ABSTRACT
Having taken up residence in Philadelphia as postmaster general of the United States of America, Hazard, no longer on the road but twice as busy, decided it was best to write his letters in shi s. His plan was to begin the process of ‘acknowledging the receipt’ of Belknap’s letters, such as ‘your favour of 20th ult’, days before the post was due to go. ‘I should be glad to bear you company to the White Hills; but, from present appearances, am apprehensive I shall never see them’. ere would be other opportunities to go, but indeed Hazard never found the time to journey to the most fascinating destination of the eighteenth-century American scientist, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or as they were o en called, as by Hazard, the White Hills. e summits Hazard now endeavoured to climb were Congressional, his dealings with which he told Belknap taught him ‘the meaning of Anxiety’. Hazard agreed with Belknap that the British had long tried to spread the erroneous rumour ‘that the Colonies were disa ected to the royal government, and thirsted a er independence’. In consequence, Hazard considered it the ‘duty incumbent on every American historian to use his endeavours to wipe o so unjust an aspersion’ – he encouraged Belknap to publish the letters of the Sons of Liberty. Regarding Belknap’s history, Hazard believed the best printer in Philadelphia was Robert Aitken, with whom Hazard discussed Belknap’s manuscript. Aitken told Hazard about the type and cost of paper and how much he would charge to print it. ‘Aitken binds books as neatly as he prints them. Should you have the work done here, I would wish you to employ him, as I know him to be an honest, conscientious man’. is plan, in Hazard’s opinion, was preferable to publishing the book exclusively in London; rather, publish it in America but nd a London publisher who will publish and distribute an edition in England for ‘half the copyright’. ‘By this means you will secure half the pro ts of the European sales, and prevent your being printed upon, as we booksellers call it’. Dr Gordon, Hazard’s friend, had a ‘brother-in-law, Mr. Field’, in the publishing industry in England, whom Hazard asserted would be, ‘a proper person to engage with’.1
