| Description | ("No. 4.")
Paris, 27 February 1791.
Dear Sir!
I am sorry to learn from yours of the 21st current that you intend to give Droz £550. I wrote you my opinion in my former letter, but am sorry it will arrive too late. This man is as Dupré exactly caracterised him with regard to his profession, a tedious engraver who never can get out any thing of his own hands, and, with regard to all other points, an impudent, assuming charlatan; these are Dupré's own words, to whom I told him I was sorry to confirm his sentiments about this man by dear-bought experience.
Permit me to add a few reflexions. If you really went so far as to give him any considerable sum of money, you have injured your cause most materially in two ways: First, by not abiding to the arbitration, which was by no means in your favor, every body who will hear of this will suspect that you have found yourself more guilty than the arbitrators did, and that you gave Droz, whose interest is to encourage suspicions against you, this sum as a hush-money for inducing him to forgive you, or not to speak out that you have ill-treated him for the important discoveries and improvements he had communicated to you. Secondly, by giving Droz such a large sum of money, with leave to go to France at present, you took the most efficacious measures to counteract every thing what I have said and what I might say to warn people here against him. If he had come here comme un gueux, every body would have suspected his conduct and my words would have had implicit credit; but when he now arrives here to-morrow, or after tomorrow, and shews tat he has brought a good deal of money (twelve or fourteen thousand livres) with him besides, impudent as he is in his pretensions, he will easily persuade many people, whatever I may say to the contrary, that he has earned this money by his skills, talents, and improvements which he has communicated to you. For every body here would laugh in my face and believe me an impostor if I were to say you gave him this money (besides the £1100 which I mentioned already here he received from you last year) only in order to get rid of him peaceably. I hope, at least, in this disagreeable situation, that, on giving him the money, you have asked a receipt-I mean, such a receipt as I mentioned to you you should ask him for, in case you gave him any money, which I thought at that time would never exceed £50 sterling. If you have such a receipt, put down in such terms as I then told you, send it me, or a copy of it, that I may shew it and thus at least prove that I have not told any lies. If I ever had thought you capable of coming to such an agreement with Droz I would never have opened my mouth here about this scoundrel; for I am afraid that all my insinuations to the Bishop, which were besides extremely moderate, will fall to the ground the moment Droz makes his first appearance. If ever I was tempted to believe in whitchcraft, it is this case, for I really believe this fellow has bewitched you.
Since I wrote you last, I have great reason to suspect that Droz and Pradeaux, together with his pretended friends, are connected with Perrier, but I have not been yet able to come to the bottom of this connexion. So much is certain: that Droz constantly corresponded for these several months past with Pradeaux; that it is through him or his friends that Droz's caracter and talents have been so much puffed up to the members of the Committee. It is this same party who have proposed to erect a coining-mill and buy all the bell-metal. It is probably the same party, also, which presented to the same Committee a model of a press which works (according to the description I received last night from a person who knows nothing about this matter) exactly as your machine does, without any human assistance, applying the round piece of metal, stamping it, and throwing it out-which model I suspect has been sent by Droz, or at least a drawing of the same. The person who was present when it was tried before the Committee told me that it worked so well in his small way that this was the only reason why the Committee was led to doubt that it would not do the same when executed at large. My opinion is that Pradeaux only wrote you his letter in order to pump out from you as much as he could, and that his demand concerning a fire-engine was only the trapp to ensnare you the easier and make you the more open. I wish you never had wrote him any thing about me. I have never have called on him, nor do I intend to do it except you desire it.
The great discovery which he mentioned to you in his letter is probably that of Mr. de Trouville, of which the Academy of Science published a report and proved it to [be] far from the sanguine expectations of its inventor. I will send you this report, together with Mirabeau's [? figures].
I called on Guyot but he is out of town.
I wrote you in my last, that I delivered your letter to van Liender, but that I scratched out in it the line where you ask him whether he would not enter into the plan (which you please to scratch out in the copy of your letter); I told you the reason which determined me to do this, and am now confirmed I did well; he told me yesterday that he would have nothing more to do with affairs, that he intends to leave Paris in a few weeks and then go along with his sister to Tarrenne, having been informed by one of his friends that Tours was a very agreeable place to settle at; that most likely he would settle either in this kingdom or at Bristol in England for the rest of his life. He has not wrote to the Bishop, who gave him no answer to his last of the 13th of January and most likely would give him none at present; this is no wonder when you consider the multiplicity of business which some of the Chambers of the National Assembly, more particularly, have upon their hands. I had twice this week an appointment from Mirabeau, and at both times found him so engaged with some Members of the National Assembly on pressing business that I could not speak a single quarter of an hour alone with him; next Thursday morning, he told me, he would be alone for me at home.
The M-ons have not yet sent to me; this is the more agreeable to me, because I can not well enter into business with them before I have not Mirabeau's opinion.
