"What's in the name of lord, that I should fear
To bring my grievance to the public ear?"
CHURCHILL.
Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are
with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience, he
can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more ancient
than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the
vassal court of Britain; he that rebels against reason is a real
rebel, but he that in defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a
better title to "Defender of the Faith," than George the Third.
As a military man your lordship may hold out the sword of war, and
call it the "ultima ratio regum": the last reason of kings; we in
return can show you the sword of justice, and call it "the best
scourge of tyrants." The first of these two may threaten, or even
frighten for a while, and cast a sickly languor over an insulted
people, but reason will soon recover the debauch, and restore them
again to tranquil fortitude. Your lordship, I find, has now commenced
author, and published a proclamation; I have published a Crisis. As
they stand, they are the antipodes of each other; both cannot rise at
once, and one of them must descend; and so quick is the revolution of
things, that your lordship's performance, I see, has already fallen
many degrees from its first place, and is now just visible on the
edge of the political horizon.
It is surprising to what a pitch of infatuation, blind folly and
obstinacy will carry mankind, and your lordship's drowsy proclamation
is a proof that it does not even quit them in their sleep. Perhaps
you thought America too was taking a nap, and therefore chose, like
Satan to Eve, to whisper the delusion softly, lest you should awaken
her. This continent, sir, is too extensive to sleep all at once, and
too watchful, even in its slumbers, not to startle at the unhallowed
foot of an invader. You may issue your proclamations, and welcome,
for we have learned to "reverence ourselves," and scorn the insulting
ruffian that employs you. America, for your deceased brother's sake,
would gladly have shown you respect and it is a new aggravation to
her feelings, that Howe should be forgetful, and raise his sword
against those, who at their own charge raised a monument to his
brother. But your master has commanded, and you have not enough of
nature left to refuse. Surely there must be something strangely
degenerating in the love of monarchy, that can so completely wear a
man down to an ingrate, and make him proud to lick the dust that
kings have trod upon. A few more years, should you survive them, will
bestow on you the title of "an old man": and in some hour of future
reflection you may probably find the fitness of Wolsey's despairing
penitence- "had I served my God as faithful as I have served my king,
he would not thus have forsaken me in my old age."
The character you appear to us in, is truly ridiculous. Your friends,
the Tories, announced your coming, with high descriptions of your
unlimited powers; but your proclamation has given them the lie, by
showing you to be a commissioner without authority. Had your powers
been ever so great they were nothing to us, further than we pleased;
because we had the same right which other nations had, to do what we
thought was best. "The UNITED STATES of AMERICA," will sound as
pompously in the world or in history, as "the kingdom of Great
Britain"; the character of General Washington will fill a page with
as much lustre as that of Lord Howe: and the Congress have as much
right to command the king and Parliament in London to desist from
legislation, as they or you have to command the Congress. Only
suppose how laughable such an edict would appear from us, and then,
in that merry mood, do but turn the tables upon yourself, and you
will see how your proclamation is received here. Having thus placed
you in a proper position in which you may have a full view of your
folly, and learn to despise it, I hold up to you, for that purpose,
the following quotation from your own lunarian proclamation.- "And we
(Lord Howe and General Howe) do command (and in his majesty's name
forsooth) all such persons as are assembled together, under the name
of general or provincial congresses, committees, conventions or other
associations, by whatever name or names known and distinguished, to
desist and cease from all such treasonable actings and doings."
