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                                      1780
                              THE AMERICAN CRISIS
                                by Thomas Paine
                                  I.

  THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of
their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks
of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet
we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the
more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too
lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be
strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be
highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has
declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL
CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that manner, is not
slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even
the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to
God.
  Whether the independence of the continent was declared too soon,
or delayed too long, I will not now enter into as an argument; my
own simple opinion is, that had it been eight months earlier, it would
have been much better. We did not make a proper use of last winter,
neither could we, while we were in a dependent state. However, the
fault, if it were one, was all our own*; we have none to blame but
ourselves. But no great deal is lost yet. All that Howe has been doing
for this month past, is rather a ravage than a conquest, which the
spirit of the Jerseys, a year ago, would have quickly repulsed, and
which time and a little resolution will soon recover.

  * The present winter is worth an age, if rightly employed; but, if
lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the evil; and
there is no punishment that man does not deserve, be he who, or
what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a
season so precious and useful.

  I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret
opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give
up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to
perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the
calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.
Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has
relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the
care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king
of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common
murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence
as he.
  'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run
through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them.
Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of
flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the
whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven
back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was
performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan
of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit
up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage
and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they
produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind
soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before.
But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of
sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which
might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the
same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would
have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of
man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory
has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with
curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.
  As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the
edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances,
which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of.
Our situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a
narrow neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our
force was inconsiderable, being not one-fourth so great as Howe
could bring against us. We had no army at hand to have relieved the
garrison, had we shut ourselves up and stood on our defence. Our
ammunition, light artillery, and the best part of our stores, had been
removed, on the apprehension that Howe would endeavor to penetrate the
Jerseys, in which case Fort Lee could be of no use to us; for it
must occur to every thinking man, whether in the army or not, that
these kind of field forts are only for temporary purposes, and last in
use no longer than the enemy directs his force against the
particular object which such forts are raised to defend. Such was
our situation and condition at Fort Lee on the morning of the 20th
of November, when an officer arrived with information that the enemy
with 200 boats had landed about seven miles above; Major General
[Nathaniel] Green, who commanded the garrison, immediately ordered
them under arms, and sent express to General Washington at the town of
Hackensack, distant by the way of the ferry = six miles. Our first
object was to secure the bridge over the Hackensack, which laid up the
river between the enemy and us, about six miles from us, and three
from them. General Washington arrived in about three-quarters of an
hour, and marched at the head of the troops towards the bridge,
which place I expected we should have a brush for; however, they did
not choose to dispute it with us, and the greatest part of our
troops went over the bridge, the rest over the ferry, except some
which passed at a mill on a small creek, between the bridge and the
ferry, and made their way through some marshy grounds up to the town
of Hackensack, and there passed the river. We brought off as much
baggage as the wagons could contain, the rest was lost. The simple
object was to bring off the garrison, and march them on till they
could be strengthened by the Jersey or Pennsylvania militia, so as
to be enabled to make a stand. We staid four days at Newark, collected
our out-posts with some of the Jersey militia, and marched out twice
to meet the enemy, on being informed that they were advancing,
though our numbers were greatly inferior to theirs. Howe, in my little
opinion, committed a great error in generalship in not throwing a body
of forces off from Staten Island through Amboy, by which means he
might have seized all our stores at Brunswick, and intercepted our
march into Pennsylvania; but if we believe the power of hell to be
limited, we must likewise believe that their agents are under some
providential control.
  I shall not now attempt to give all the particulars of our retreat
to the Delaware; suffice it for the present to say, that both officers
and men, though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without
rest, covering, or provision, the inevitable consequences of a long
retreat, bore it with a manly and martial spirit. All their wishes
centred in one, which was, that the country would turn out and help
them to drive the enemy back. Voltaire has remarked that King
William never appeared to full advantage but in difficulties and in
action; the same remark may be made on General Washington, for the
character fits him. There is a natural firmness in some minds which
cannot be unlocked by trifles, but which, when unlocked, discovers a
cabinet of fortitude; and I reckon it among those kind of public
blessings, which we do not immediately see, that God hath blessed
him with uninterrupted health, and given him a mind that can even
flourish upon care.
  I shall conclude this paper with some miscellaneous remarks on the
state of our affairs; and shall begin with asking the following
question, Why is it that the enemy have left the New England
provinces, and made these middle ones the seat of war? The answer is
easy: New England is not infested with Tories, and we are. I have been
tender in raising the cry against these men, and used numberless
arguments to show them their danger, but it will not do to sacrifice a
world either to their folly or their baseness. The period is now
arrived, in which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one
or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I
should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand
Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward;
for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of
Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never
can be brave.
  But, before the line of irrecoverable separation be drawn between
us, let us reason the matter together: Your conduct is an invitation
to the enemy, yet not one in a thousand of you has heart enough to
join him. Howe is as much deceived by you as the American cause is
injured by you. He expects you will all take up arms, and flock to his
standard, with muskets on your shoulders. Your opinions are of no
use to him, unless you support him personally, for 'tis soldiers,
and not Tories, that he wants.
