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