BIB_ID
137543
Accession number
MA 150.2
Creator
Smith, L.L., Captain, active 1780.
Display Date
1779 July 22.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1901.
Description
1 item (11 p.) ; 22.5 cm
Notes
Docketed on verso.
Part of a large collection of correspondence of Sir Philip Francis; see collection-level record for more information.
Part of a large collection of correspondence of Sir Philip Francis; see collection-level record for more information.
Provenance
By descent to his eldest granddaughter Miss Francis, and in her possession in 1871; sale (London, Sotheby's, 27 November 1897); purchased by Pierpont Morgan from the London dealer J. Pearson & Co., 1901.
Summary
Relating, in detail, of the "state of wretchedness" of the army "sufficient to gratify malevolence;" detailing the extravagant spending and complaining that "out of the prodigious expence of the army .... there is but a very small portion of it that reaches the officers, the greatest part of it is diverted into adventitious channels; silently meanders into the civil Ocean, which drinks up all the golden Rivulets in the country and disembogues them in Europe;" commenting on the need to infuse a nation with cash; commenting on the structure of ambition and on the differences between men and women when they have achieved their ambitions and are aging; concluding that he is "convinced that the infamous avidity of some of those who have, and who now do command Batt's have rendered these regulations highly necessary; and we are in this, as in many other instances indebted for our ruin to each other."
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