  I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel,
against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted
one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as
pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever
saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was
prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, "Well! give me
peace in my day." Not a man lives on the continent but fully
believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place,
and a generous parent should have said, "If there must be trouble, let
it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single
reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.
Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation
is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do
but to trade with them. A man can distinguish himself between temper
and principle, and I am as confident, as I am that God governs the
world, that America will never be happy till she gets clear of foreign
dominion. Wars, without ceasing, will break out till that period
arrives, and the continent must in the end be conqueror; for though
the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can
never expire.
  America did not, nor does not want force; but she wanted a proper
application of that force. Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it
is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off. From an
excess of tenderness, we were unwilling to raise an army, and
trusted our cause to the temporary defence of a well-meaning
militia. A summer's experience has now taught us better; yet with
those troops, while they were collected, we were able to set bounds to
the progress of the enemy, and, thank God! they are again
assembling. I always considered militia as the best troops in the
world for a sudden exertion, but they will not do for a long campaign.
Howe, it is probable, will make an attempt on this city
[Philadelphia]; should he fail on this side the Delaware, he is
ruined. If he succeeds, our cause is not ruined. He stakes all on
his side against a part on ours; admitting he succeeds, the
consequence will be, that armies from both ends of the continent
will march to assist their suffering friends in the middle states; for
he cannot go everywhere, it is impossible. I consider Howe as the
greatest enemy the Tories have; he is bringing a war into their
country, which, had it not been for him and partly for themselves,
they had been clear of. Should he now be expelled, I wish with all the
devotion of a Christian, that the names of Whig and Tory may never
more be mentioned; but should the Tories give him encouragement to
come, or assistance if he come, I as sincerely wish that our next
year's arms may expel them from the continent, and the Congress
appropriate their possessions to the relief of those who have suffered
in well-doing. A single successful battle next year will settle the
whole. America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation
of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their
expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft
resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but
the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful
event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence
may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear
of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with
prejudice.
  Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a friend
to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the
matter out: I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state
or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your
shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little,
when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future
world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue
could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common
danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands
are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the
day upon Providence, but "show your faith by your works," that God may
bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you
hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the
near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will
suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the
blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at
a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them
happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather
strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the
business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and
whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto
death. My own line of reasoning is to myself as straight and clear
as a ray of light. Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I
believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I
think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and
destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that
are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute
will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who
does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman;
whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we
reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither
can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case
and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no
concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to
make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose
character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish
man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a
being, who at the last day shall be shrieking to the rocks and
mountains to cover him, and fleeing with terror from the orphan, the
widow, and the slain of America.
  There are cases which cannot be overdone by language, and this is
one. There are persons, too, who see not the full extent of the evil
which threatens them; they solace themselves with hopes that the
enemy, if he succeed, will be merciful. It is the madness of folly, to
expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even
mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the
cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf, and we
ought to guard equally against both. Howe's first object is, partly by
threats and partly by promises, to terrify or seduce the people to
deliver up their arms and receive mercy. The ministry recommended
the same plan to Gage, and this is what the tories call making their
peace, "a peace which passeth all understanding" indeed! A peace which
would be the immediate forerunner of a worse ruin than any we have yet
thought of. Ye men of Pennsylvania, do reason upon these things!
Were the back counties to give up their arms, they would fall an
easy prey to the Indians, who are all armed: this perhaps is what some
Tories would not be sorry for. Were the home counties to deliver up
their arms, they would be exposed to the resentment of the back
counties who would then have it in their power to chastise their
defection at pleasure. And were any one state to give up its arms,
that state must be garrisoned by all Howe's army of Britons and
Hessians to preserve it from the anger of the rest. Mutual fear is the
principal link in the chain of mutual love, and woe be to that state
that breaks the compact. Howe is mercifully inviting you to
barbarous destruction, and men must be either rogues or fools that
will not see it. I dwell not upon the vapors of imagination; I bring
reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as A, B, C, hold up
truth to your eyes.
  I thank God, that I fear not. I see no real cause for fear. I know
our situation well, and can see the way out of it. While our army
was collected, Howe dared not risk a battle; and it is no credit to
him that he decamped from the White Plains, and waited a mean
opportunity to ravage the defenceless Jerseys; but it is great
credit to us, that, with a handful of men, we sustained an orderly
retreat for near an hundred miles, brought off our ammunition, all our
field pieces, the greatest part of our stores, and had four rivers
to pass. None can say that our retreat was precipitate, for we were
near three weeks in performing it, that the country might have time to
come in. Twice we marched back to meet the enemy, and remained out
till dark. The sign of fear was not seen in our camp, and had not some
of the cowardly and disaffected inhabitants spread false alarms
through the country, the Jerseys had never been ravaged. Once more
we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of
the continent is recruiting fast, and we shall be able to open the
next campaign with sixty thousand men, well armed and clothed. This is
our situation, and who will may know it. By perseverance and fortitude
we have the prospect of a glorious issue; by cowardice and submission,
the sad choice of a variety of evils- a ravaged country- a depopulated
city- habitations without safety, and slavery without hope- our
homes turned into barracks and bawdy-houses for Hessians, and a future
race to provide for, whose fathers we shall doubt of. Look on this
picture and weep over it! and if there yet remains one thoughtless
wretch who believes it not, let him suffer it unlamented.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  December 23, 1776.
