To Lafayette (unpublished)
Passy, Mar. 14, 1781.

You mention my having enemies in America. You are luckier, for I think you have none here, nor any where. Your friends have heard of your being gone against the traitor Arnold, and are anxious to hear of your success, and that you have brought him to justice. Enclosed is a copy of a letter from his agent in England, by which the price of his treason may be nearly guessed at. Judas sold only one man, Arnold three millions; Judas got for his one man 30 pieces of silver, Arnold not a halfpenny a head. A miserable bargainer! Especially when one considers the quantity of infamy he has acquired to himself, and entailed on his family.

The English are in a fair way of gaining still more enemies; they play a desperate game. Fortune may favour them as it sometimes does a drunken dicer. But by their tyranny in the east they have at length roused the powers there against them; and I do not know that they have in the west a single friend. If they lose their India commerce, which is one of their present great supports, and one battle at sea, their credit is gone and the power follows. Thus empires by pride, and folly, and extravagance, ruin themselves like individuals. M. la Motte Piquet has snatched from between their teeth, a good deal of their West India prey, having taken 22 sail of their homeward bound prizes; one of our American privateers has taken two more, and brought them into Brest; and two were burnt. There were 34 in company, with two men of war of the line and two frigates; who saved themselves by flight, but we do not hear of their being yet got in.

B. Franklin.

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