. DNA, PCC, item 84, vol. 1, p. 142 (M247, roll 111). See Adams Papers 6: 184–85 and Benjamin Franklin Papers 26: 593.