                                 II.

                            TO LORD HOWE.

           "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.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 13, 1777.
                                 III.

  IN THE progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life,
we are not only apt to forget the ground we have travelled over, but
frequently neglect to gather up experience as we go. We expend, if I
may so say, the knowledge of every day on the circumstances that
produce it, and journey on in search of new matter and new
refinements: but as it is pleasant and sometimes useful to look
back, even to the first periods of infancy, and trace the turns and
windings through which we have passed, so we may likewise derive
many advantages by halting a while in our political career, and taking
a review of the wondrous complicated labyrinth of little more than
yesterday.
  Truly may we say, that never did men grow old in so short a time! We
have crowded the business of an age into the compass of a few
months, and have been driven through such a rapid succession of
things, that for the want of leisure to think, we unavoidably wasted
knowledge as we came, and have left nearly as much behind us as we
brought with us: but the road is yet rich with the fragments, and,
before we finally lose sight of them, will repay us for the trouble of
stopping to pick them up.
  Were a man to be totally deprived of memory, he would be incapable
of forming any just opinion; every thing about him would seem a chaos:
he would have even his own history to ask from every one; and by not
knowing how the world went in his absence, he would be at a loss to
know how it ought to go on when he recovered, or rather, returned to
it again. In like manner, though in a less degree, a too great
inattention to past occurrences retards and bewilders our judgment
in everything; while, on the contrary, by comparing what is past
with what is present, we frequently hit on the true character of both,
and become wise with very little trouble. It is a kind of
counter-march, by which we get into the rear of time, and mark the
movements and meaning of things as we make our return. There are
certain circumstances, which, at the time of their happening, are a
kind of riddles, and as every riddle is to be followed by its
answer, so those kind of circumstances will be followed by their
events, and those events are always the true solution. A
considerable space of time may lapse between, and unless we continue
our observations from the one to the other, the harmony of them will
pass away unnoticed: but the misfortune is, that partly from the
pressing necessity of some instant things, and partly from the
impatience of our own tempers, we are frequently in such a hurry to
make out the meaning of everything as fast as it happens, that we
thereby never truly understand it; and not only start new difficulties
to ourselves by so doing, but, as it were, embarrass Providence in her
good designs.
  I have been civil in stating this fault on a large scale, for, as it
now stands, it does not appear to be levelled against any particular
set of men; but were it to be refined a little further, it might
afterwards be applied to the Tories with a degree of striking
propriety: those men have been remarkable for drawing sudden
conclusions from single facts. The least apparent mishap on our
side, or the least seeming advantage on the part of the enemy, have
determined with them the fate of a whole campaign. By this hasty
judgment they have converted a retreat into a defeat; mistook
generalship for error; while every little advantage purposely given
the enemy, either to weaken their strength by dividing it, embarrass
their councils by multiplying their objects, or to secure a greater
post by the surrender of a less, has been instantly magnified into a
conquest. Thus, by quartering ill policy upon ill principles, they
have frequently promoted the cause they designed to injure, and
injured that which they intended to promote.
  It is probable the campaign may open before this number comes from
the press. The enemy have long lain idle, and amused themselves with
carrying on the war by proclamations only. While they continue their
delay our strength increases, and were they to move to action now,
it is a circumstantial proof that they have no reinforcement coming;
wherefore, in either case, the comparative advantage will be ours.
Like a wounded, disabled whale, they want only time and room to die
in; and though in the agony of their exit, it may be unsafe to live
within the flapping of their tail, yet every hour shortens their date,
and lessens their power of mischief. If any thing happens while this
number is in the press, it will afford me a subject for the last pages
of it. At present I am tired of waiting; and as neither the enemy, nor
the state of politics have yet produced any thing new, I am thereby
left in the field of general matter, undirected by any striking or
particular object. This Crisis, therefore, will be made up rather of
variety than novelty, and consist more of things useful than things
wonderful.
  The success of the cause, the union of the people, and the means
of supporting and securing both, are points which cannot be too much
attended to. He who doubts of the former is a desponding coward, and
he who wilfully disturbs the latter is a traitor. Their characters are
easily fixed, and under these short descriptions I leave them for
the present.
  One of the greatest degrees of sentimental union which America
ever knew, was in denying the right of the British parliament "to bind
the colonies in all cases whatsoever." The Declaration is, in its
form, an almighty one, and is the loftiest stretch of arbitrary
power that ever one set of men or one country claimed over another.
