Ben Franklin | Autograph letter signed, to Lord Shelburne, British Prime Minister, during peace negotiations, November 1782

Benjamin Franklin

Autograph letter signed (“B. Franklin”), to William Petty, 2^nd Earl of Shelburne, as American Peace Commissioner, (“…Mr Vaughan brought me some time since from your Lordship a Remedy you were so kind as to send my for my Gravel. I intended to thank you by him. He staid here much longer than I expected, and when he went it was so suddenly that I had not time to write…”), 1 page, 4to, integral address leaf, Passy, 26 November 1782, docketed, with an erasure, presumably a false start (“Mr Franklin presents…”), on the address leaf 

BEN FRANKLIN THANKS THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER FOR A CURE FOR BLADDER STONES, WHILST NEGOTIATING THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. Franklin, who had been the American representative in Paris throughout the revolutionary period, and also had many connections in England, was key to the peace negotiations that followed British defeat in North America. Negotiations had begun in April 1782 and a draft treaty had been agreed just a few days before this letter was written (although the treaty would not be signed until the following September). Lord Shelburne, the British Prime Minister, was willing to make generous concessions to the Americans in the hope that close alliance would benefit British trade in the long term, so this friendly letter reflects something of the spirit of the negotiations.

Shelburne’s remedy for the bladder stones that plagued Franklin in his final years was sent to Paris by Benjamin Vaughan (1751–1835), a merchant, publisher, and political radical who was both a close friend of Ben Franklin (he published Franklin's Works in 1780) and confidential agent to Lord Shelburne. Vaughan was first sent to Passy at the beginning of July 1782, shortly after Shelburne became Prime Minister, and played an important role as the unofficial conduit for negotiations between Britain and America that led to the Treaty of Paris. He was with Franklin once again in the autumn, and this letter was written during a ten-day trip back to England to try and bring negotiations to a successful conclusion.

Franklin diagnosed with bladder stones in August 1782 but he was well aware of the suffering that the disease could cause: his brother had been afflicted earlier in life, leading Franklin to invent a flexible catheter in the 1750s. Two days after writing this letter, Franklin wrote to an English MP, David Hartley, thanking him for another cure but saying that “at present the Gravel has left me”. The cure proved to be only a temporary amelioration, however, and Franklin's bladder stone caused him chronic pain during the later 1780s.