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