Taxation was nothing more than the putting the declared right into
practice; and this failing, recourse was had to arms, as a means to
establish both the right and the practice, or to answer a worse
purpose, which will be mentioned in the course of this number. And
in order to repay themselves the expense of an army, and to profit
by their own injustice, the colonies were, by another law, declared to
be in a state of actual rebellion, and of consequence all property
therein would fall to the conquerors.
  The colonies, on their part, first, denied the right; secondly, they
suspended the use of taxable articles, and petitioned against the
practice of taxation: and these failing, they, thirdly, defended their
property by force, as soon as it was forcibly invaded, and, in
answer to the declaration of rebellion and non-protection, published
their Declaration of Independence and right of self-protection.
  These, in a few words, are the different stages of the quarrel;
and the parts are so intimately and necessarily connected with each
other as to admit of no separation. A person, to use a trite phrase,
must be a Whig or a Tory in a lump. His feelings, as a man, may be
wounded; his charity, as a Christian, may be moved; but his
political principles must go through all the cases on one side or
the other. He cannot be a Whig in this stage, and a Tory in that. If
he says he is against the united independence of the continent, he
is to all intents and purposes against her in all the rest; because
this last comprehends the whole. And he may just as well say, that
Britain was right in declaring us rebels; right in taxing us; and
right in declaring her "right to bind the colonies in all cases
whatsoever." It signifies nothing what neutral ground, of his own
creating, he may skulk upon for shelter, for the quarrel in no stage
of it hath afforded any such ground; and either we or Britain are
absolutely right or absolutely wrong through the whole.
  Britain, like a gamester nearly ruined, has now put all her losses
into one bet, and is playing a desperate game for the total. If she
wins it, she wins from me my life; she wins the continent as the
forfeited property of rebels; the right of taxing those that are
left as reduced subjects; and the power of binding them slaves: and
the single die which determines this unparalleled event is, whether we
support our independence or she overturn it. This is coming to the
point at once. Here is the touchstone to try men by. He that is not
a supporter of the independent States of America in the same degree
that his religious and political principles would suffer him to
support the government of any other country, of which he called
himself a subject, is, in the American sense of the word, A TORY;
and the instant that he endeavors to bring his toryism into
practice, he becomes A TRAITOR. The first can only be detected by a
general test, and the law hath already provided for the latter.
  It is unnatural and impolitic to admit men who would root up our
independence to have any share in our legislation, either as
electors or representatives; because the support of our independence
rests, in a great measure, on the vigor and purity of our public
bodies. Would Britain, even in time of peace, much less in war, suffer
an election to be carried by men who professed themselves to be not
her subjects, or allow such to sit in Parliament? Certainly not.
  But there are a certain species of Tories with whom conscience or
principle has nothing to do, and who are so from avarice only. Some of
the first fortunes on the continent, on the part of the Whigs, are
staked on the issue of our present measures. And shall disaffection
only be rewarded with security? Can any thing be a greater
inducement to a miserly man, than the hope of making his Mammon
safe? And though the scheme be fraught with every character of
folly, yet, so long as he supposes, that by doing nothing materially
criminal against America on one part, and by expressing his private
disapprobation against independence, as palliative with the enemy,
on the other part, he stands in a safe line between both; while, I
say, this ground be suffered to remain, craft, and the spirit of
avarice, will point it out, and men will not be wanting to fill up
this most contemptible of all characters.
  These men, ashamed to own the sordid cause from whence their
disaffection springs, add thereby meanness to meanness, by endeavoring
to shelter themselves under the mask of hypocrisy; that is, they had
rather be thought to be Tories from some kind of principle, than
Tories by having no principle at all. But till such time as they can
show some real reason, natural, political, or conscientious, on
which their objections to independence are founded, we are not obliged
to give them credit for being Tories of the first stamp, but must
set them down as Tories of the last.
  In the second number of the Crisis, I endeavored to show the
impossibility of the enemy's making any conquest of America, that
nothing was wanting on our part but patience and perseverance, and
that, with these virtues, our success, as far as human speculation
could discern, seemed as certain as fate. But as there are many
among us, who, influenced by others, have regularly gone back from the
principles they once held, in proportion as we have gone forward;
and as it is the unfortunate lot of many a good man to live within the
neighborhood of disaffected ones; I shall, therefore, for the sake
of confirming the one and recovering the other, endeavor, in the space
of a page or two, to go over some of the leading principles in support
of independence. It is a much pleasanter task to prevent vice than
to punish it, and, however our tempers may be gratified by resentment,
or our national expenses eased by forfeited estates, harmony and
friendship is, nevertheless, the happiest condition a country can be
blessed with.
  The principal arguments in support of independence may be
comprehended under the four following heads.
  1st, The natural right of the continent to independence.
  2d, Her interest in being independent.
  3d, The necessity,- and
  4th, The moral advantages arising therefrom.