You introduce your proclamation by referring to your declarations of
the 14th of July and 19th of September. In the last of these you sunk
yourself below the character of a private gentleman. That I may not
seem to accuse you unjustly, I shall state the circumstance: by a
verbal invitation of yours, communicated to Congress by General
Sullivan, then a prisoner on his parole, you signified your desire of
conferring with some members of that body as private gentlemen. It
was beneath the dignity of the American Congress to pay any regard to
a message that at best was but a genteel affront, and had too much of
the ministerial complexion of tampering with private persons; and
which might probably have been the case, had the gentlemen who were
deputed on the business possessed that kind of easy virtue which an
English courtier is so truly distinguished by. Your request, however,
was complied with, for honest men are naturally more tender of their
civil than their political fame. The interview ended as every
sensible man thought it would; for your lordship knows, as well as
the writer of the Crisis, that it is impossible for the King of
England to promise the repeal, or even the revisal of any acts of
parliament; wherefore, on your part, you had nothing to say, more
than to request, in the room of demanding, the entire surrender of
the continent; and then, if that was complied with, to promise that
the inhabitants should escape with their lives. This was the upshot
of the conference. You informed the conferees that you were two
months in soliciting these powers. We ask, what powers? for as
commissioner you have none. If you mean the power of pardoning, it is
an oblique proof that your master was determined to sacrifice all
before him; and that you were two months in dissuading him from his
purpose. Another evidence of his savage obstinacy! From your own
account of the matter we may justly draw these two conclusions: 1st,
That you serve a monster; and 2d, That never was a messenger sent on
a more foolish errand than yourself. This plain language may perhaps
sound uncouthly to an ear vitiated by courtly refinements, but words
were made for use, and the fault lies in deserving them, or the abuse
in applying them unfairly.
Soon after your return to New York, you published a very illiberal
and unmanly handbill against the Congress; for it was certainly
stepping out of the line of common civility, first to screen your
national pride by soliciting an interview with them as private
gentlemen, and in the conclusion to endeavor to deceive the multitude
by making a handbill attack on the whole body of the Congress; you
got them together under one name, and abused them under another. But
the king you serve, and the cause you support, afford you so few
instances of acting the gentleman, that out of pity to your situation
the Congress pardoned the insult by taking no notice of it.
You say in that handbill, "that they, the Congress, disavowed every
purpose for reconciliation not consonant with their extravagant and
inadmissible claim of independence." Why, God bless me! what have you
to do with our independence? We ask no leave of yours to set it up;
we ask no money of yours to support it; we can do better without your
fleets and armies than with them; you may soon have enough to do to
protect yourselves without being burdened with us. We are very
willing to be at peace with you, to buy of you and sell to you, and,
like young beginners in the world, to work for our living; therefore,
why do you put yourselves out of cash, when we know you cannot spare
it, and we do not desire you to run into debt? I am willing, sir,
that you should see your folly in every point of view I can place it
in, and for that reason descend sometimes to tell you in jest what I
wish you to see in earnest. But to be more serious with you, why do
you say, "their independence?" To set you right, sir, we tell you,
that the independency is ours, not theirs. The Congress were
authorized by every state on the continent to publish it to all the
world, and in so doing are not to be considered as the inventors, but
only as the heralds that proclaimed it, or the office from which the
sense of the people received a legal form; and it was as much as any
or all their heads were worth, to have treated with you on the
subject of submission under any name whatever. But we know the men in
whom we have trusted; can England say the same of her Parliament?
I come now more particularly to your proclamation of the 30th of
November last. Had you gained an entire conquest over all the armies
of America, and then put forth a proclamation, offering (what you
call) mercy, your conduct would have had some specious show of
humanity; but to creep by surprise into a province, and there
endeavor to terrify and seduce the inhabitants from their just
allegiance to the rest by promises, which you neither meant nor were
able to fulfil, is both cruel and unmanly: cruel in its effects;
because, unless you can keep all the ground you have marched over,
how are you, in the words of your proclamation, to secure to your
proselytes "the enjoyment of their property?" What is to become
either of your new adopted subjects, or your old friends, the Tories,
in Burlington, Bordentown, Trenton, Mount Holly, and many other
places, where you proudly lorded it for a few days, and then fled
with the precipitation of a pursued thief? What, I say, is to become
of those wretches? What is to become of those who went over to you
from this city and State? What more can you say to them than "shift
for yourselves?" Or what more can they hope for than to wander like
vagabonds over the face of the earth? You may now tell them to take
their leave of America, and all that once was theirs. Recommend them,
for consolation, to your master's court; there perhaps they may make
a shift to live on the scraps of some dangling parasite, and choose
companions among thousands like themselves. A traitor is the foulest
fiend on earth.
