Thomas Mullett, Bristol, to [Thomas Palfrey], [America], 14 December 1777.

Dear Sir

   This is intended to be deliverd into your hands by my friend and neighbor Mr William Stevenson. He has for some time past Communicated his intentions to me and I have given him the best advice in my power. Those intentions will be most fully explaind to you, and I hope your advice and assistance with that of your friends may essentially serve him and his family. The present State of Affairs renders it necessary for me to add that I have long known Mr S. and have always found him a uniform and strenuous advocate for the Rights of his Country. He has supported every measure for the accomplishment of the great object of Peace and to prevent the horrors of that War which the most Sanguine are now brought to believe will finally issue in the Ruin of this Country. The Embarrassment of the house in which he held a Capital Share was a check to that activity which he would gladly have discover’d, and from a thorough knowledge of his principles I am confident this circumstance gave him pain – nearly equal to his domestic affliction.

   As Mr S. is already personally known to you the formality of such an introduction as this may be thought unnecessary. I should have thought so but for the recollection of some part of our Conversation when I had the pleasure of seeing you here last. You had mentiond several names, and amongst them that of Mr S. and I think I then told you he was the less active on Account of the Embarrassd State of his Affairs. Lest you might have suspected any degree of lukewarmness or disaffection to the public Cause I thought it an act of Common Justice to my friend to be thus explicit.

   On all Occasions my best wishes attend you as I am always very sincerely

                     Dr Sr

                                 Your most humble Servant

                                                   Thomas Mullett

Bristol 14 December 1777.

Address: none

Text: Correspondence of the Palfrey Family, Letters to William Palfrey, 1741-1781, bms Am 1704-1704.8/ Part II. a, box 48, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Boston.