  I. The natural right of the continent to independence, is a point
which never yet was called in question. It will not even admit of a
debate. To deny such a right, would be a kind of atheism against
nature: and the best answer to such an objection would be, "The fool
hath said in his heart there is no God."
  II. The interest of the continent in being independent is a point as
clearly right as the former. America, by her own internal industry,
and unknown to all the powers of Europe, was, at the beginning of
the dispute, arrived at a pitch of greatness, trade and population,
beyond which it was the interest of Britain not to suffer her to pass,
lest she should grow too powerful to be kept subordinate. She began to
view this country with the same uneasy malicious eye, with which a
covetous guardian would view his ward, whose estate he had been
enriching himself by for twenty years, and saw him just arriving at
manhood. And America owes no more to Britain for her present maturity,
than the ward would to the guardian for being twenty-one years of age.
That America hath flourished at the time she was under the
government of Britain, is true; but there is every natural reason to
believe, that had she been an independent country from the first
settlement thereof, uncontrolled by any foreign power, free to make
her own laws, regulate and encourage her own commerce, she had by this
time been of much greater worth than now. The case is simply this: the
first settlers in the different colonies were left to shift for
themselves, unnoticed and unsupported by any European government;
but as the tyranny and persecution of the old world daily drove
numbers to the new, and as, by the favor of heaven on their industry
and perseverance, they grew into importance, so, in a like degree,
they became an object of profit to the greedy eyes of Europe. It was
impossible, in this state of infancy, however thriving and
promising, that they could resist the power of any armed invader
that should seek to bring them under his authority. In this situation,
Britain thought it worth her while to claim them, and the continent
received and acknowledged the claimer. It was, in reality, of no
very great importance who was her master, seeing, that from the
force and ambition of the different powers of Europe, she must, till
she acquired strength enough to assert her own right, acknowledge some
one. As well, perhaps, Britain as another; and it might have been as
well to have been under the states of Holland as any. The same hopes
of engrossing and profiting by her trade, by not oppressing it too
much, would have operated alike with any master, and produced to the
colonies the same effects. The clamor of protection, likewise, was all
a farce; because, in order to make that protection necessary, she must
first, by her own quarrels, create us enemies. Hard terms indeed!
  To know whether it be the interest of the continent to be
independent, we need only ask this easy, simple question: Is it the
interest of a man to be a boy all his life? The answer to one will
be the answer to both. America hath been one continued scene of
legislative contention from the first king's representative to the
last; and this was unavoidably founded in the natural opposition of
interest between the old country and the new. A governor sent from
England, or receiving his authority therefrom, ought never to have
been considered in any other light than that of a genteel commissioned
spy, whose private business was information, and his public business a
kind of civilized oppression. In the first of these characters he
was to watch the tempers, sentiments, and disposition of the people,
the growth of trade, and the increase of private fortunes; and, in the
latter, to suppress all such acts of the assemblies, however
beneficial to the people, which did not directly or indirectly throw
some increase of power or profit into the hands of those that sent
him.
  America, till now, could never be called a free country, because her
legislation depended on the will of a man three thousand miles
distant, whose interest was in opposition to ours, and who, by a
single "no," could forbid what law he pleased.
  The freedom of trade, likewise, is, to a trading country, an article
of such importance, that the principal source of wealth depends upon
it; and it is impossible that any country can flourish, as it
otherwise might do, whose commerce is engrossed, cramped and
fettered by the laws and mandates of another- yet these evils, and
more than I can here enumerate, the continent has suffered by being
under the government of England. By an independence we clear the whole
at once- put an end to the business of unanswered petitions and
fruitless remonstrances- exchange Britain for Europe- shake hands with
the world- live at peace with the world- and trade to any market where
we can buy and sell.
  III. The necessity, likewise, of being independent, even before it
was declared, became so evident and important, that the continent
ran the risk of being ruined every day that she delayed it. There
was reason to believe that Britain would endeavor to make an
European matter of it, and, rather than lose the whole, would
dismember it, like Poland, and dispose of her several claims to the
highest bidder. Genoa, failing in her attempts to reduce Corsica, made
a sale of it to the French, and such trafficks have been common in the
old world. We had at that time no ambassador in any part of Europe, to
counteract her negotiations, and by that means she had the range of
every foreign court uncontradicted on our part. We even knew nothing
of the treaty for the Hessians till it was concluded, and the troops
ready to embark. Had we been independent before, we had probably
prevented her obtaining them. We had no credit abroad, because of
our rebellious dependency. Our ships could claim no protection in
foreign ports, because we afforded them no justifiable reason for
granting it to us. The calling ourselves subjects, and at the same
time fighting against the power which we acknowledged, was a dangerous
precedent to all Europe. If the grievances justified the taking up
arms, they justified our separation; if they did not justify our
separation, neither could they justify our taking up arms. All
Europe was interested in reducing us as rebels, and all Europe (or the
greatest part at least) is interested in supporting us as
independent States. At home our condition was still worse: our
currency had no foundation, and the fall of it would have ruined
Whig and Tory alike. We had no other law than a kind of moderated
passion; no other civil power than an honest mob; and no other
protection than the temporary attachment of one man to another. Had
independence been delayed a few months longer, this continent would
have been plunged into irrecoverable confusion: some violent for it,
some against it, till, in the general cabal, the rich would have
been ruined, and the poor destroyed. It is to independence that
every Tory owes the present safety which he lives in; for by that, and
that only, we emerged from a state of dangerous suspense, and became a
regular people.