In a political sense we ought to thank you for thus bequeathing
estates to the continent; we shall soon, at this rate, be able to
carry on a war without expense, and grow rich by the ill policy of
Lord Howe, and the generous defection of the Tories. Had you set your
foot into this city, you would have bestowed estates upon us which we
never thought of, by bringing forth traitors we were unwilling to
suspect. But these men, you'll say, "are his majesty's most faithful
subjects;" let that honor, then, be all their fortune, and let his
majesty take them to himself.
I am now thoroughly disgusted with them; they live in ungrateful
ease, and bend their whole minds to mischief. It seems as if God had
given them over to a spirit of infidelity, and that they are open to
conviction in no other line but that of punishment. It is time to
have done with tarring, feathering, carting, and taking securities
for their future good behavior; every sensible man must feel a
conscious shame at seeing a poor fellow hawked for a show about the
streets, when it is known he is only the tool of some principal
villain, biassed into his offence by the force of false reasoning, or
bribed thereto, through sad necessity. We dishonor ourselves by
attacking such trifling characters while greater ones are suffered to
escape; 'tis our duty to find them out, and their proper punishment
would be to exile them from the continent for ever. The circle of
them is not so great as some imagine; the influence of a few have
tainted many who are not naturally corrupt. A continual circulation
of lies among those who are not much in the way of hearing them
contradicted, will in time pass for truth; and the crime lies not in
the believer but the inventor. I am not for declaring war with every
man that appears not so warm as myself: difference of constitution,
temper, habit of speaking, and many other things, will go a great way
in fixing the outward character of a man, yet simple honesty may
remain at bottom. Some men have naturally a military turn, and can
brave hardships and the risk of life with a cheerful face; others
have not; no slavery appears to them so great as the fatigue of arms,
and no terror so powerful as that of personal danger. What can we
say? We cannot alter nature, neither ought we to punish the son
because the father begot him in a cowardly mood. However, I believe
most men have more courage than they know of, and that a little at
first is enough to begin with. I knew the time when I thought that
the whistling of a cannon ball would have frightened me almost to
death; but I have since tried it, and find that I can stand it with
as little discomposure, and, I believe, with a much easier conscience
than your lordship. The same dread would return to me again were I in
your situation, for my solemn belief of your cause is, that it is
hellish and damnable, and, under that conviction, every thinking
man's heart must fail him.
From a concern that a good cause should be dishonored by the least
disunion among us, I said in my former paper, No. I. "That should the
enemy now be expelled, I wish, with all the sincerity of a Christian,
that the names of Whig and Tory might never more be mentioned;" but
there is a knot of men among us of such a venomous cast, that they
will not admit even one's good wishes to act in their favor. Instead
of rejoicing that heaven had, as it were, providentially preserved
this city from plunder and destruction, by delivering so great a part
of the enemy into our hands with so little effusion of blood, they
stubbornly affected to disbelieve it till within an hour, nay, half
an hour, of the prisoners arriving; and the Quakers put forth a
testimony, dated the 20th of December, signed "John Pemberton,"
declaring their attachment to the British government.* These men are
continually harping on the great sin of our bearing arms, but the
king of Britain may lay waste the world in blood and famine, and
they, poor fallen souls, have nothing to say.
* I have ever been careful of charging offences upon whole societies
of men, but as the paper referred to is put forth by an unknown set
of men, who claim to themselves the right of representing the whole:
and while the whole Society of Quakers admit its validity by a silent
acknowledgment, it is impossible that any distinction can be made by
the public: and the more so, because the New York paper of the 30th
of December, printed by permission of our enemies, says that "the
Quakers begin to speak openly of their attachment to the British
Constitution." We are certain that we have many friends among them,
and wish to know them.
