"I am D^r Sir "Yrs. affectionately "JOHN FOXCROFT.
"Mrs Franklin, Mrs Bache, little Ben & Family at Burlington are all well. I had a letter from ye Gov^r yesterday
Among the Franklin papers in the State Department at Washington there are copies of a number of letters which Franklin wrote to Foxcroft, and in three of them--October 7, 1772, November 3, 1772, and March 3, 1773--he sends "love to my daughter." There is also in Bigelow's edition of his works[11] a letter in which he refers to Mrs. Foxcroft as his daughter. The letter I have quoted above was written while Franklin was in England as the representative of some of the colonies, and is addressed to him at his Craven Street lodgings. Foxcroft, who was postmaster of Philadelphia, seems to have been on friendly terms with the rest of Franklin's family.
Mrs. Bache, whom Foxcroft mentions in the letter, was Franklin's legitimate daughter, Sarah, who was married. The family at Burlington was the family of the illegitimate son, William, who was the royal governor of New Jersey. This extraordinarily mixed family of legitimates and illegitimates seems to have maintained a certain kind of harmony. The son William, the governor, continued the line through an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, usually known as Temple Franklin. This condition of affairs enables us to understand the odium in which Franklin was held by many of the upper classes of Philadelphia, even when he was well received by the best people in England and France.
In his writings we constantly find him encouraging early marriages; and he complains of the great number of bachelors and old maids in England. "The accounts you give me," he writes to his wife, "of the marriages of our friends are very agreeable. I love to hear of everything that tends to increase the number of good people." He certainly lived up to his doctrine, and more.
"Men I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for without a blush they assemble in great armies at noonday to destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory; but they creep into corners or cover themselves with the darkness of night when they mean to beget, as being ashamed of a virtuous action." (Bigelow's Works of Franklin, vol. vii. p. 464.)