  The necessity, likewise, of being independent, had there been no
rupture between Britain and America, would, in a little time, have
brought one on. The increasing importance of commerce, the weight
and perplexity of legislation, and the entangled state of European
politics, would daily have shown to the continent the impossibility of
continuing subordinate; for, after the coolest reflections on the
matter, this must be allowed, that Britain was too jealous of
America to govern it justly; too ignorant of it to govern it well; and
too far distant from it to govern it at all.
  IV. But what weigh most with all men of serious reflection are,
the moral advantages arising from independence: war and desolation
have become the trade of the old world; and America neither could
nor can be under the government of Britain without becoming a sharer
of her guilt, and a partner in all the dismal commerce of death. The
spirit of duelling, extended on a national scale, is a proper
character for European wars. They have seldom any other motive than
pride, or any other object than fame. The conquerors and the conquered
are generally ruined alike, and the chief difference at last is,
that the one marches home with his honors, and the other without them.
'Tis the natural temper of the English to fight for a feather, if they
suppose that feather to be an affront; and America, without the
right of asking why, must have abetted in every quarrel, and abided by
its fate. It is a shocking situation to live in, that one country must
be brought into all the wars of another, whether the measure be
right or wrong, or whether she will or not; yet this, in the fullest
extent, was, and ever would be, the unavoidable consequence of the
connection. Surely the Quakers forgot their own principles when, in
their late Testimony, they called this connection, with these military
and miserable appendages hanging to it- "the happy constitution."
  Britain, for centuries past, has been nearly fifty years out of
every hundred at war with some power or other. It certainly ought to
be a conscientious as well political consideration with America, not
to dip her hands in the bloody work of Europe. Our situation affords
us a retreat from their cabals, and the present happy union of the
states bids fair for extirpating the future use of arms from one
quarter of the world; yet such have been the irreligious politics of
the present leaders of the Quakers, that, for the sake of they
scarce know what, they would cut off every hope of such a blessing
by tying this continent to Britain, like Hector to the chariot wheel
of Achilles, to be dragged through all the miseries of endless
European wars.
  The connection, viewed from this ground, is distressing to every man
who has the feelings of humanity. By having Britain for our master, we
became enemies to the greatest part of Europe, and they to us: and the
consequence was war inevitable. By being our own masters,
independent of any foreign one, we have Europe for our friends, and
the prospect of an endless peace among ourselves. Those who were
advocates for the British government over these colonies, were obliged
to limit both their arguments and their ideas to the period of an
European peace only; the moment Britain became plunged in war, every
supposed convenience to us vanished, and all we could hope for was not
to be ruined. Could this be a desirable condition for a young
country to be in?
  Had the French pursued their fortune immediately after the defeat of
Braddock last war, this city and province had then experienced the
woful calamities of being a British subject. A scene of the same
kind might happen again; for America, considered as a subject to the
crown of Britain, would ever have been the seat of war, and the bone
of contention between the two powers.
  On the whole, if the future expulsion of arms from one quarter of
the world would be a desirable object to a peaceable man; if the
freedom of trade to every part of it can engage the attention of a man
of business; if the support or fall of millions of currency can affect
our interests; if the entire possession of estates, by cutting off the
lordly claims of Britain over the soil, deserves the regard of
landed property; and if the right of making our own laws, uncontrolled
by royal or ministerial spies or mandates, be worthy our care as
freemen;- then are all men interested in the support of
independence; and may he that supports it not, be driven from the
blessing, and live unpitied beneath the servile sufferings of
scandalous subjection!
  We have been amused with the tales of ancient wonders; we have read,
and wept over the histories of other nations: applauded, censured,
or pitied, as their cases affected us. The fortitude and patience of
the sufferers- the justness of their cause- the weight of their
oppressions and oppressors- the object to be saved or lost- with all
the consequences of a defeat or a conquest- have, in the hour of
sympathy, bewitched our hearts, and chained it to their fate: but
where is the power that ever made war upon petitioners? Or where is
the war on which a world was staked till now?
  We may not, perhaps, be wise enough to make all the advantages we
ought of our independence; but they are, nevertheless, marked and
presented to us with every character of great and good, and worthy the
hand of him who sent them. I look through the present trouble to a
time of tranquillity, when we shall have it in our power to set an
example of peace to all the world. Were the Quakers really impressed
and influenced by the quiet principles they profess to hold, they
would, however they might disapprove the means, be the first of all
men to approve of independence, because, by separating ourselves
from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, it affords an opportunity never
given to man before of carrying their favourite principle of peace
into general practice, by establishing governments that shall
hereafter exist without wars. O! ye fallen, cringing,
priest-and-Pemberton-ridden people! What more can we say of ye than
that a religious Quaker is a valuable character, and a political
Quaker a real Jesuit.