In some future paper I intend to distinguish between the different
kind of persons who have been denominated Tories; for this I am clear
in, that all are not so who have been called so, nor all men Whigs
who were once thought so; and as I mean not to conceal the name of
any true friend when there shall be occasion to mention him, neither
will I that of an enemy, who ought to be known, let his rank, station
or religion be what it may. Much pains have been taken by some to set
your lordship's private character in an amiable light, but as it has
chiefly been done by men who know nothing about you, and who are no
ways remarkable for their attachment to us, we have no just authority
for believing it. George the Third has imposed upon us by the same
arts, but time, at length, has done him justice, and the same fate
may probably attend your lordship. You avowed purpose here is to
kill, conquer, plunder, pardon, and enslave: and the ravages of your
army through the Jerseys have been marked with as much barbarism as
if you had openly professed yourself the prince of ruffians; not even
the appearance of humanity has been preserved either on the march or
the retreat of your troops; no general order that I could ever learn,
has ever been issued to prevent or even forbid your troops from
robbery, wherever they came, and the only instance of justice, if it
can be called such, which has distinguished you for impartiality, is,
that you treated and plundered all alike; what could not be carried
away has been destroyed, and mahogany furniture has been deliberately
laid on fire for fuel, rather than the men should be fatigued with
cutting wood.* There was a time when the Whigs confided much in your
supposed candor, and the Tories rested themselves in your favor; the
experiments have now been made, and failed; in every town, nay, every
cottage, in the Jerseys, where your arms have been, is a testimony
against you. How you may rest under this sacrifice of character I
know not; but this I know, that you sleep and rise with the daily
curses of thousands upon you; perhaps the misery which the Tories
have suffered by your proffered mercy may give them some claim to
their country's pity, and be in the end the best favor you could show
them.
* As some people may doubt the truth of such wanton destruction, I
think it necessary to inform them that one of the people called
Quakers, who lives at Trenton, gave me this information at the house
of Mr. Michael Hutchinson, (one of the same profession,) who lives
near Trenton ferry on the Pennsylvania side, Mr. Hutchinson being
present.
In a folio general-order book belonging to Col. Rhal's battalion,
taken at Trenton, and now in the possession of the council of safety
for this state, the following barbarous order is frequently repeated,
"His excellency the Commander-in-Chief orders, that all inhabitants
who shall be found with arms, not having an officer with them, shall
be immediately taken and hung up." How many you may thus have
privately sacrificed, we know not, and the account can only be
settled in another world. Your treatment of prisoners, in order to
distress them to enlist in your infernal service, is not to be
equalled by any instance in Europe. Yet this is the humane Lord Howe
and his brother, whom the Tories and their three-quarter kindred, the
Quakers, or some of them at least, have been holding up for patterns
of justice and mercy!
A bad cause will ever be supported by bad means and bad men; and
whoever will be at the pains of examining strictly into things, will
find that one and the same spirit of oppression and impiety, more or
less, governs through your whole party in both countries: not many
days ago, I accidentally fell in company with a person of this city
noted for espousing your cause, and on my remarking to him, "that it
appeared clear to me, by the late providential turn of affairs, that
God Almighty was visibly on our side," he replied, "We care nothing
for that you may have Him, and welcome; if we have but enough of the
devil on our side, we shall do." However carelessly this might be
spoken, matters not, 'tis still the insensible principle that directs
all your conduct and will at last most assuredly deceive and ruin you.
If ever a nation was made and foolish, blind to its own interest and
bent on its own destruction, it is Britain. There are such things as
national sins, and though the punishment of individuals may be
reserved to another world, national punishment can only be inflicted
in this world. Britain, as a nation, is, in my inmost belief, the
greatest and most ungrateful offender against God on the face of the
whole earth. Blessed with all the commerce she could wish for, and
furnished, by a vast extension of dominion, with the means of
civilizing both the eastern and western world, she has made no other
use of both than proudly to idolize her own "thunder," and rip up the
bowels of whole countries for what she could get. Like Alexander, she
has made war her sport, and inflicted misery for prodigality's sake.
The blood of India is not yet repaid, nor the wretchedness of Africa
yet requited. Of late she has enlarged her list of national cruelties
by her butcherly destruction of the Caribbs of St. Vincent's, and
returning an answer by the sword to the meek prayer for "Peace,
liberty and safety." These are serious things, and whatever a foolish
tyrant, a debauched court, a trafficking legislature, or a blinded
people may think, the national account with heaven must some day or
other be settled: all countries have sooner or later been called to
their reckoning; the proudest empires have sunk when the balance was
struck; and Britain, like an individual penitent, must undergo her
day of sorrow, and the sooner it happens to her the better. As I wish
it over, I wish it to come, but withal wish that it may be as light
as possible.
