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1
You will perhaps wonder to find me ask so many
questions about trade and to see me so intent as
it were upon it. You may think I have taken
up an entire new plan and laid aside my old
ones, that I forget all my expectations with respect
to Russia and think only of getting money in a
way which I am not at all suited for.
The case is that I have heard from the
different accounts I have heard of the trade
between this country and England it appears it its
present state very advantageous and to be capable
of gre very great improvements. Moreover I
think it probable that if I were to have any
thing to do with the building of Ships here I might
have m very advantageous opportunities of engaging
in trade at the same time.
This I hope is a sufficient general excuse to
wish to have all the information as soon as
possible which may assist me in deciding.
The last letter I sent from Liban and was obliged
to finish it in a very great hurry.
In it I desired to know what sum of money I could
be furnished with if it should so happen that I should
have any very advantageous opportunity of employing
it in trade. This certainly I should wish much
to know, but I doubt very much if anything
would tempt me to hazard any sum.
How I long to know how "Punishments" & "Code" go on,
the latter I suppose is laid aside for the present, but I
hope to hear a very good account of the former before
this year is out.
Charles I take for granted is returned long before
now. How is he? How does he? Do you see any
thing of him?
Do you hear or see any thing
of Lindegren? How does Davies & Wilson do?
Are ye all dead or asleep?
I have been frequently uneasy about my having
mentioned Lind as the Author of the answer to the
Declaration of the French Court, without being certain
that he would like it should be known. I told you
in my letter from Berlin that I had mentioned
it to Mr Lister, I hope therefore in the first letter
that I receive from you I shall have some answer
about it.
I do hereby desire that you will not
for the future tell me any such secrets,
seeing that my memory is so very bad in all
matters in which my reasoning will not assist it.
'Tis true that I received a very great pleasure from
hearing it spoke of in such very high terms on
account of my knowing my friend to be the Author,
yet perhaps that very pleasure might perhaps
tend to make me forget my injunctions to secrecy.
In short you should never tell me a secret which
it does not concern me to know. I began a
letter to him from at Dantzic but as I had told him
told him in it of my having mentioned him as the Author,
when I came to consider that if I had done wrong
in telling it, therewas no ion to give him the
pain of knowing it, I laid the letter aside.
I have a great mind to sit up all tonight to
give you my journal from the time of my quitting
Hamburgh to the present. — No it cant be
tonight for tomorrow morning I shall get to
Mittau and possibly see Klopman, and therefore
I will sleep well tonight, least I should not
otherwise have my senses well about me.
Mittau Decr 13th. 1779.
I arrived here about ½ past 1 in the afternoon
The Country a few miles before you distant
I can imagine is excedingly pleasant in Summer
but the situation of Mittau itself appears very flat.
There are only 2 steeples or Towers which distinguish
themselves from the houses, and they
only by their height, for there is nothing at all
in to be admired in their appearance. The Town itself
certainly has not much the appearance of the Capital
of so fertile though small a country. If the houses
were high the Streets would appear very narrow
but as they consist chiefly of but 2 Stories the
streets appear quite broad enough. The badness
of the Pavement which Wraxal takes notice of
either must be hid by the snow with which it is
entirely covered or the town must have been new
paved. When I arrived at the Inn everybody
had dined and in ½ an hour when it was scarcely
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Identifier: | JB/538/416/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 538.
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1779-12-18 |
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538 |
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416 |
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001 |
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Correspondence |
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Samuel Bentham |
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