  Having thus gone over some of the principal points in support of
independence, I must now request the reader to return back with me
to the period when it first began to be a public doctrine, and to
examine the progress it has made among the various classes of men. The
area I mean to begin at, is the breaking out of hostilities, April
19th, 1775. Until this event happened, the continent seemed to view
the dispute as a kind of law-suit for a matter of right, litigating
between the old country and the new; and she felt the same kind and
degree of horror, as if she had seen an oppressive plaintiff, at the
head of a band of ruffians, enter the court, while the cause was
before it, and put the judge, the jury, the defendant and his counsel,
to the sword. Perhaps a more heart-felt convulsion never reached a
country with the same degree of power and rapidity before, and never
may again. Pity for the sufferers, mixed with indignation at the
violence, and heightened with apprehensions of undergoing the same
fate, made the affair of Lexington the affair of the continent.
Every part of it felt the shock, and all vibrated together. A
general promotion of sentiment took place: those who had drank
deeply into Whiggish principles, that is, the right and necessity
not only of opposing, but wholly setting aside the power of the
crown as soon as it became practically dangerous (for in theory it was
always so), stepped into the first stage of independence; while
another class of Whigs, equally sound in principle, but not so
sanguine in enterprise, attached themselves the stronger to the cause,
and fell close in with the rear of the former; their partition was a
mere point. Numbers of the moderate men, whose chief fault, at that
time, arose from entertaining a better opinion of Britain than she
deserved, convinced now of their mistake, gave her up, and publicly
declared themselves good Whigs. While the Tories, seeing it was no
longer a laughing matter, either sank into silent obscurity, or
contented themselves with coming forth and abusing General Gage: not a
single advocate appeared to justify the action of that day; it
seemed to appear to every one with the same magnitude, struck every
one with the same force, and created in every one the same abhorrence.
From this period we may date the growth of independence.
  If the many circumstances which happened at this memorable time,
be taken in one view, and compared with each other, they will
justify a conclusion which seems not to have been attended to, I
mean a fixed design in the king and ministry of driving America into
arms, in order that they might be furnished with a pretence for
seizing the whole continent, as the immediate property of the crown. A
noble plunder for hungry courtiers!
  It ought to be remembered, that the first petition from the Congress
was at this time unanswered on the part of the British king. That
the motion, called Lord North's motion, of the 20th of February, 1775,
arrived in America the latter end of March. This motion was to be
laid, by the several governors then in being, before, the assembly
of each province; and the first assembly before which it was laid, was
the assembly of Pennsylvania, in May following. This being a just
state of the case, I then ask, why were hostilities commenced
between the time of passing the resolve in the House of Commons, of
the 20th of February, and the time of the assemblies meeting to
deliberate upon it? Degrading and famous as that motion was, there
is nevertheless reason to believe that the king and his adherents were
afraid the colonies would agree to it, and lest they should, took
effectual care they should not, by provoking them with hostilities
in the interim. They had not the least doubt at that time of
conquering America at one blow; and what they expected to get by a
conquest being infinitely greater than any thing they could hope to
get either by taxation or accommodation, they seemed determined to
prevent even the possibility of hearing each other, lest America
should disappoint their greedy hopes of the whole, by listening even
to their own terms. On the one hand they refused to hear the
petition of the continent, and on the other hand took effectual care
the continent should not hear them.
  That the motion of the 20th February and the orders for commencing
hostilities were both concerted by the same person or persons, and not
the latter by General Gage, as was falsely imagined at first, is
evident from an extract of a letter of his to the administration, read
among other papers in the House of Commons; in which he informs his
masters, "That though their idea of his disarming certain counties was
a right one, yet it required him to be master of the country, in order
to enable him to execute it." This was prior to the commencement of
hostilities, and consequently before the motion of the 20th February
could be deliberated on by the several assemblies.
  Perhaps it may be asked, why was the motion passed, if there was
at the same time a plan to aggravate the Americans not to listen to
it? Lord North assigned one reason himself, which was a hope of
dividing them. This was publicly tempting them to reject it; that
if, in case the injury of arms should fail in provoking them
sufficiently, the insult of such a declaration might fill it up. But
by passing the motion and getting it afterwards rejected in America,
it enabled them, in their wicked idea of politics, among other things,
to hold up the colonies to foreign powers, with every possible mark of
disobedience and rebellion. They had applied to those powers not to
supply the continent with arms, ammunition, etc., and it was necessary
they should incense them against us, by assigning on their own part
some seeming reputable reason why. By dividing, it had a tendency to
weaken the States, and likewise to perplex the adherents of America in
England. But the principal scheme, and that which has marked their
character in every part of their conduct, was a design of
precipitating the colonies into a state which they might afterwards
deem rebellion, and, under that pretence, put an end to all future
complaints, petitions and remonstrances, by seizing the whole at once.