Perhaps your lordship has no taste for serious things; by your
connections in England I should suppose not; therefore I shall drop
this part of the subject, and take it up in a line in which you will
better understand me.
By what means, may I ask, do you expect to conquer America? If you
could not effect it in the summer, when our army was less than yours,
nor in the winter, when we had none, how are you to do it? In point
of generalship you have been outwitted, and in point of fortitude
outdone; your advantages turn out to your loss, and show us that it
is in our power to ruin you by gifts: like a game of drafts, we can
move out of one square to let you come in, in order that we may
afterwards take two or three for one; and as we can always keep a
double corner for ourselves, we can always prevent a total defeat.
You cannot be so insensible as not to see that we have two to one the
advantage of you, because we conquer by a drawn game, and you lose by
it. Burgoyne might have taught your lordship this knowledge; he has
been long a student in the doctrine of chances.
I have no other idea of conquering countries than by subduing the
armies which defend them: have you done this, or can you do it? If
you have not, it would be civil in you to let your proclamations
alone for the present; otherwise, you will ruin more Tories by your
grace and favor, than you will Whigs by your arms.
Were you to obtain possession of this city, you would not know what
to do with it more than to plunder it. To hold it in the manner you
hold New York, would be an additional dead weight upon your hands;
and if a general conquest is your object, you had better be without
the city than with it. When you have defeated all our armies, the
cities will fall into your hands of themselves; but to creep into
them in the manner you got into Princeton, Trenton, &c. is like
robbing an orchard in the night before the fruit be ripe, and running
away in the morning. Your experiment in the Jerseys is sufficient to
teach you that you have something more to do than barely to get into
other people's houses; and your new converts, to whom you promised
all manner of protection, and seduced into new guilt by pardoning
them from their former virtues, must begin to have a very
contemptible opinion both of your power and your policy. Your
authority in the Jerseys is now reduced to the small circle which
your army occupies, and your proclamation is no where else seen
unless it be to be laughed at. The mighty subduers of the continent
have retreated into a nutshell, and the proud forgivers of our sins
are fled from those they came to pardon; and all this at a time when
they were despatching vessel after vessel to England with the great
news of every day. In short, you have managed your Jersey expedition
so very dexterously, that the dead only are conquerors, because none
will dispute the ground with them.
In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in you had
only armies to contend with; in this case you have both an army and a
country to combat with. In former wars, the countries followed the
fate of their capitals; Canada fell with Quebec, and Minorca with
Port Mahon or St. Phillips; by subduing those, the conquerors opened
a way into, and became masters of the country: here it is otherwise;
if you get possession of a city here, you are obliged to shut
yourselves up in it, and can make no other use of it, than to spend
your country's money in. This is all the advantage you have drawn
from New York; and you would draw less from Philadelphia, because it
requires more force to keep it, and is much further from the sea. A
pretty figure you and the Tories would cut in this city, with a river
full of ice, and a town full of fire; for the immediate consequence
of your getting here would be, that you would be cannonaded out
again, and the Tories be obliged to make good the damage; and this
sooner or later will be the fate of New York.
I wish to see the city saved, not so much from military as from
natural motives. 'Tis the hiding place of women and children, and
Lord Howe's proper business is with our armies. When I put all the
circumstances together which ought to be taken, I laugh at your
notion of conquering America. Because you lived in a little country,
where an army might run over the whole in a few days, and where a
single company of soldiers might put a multitude to the rout, you
expected to find it the same here. It is plain that you brought over
with you all the narrow notions you were bred up with, and imagined
that a proclamation in the king's name was to do great things; but
Englishmen always travel for knowledge, and your lordship, I hope,
will return, if you return at all, much wiser than you came.
