drawn from the same pack which the Americans had used in these earlier
days of the war.

***

A matter which grew out of privateering gave Franklin much trouble. The
American captains, who were cruising on the European side of the
Atlantic prior to the treaty of alliance with France, had no place in
which to deposit their prisoners. They could not often send them to the
States, neither of course could they accumulate them on board their
ships, nor yet store them, so to speak, in France and Spain; for
undeveloped as were the rules of neutrality they at least forbade the
use of neutral prisons for the keeping of English prisoners of war in
time of peace. Meanwhile the colonial captives, in confinement just
across the Channel, in the prisons at Plymouth and Portsmouth, were
subjected to very harsh treatment; and others were even being sent to
the fort of Senegal on the coast of Africa, and to the East Indies,
whence they could not hope ever to regain their homes. Franklin
immediately resolved, if possible, to utilize these assets in the shape
of English sailors in the usual course of exchange. A letter was
accordingly addressed by him to Lord Stormont, asking whether it would
be worth while to approach the British court with an offer to exchange
one hundred English prisoners in the hands of the captain of the
Reprisal for a like number of American sailors from the English prisons.
The note was a simple interrogatory in proper form of civility. No
answer was received. After a while a second letter was prepared, less
formal, more forcible in statement and argument, and in the appeal to
good sense and decent good feeling. This elicited from his lordship a
brief response: "The king's ambassador receives no applications from
rebels, unless they come to implore his majesty's mercy." The
commissioners indignantly rejoined: "In answer to a letter which
concerns some of the most material interests of humanity, and of the two
nations, Great Britain and the United States of America, now at war, we
received the inclosed indecent paper, as coming from your lordship,
which we return for your lordship's more mature consideration."

The technical position of the English in this business was that the
captured Americans were not prisoners of war, but traitors. Their
practical position was that captains of American privateers, not finding
it a physical possibility to keep their prisoners, would erelong be
obliged to let them go without e