I was yesterday in six or seven different shops to inform myself about the list of prices which you desire to be sent you; but no body knows any thing about such a list being printed at Paris. I will, however, inform myself still more and see whether I am not more successfull; if you had any Member of Parliament in London whom I could direct to, I would send you this as well as Mirabeau's pamphlets on coining, which are masterpieces, by the post; if not, I see no other way than by the diligence, directed to Chippindall, who will forward you the parcel. I shall then also send you back the copy of your letter to M.
As to news, there is a good many: the journey of the two old maids, the King's aunts, to Rome has occasioned some bustle here, as well as at the place where they were stopped. The National Assembly wisely observed to the people that there being no law which prevents any body going out of the kingdom, these two old women could not be legally stopped, and referred the matter to the executive power, upon which a great number of common people assembled in the Tuilleries with an intention to ask the King to recall his aunts and not let them go out of the kingdom, with a vast sum of money, at this time; but the National Guard by simple reasoning dispersed them, without much trouble or any bloodshed.
The news from Alsace, as well as from Languedoc, shews that every thing is returned to good order, and that consequently the people are not longer duped by either priests or aristocrats. The general permission of cultivating tobaco, the abolition of all corporations, and the free entry into all the towns in the internal parts of the country, will and must attach the common people (of the towns especially) to the Constitution more forcibly than any thing hitherto done in their behalf. This exciting of troubles, however, by the aristrocratic party, and the many impediments they throw constantly in the way, prevent the National Assembly from finishing the great work, the Constitution; and different branches essentially connected with it, such as regulation of coinage, national guards, &c., &c., are of consequence necessarily put off from time to time, and will oblige the present assembly to continue their sittings during the whole present year, instead of concluding, as they thought, by the end of April.
I wish you could send me your observations concerning patents; for I find several members willing to adopt any thing to the better in this respect. If faulty laws are made, I am sure, it is owing to want of proper information, not to good will.
The 3 or 4th of March next is the day fixed for the election of a new archbishop of Paris; it is not yet known upon whom this election will fall, but certainly upon a warm friend to liberty.
Best compliments to Mr. Watt, Dr. Withering, and other friends.
Yours sincerely,
F. Swediaur
PS. I herewith join you the portrait of one of my most intimate friends in France.
The list of prices you desire from me I can learn nothing about any where, but that such a list does not exist. Perhaps I find it out in my further enquiries. There is a list published daily in the rue Vivienne, which gives an exact account of the rise and fall of stocks, &c., &c., and also of the daily prices of gold and silver upon the market; but it contains no other article.
[The following passage was written with sympathetic ink.]
February 28th.
As it is impossible to speak with Mirabeau on the subject before Thursday-viz. to-morrow morning-and your letter indicated Droz's arrival, I changed my plan, and therefore asked my friend Mr. Perruquier, Member of the National Assembly, who is an active good man, to whom I communicated my whole intentions and who procured me Mirabeau's acquaintance last year, to introduce me to the Bishop, which he readily did. The Bishop had received specimens of your coin from Droz and therefore knew them immediately; he said he knew you personally, having seen you when you was last at Paris, and promised me perfect secrecy. He heared me with attention and seemed rather surprised of what I told him concerning Droz, viz. that the former specimens as well as the latter he had sent him, were done by our machine, and that the different mechanical improvements which he pretended to turned out in practice to be good for nothing; but that he was a very good engraver. He seemed to me sensible that he was not perfect master of several things which occurred in our conversation concerning coinage, and therefore desired I would meet on Wednesday night with Mr. Cussy, ancient director of the Mint at Caën, who is, as my friend tells me, a man of a most excellent caracter and an ennemy to all former abuses in the Mint; he is a Member of the National Assembly, and one of the Committee de Monnoye; my friend undertook to speak with him, and the meeting for us four is thus settled. The Bishop seemed much to like my proposition, to take the bell-metal in payment for coinage.
I told you in my former that Mirabeau, [though not] a member of the Committee de Monnoye, is yet the very soal [of it], on account of his extensive and profund knowledge on this subject. The Bishop likes his ideas, and the National Assembly will certainly [reject] any plan about coinage, if Mirabeau were against, so much confidence has he gained by his two pamphlets. This man we therefore must absolutely have on our side, but as he is poor and in debt, I think a gentle hint of remuneration will be useful, write me how much you think I may offer, if occasion required it. I do not think that he would engage to do any thing if it was against public utility, being now in the full possession of high confidence, and being besides just now chusen one of the active administrators of the department of Paris; but as our propositon is grande and useful, I think he will more readily enter into [it] than any other man; but this should not hinder us, but rather be an inducement to make him a genteel-or, if you please, an undetermined but sure [The remainder of the letter is difficult to read, because the ink has come through from the other side of the page; but probably further work with ultra-violet light would reveal the text.] |