We may be surprised by events we did not expect, and in that interval
of recollection you may gain some temporary advantage: such was the
case a few weeks ago, but we soon ripen again into reason, collect
our strength, and while you are preparing for a triumph, we come upon
you with a defeat. Such it has been, and such it would be were you to
try it a hundred times over. Were you to garrison the places you
might march over, in order to secure their subjection, (for remember
you can do it by no other means,) your army would be like a stream of
water running to nothing. By the time you extended from New York to
Virginia, you would be reduced to a string of drops not capable of
hanging together; while we, by retreating from State to State, like a
river turning back upon itself, would acquire strength in the same
proportion as you lost it, and in the end be capable of overwhelming
you. The country, in the meantime, would suffer, but it is a day of
suffering, and we ought to expect it. What we contend for is worthy
the affliction we may go through. If we get but bread to eat, and any
kind of raiment to put on, we ought not only to be contented, but
thankful. More than that we ought not to look for, and less than that
heaven has not yet suffered us to want. He that would sell his
birthright for a little salt, is as worthless as he who sold it for
pottage without salt; and he that would part with it for a gay coat,
or a plain coat, ought for ever to be a slave in buff. What are salt,
sugar and finery, to the inestimable blessings of "Liberty and
Safety!" Or what are the inconveniences of a few months to the
tributary bondage of ages? The meanest peasant in America, blessed
with these sentiments, is a happy man compared with a New York Tory;
he can eat his morsel without repining, and when he has done, can
sweeten it with a repast of wholesome air; he can take his child by
the hand and bless it, without feeling the conscious shame of
neglecting a parent's duty.
In publishing these remarks I have several objects in view.
On your part they are to expose the folly of your pretended authority
as a commissioner; the wickedness of your cause in general; and the
impossibility of your conquering us at any rate. On the part of the
public, my intention is, to show them their true and sold interest;
to encourage them to their own good, to remove the fears and
falsities which bad men have spread, and weak men have encouraged;
and to excite in all men a love for union, and a cheerfulness for
duty.
I shall submit one more case to you respecting your conquest of this
country, and then proceed to new observations.
Suppose our armies in every part of this continent were immediately
to disperse, every man to his home, or where else he might be safe,
and engage to reassemble again on a certain future day; it is clear
that you would then have no army to contend with, yet you would be as
much at a loss in that case as you are now; you would be afraid to
send your troops in parties over to the continent, either to disarm
or prevent us from assembling, lest they should not return; and while
you kept them together, having no arms of ours to dispute with, you
could not call it a conquest; you might furnish out a pompous page in
the London Gazette or a New York paper, but when we returned at the
appointed time, you would have the same work to do that you had at
first.
It has been the folly of Britain to suppose herself more powerful
than she really is, and by that means has arrogated to herself a rank
in the world she is not entitled to: for more than this century past
she has not been able to carry on a war without foreign assistance.
In Marlborough's campaigns, and from that day to this, the number of
German troops and officers assisting her have been about equal with
her own; ten thousand Hessians were sent to England last war to
protect her from a French invasion; and she would have cut but a poor
figure in her Canadian and West Indian expeditions, had not America
been lavish both of her money and men to help her along. The only
instance in which she was engaged singly, that I can recollect, was
against the rebellion in Scotland, in the years 1745 and 1746, and in
that, out of three battles, she was twice beaten, till by thus
reducing their numbers, (as we shall yours) and taking a supply ship
that was coming to Scotland with clothes, arms and money, (as we have
often done,) she was at last enabled to defeat them. England was
never famous by land; her officers have generally been suspected of
cowardice, have more of the air of a dancing-master than a soldier,
and by the samples which we have taken prisoners, we give the
preference to ourselves. Her strength, of late, has lain in her
extravagance; but as her finances and credit are now low, her sinews
in that line begin to fail fast. As a nation she is the poorest in
Europe; for were the whole kingdom, and all that is in it, to be put
up for sale like the estate of a bankrupt, it would not fetch as much
as she owes; yet this thoughtless wretch must go to war, and with the
avowed design, too, of making us beasts of burden, to support her in
riot and debauchery, and to assist her afterwards in distressing
those nations who are now our best friends. This ingratitude may suit
a Tory, or the unchristian peevishness of a fallen Quaker, but none
else.
'Tis the unhappy temper of the English to be pleased with any war,
right or wrong, be it but successful; but they soon grow discontented
with ill fortune, and it is an even chance that they are as clamorous
for peace next summer, as the king and his ministers were for war
last winter. In this natural view of things, your lordship stands in
a very critical situation: your whole character is now staked upon
your laurels; if they wither, you wither with them; if they flourish,
you cannot live long to look at them; and at any rate, the black
account hereafter is not far off. What lately appeared to us
misfortunes, were only blessings in disguise; and the seeming
advantages on your side have turned out to our profit. Even our loss
of this city, as far as we can see, might be a principal gain to us:
the more surface you spread over, the thinner you will be, and the
easier wiped away; and our consolation under that apparent disaster
would be, that the estates of the Tories would become securities for
the repairs. In short, there is no old ground we can fail upon, but
some new foundation rises again to support us. "We have put, sir, our
hands to the plough, and cursed be he that looketh back."
Your king, in his speech to parliament last spring, declared, "That
he had no doubt but the great force they had enabled him to send to
America, would effectually reduce the rebellious colonies." It has
not, neither can it; but it has done just enough to lay the
foundation of its own next year's ruin. You are sensible that you
left England in a divided, distracted state of politics, and, by the
command you had here, you became a principal prop in the court party;
their fortunes rest on yours; by a single express you can fix their
value with the public, and the degree to which their spirits shall
rise or fall; they are in your hands as stock, and you have the
secret of the alley with you. Thus situated and connected, you become
the unintentional mechanical instrument of your own and their
overthrow. The king and his ministers put conquest out of doubt, and
the credit of both depended on the proof. To support them in the
interim, it was necessary that you should make the most of every
thing, and we can tell by Hugh Gaine's New York paper what the
complexion of the London Gazette is. With such a list of victories
the nation cannot expect you will ask new supplies; and to confess
your want of them would give the lie to your triumphs, and impeach
the king and his ministers of treasonable deception. If you make the
necessary demand at home, your party sinks; if you make it not, you
sink yourself; to ask it now is too late, and to ask it before was
too soon, and unless it arrive quickly will be of no use. In short,
the part you have to act, cannot be acted; and I am fully persuaded
that all you have to trust to is, to do the best you can with what
force you have got, or little more. Though we have greatly exceeded
you in point of generalship and bravery of men, yet, as a people, we
have not entered into the full soul of enterprise; for I, who know
England and the disposition of the people well, am confident, that it
is easier for us to effect a revolution there, than you a conquest
here; a few thousand men landed in England with the declared design
of deposing the present king, bringing his ministers to trial, and
setting up the Duke of Gloucester in his stead, would assuredly carry
their point, while you are grovelling here, ignorant of the matter.
As I send all my papers to England, this, like Common Sense, will
find its way there; and though it may put one party on their guard,
it will inform the other, and the nation in general, of our design to
help them.
Thus far, sir, I have endeavored to give you a picture of present
affairs: you may draw from it what conclusions you please. I wish as
well to the true prosperity of England as you can, but I consider
INDEPENDENCE as America's natural right and interest, and never could
see any real disservice it would be to Britain. If an English
merchant receives an order, and is paid for it, it signifies nothing
to him who governs the country. This is my creed of politics. If I
have any where expressed myself over-warmly, 'tis from a fixed,
immovable hatred I have, and ever had, to cruel men and cruel
measures. I have likewise an aversion to monarchy, as being too
debasing to the dignity of man; but I never troubled others with my
notions till very lately, nor ever published a syllable in England in
my life. What I write is pure nature, and my pen and my soul have
ever gone together. My writings I have always given away, reserving
only the expense of printing and paper, and sometimes not even that.
I never courted either fame or interest, and my manner of life, to
those who know it, will justify what I say. My study is to be useful,
and if your lordship loves mankind as well as I do, you would, seeing
you cannot conquer us, cast about and lend your hand towards
accomplishing a peace. Our independence with God's blessing we will
maintain against all the world; but as we wish to avoid evil
ourselves, we wish not to inflict it on others. I am never
over-inquisitive into the secrets of the cabinet, but I have some
notion that, if you neglect the present opportunity, it will not be
in our power to make a separate peace with you afterwards; for
whatever treaties or alliances we form, we shall most faithfully
abide by; wherefore you may be deceived if you think you can make it
with us at any time. A lasting independent peace is my wish, end and
aim; and to accomplish that, I pray God the Americans may never be
defeated, and I trust while they have good officers, and are well
commanded, and willing to be commanded, that they NEVER WILL BE.