They had ravaged one part of the globe, till it could glut them no
longer; their prodigality required new plunder, and through the East
India article tea they hoped to transfer their rapine from that
quarter of the world to this. Every designed quarrel had its pretence;
and the same barbarian avarice accompanied the plant to America, which
ruined the country that produced it.
  That men never turn rogues without turning fools is a maxim,
sooner or later, universally true. The commencement of hostilities,
being in the beginning of April, was, of all times the worst chosen:
the Congress were to meet the tenth of May following, and the distress
the continent felt at this unparalleled outrage gave a stability to
that body which no other circumstance could have done. It suppressed
too all inferior debates, and bound them together by a necessitous
affection, without giving them time to differ upon trifles. The
suffering likewise softened the whole body of the people into a degree
of pliability, which laid the principal foundation-stone of union,
order, and government; and which, at any other time, might only have
fretted and then faded away unnoticed and unimproved. But
Providence, who best knows how to time her misfortunes as well as
her immediate favors, chose this to be the time, and who dare
dispute it?
  It did not seem the disposition of the people, at this crisis, to
heap petition upon petition, while the former remained unanswered. The
measure however was carried in Congress, and a second petition was
sent; of which I shall only remark that it was submissive even to a
dangerous fault, because the prayer of it appealed solely to what it
called the prerogative of the crown, while the matter in dispute was
confessedly constitutional. But even this petition, flattering as it
was, was still not so harmonious as the chink of cash, and
consequently not sufficiently grateful to the tyrant and his ministry.
From every circumstance it is evident, that it was the determination
of the British court to have nothing to do with America but to conquer
her fully and absolutely. They were certain of success, and the
field of battle was the only place of treaty. I am confident there are
thousands and tens of thousands in America who wonder now that they
should ever have thought otherwise; but the sin of that day was the
sin of civility; yet it operated against our present good in the
same manner that a civil opinion of the devil would against our future
peace.
  Independence was a doctrine scarce and rare, even towards the
conclusion of the year 1775; all our politics had been founded on
the hope of expectation of making the matter up- a hope, which, though
general on the side of America, had never entered the head or heart of
the British court. Their hope was conquest and confiscation. Good
heavens! what volumes of thanks does America owe to Britain? What
infinite obligation to the tool that fills, with paradoxical
vacancy, the throne! Nothing but the sharpest essence of villany,
compounded with the strongest distillation of folly, could have
produced a menstruum that would have effected a separation. The
Congress in 1774 administered an abortive medicine to independence, by
prohibiting the importation of goods, and the succeeding Congress
rendered the dose still more dangerous by continuing it. Had
independence been a settled system with America, (as Britain has
advanced,) she ought to have doubled her importation, and prohibited
in some degree her exportation. And this single circumstance is
sufficient to acquit America before any jury of nations, of having a
continental plan of independence in view; a charge which, had it
been true, would have been honorable, but is so grossly false, that
either the amazing ignorance or the wilful dishonesty of the British
court is effectually proved by it.
  The second petition, like the first, produced no answer; it was
scarcely acknowledged to have been received; the British court were
too determined in their villainy even to act it artfully, and in their
rage for conquest neglected the necessary subtleties for obtaining it.
They might have divided, distracted and played a thousand tricks
with us, had they been as cunning as they were cruel.
  This last indignity gave a new spring to independence. Those who
knew the savage obstinacy of the king, and the jobbing, gambling
spirit of the court, predicted the fate of the petition, as soon as it
was sent from America; for the men being known, their measures were
easily foreseen. As politicians we ought not so much to ground our
hopes on the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the
reasonableness of the person of whom we ask it: who would expect
discretion from a fool, candor from a tyrant, or justice from a
villain?
  As every prospect of accommodation seemed now to fail fast, men
began to think seriously on the matter; and their reason being thus
stripped of the false hope which had long encompassed it, became
approachable by fair debate: yet still the bulk of the people
hesitated; they startled at the novelty of independence, without
once considering that our getting into arms at first was a more
extraordinary novelty, and that all other nations had gone through the
work of independence before us. They doubted likewise the ability of
the continent to support it, without reflecting that it required the
same force to obtain an accommodation by arms as an independence. If
the one was acquirable, the other was the same; because, to accomplish
either, it was necessary that our strength should be too great for
Britain to subdue; and it was too unreasonable to suppose, that with
the power of being masters, we should submit to be servants.* Their
caution at this time was exceedingly misplaced; for if they were
able to defend their property and maintain their rights by arms, they,
consequently, were able to defend and support their independence;
and in proportion as these men saw the necessity and correctness of
the measure, they honestly and openly declared and adopted it, and the
part that they had acted since has done them honor and fully
established their characters. Error in opinion has this peculiar
advantage with it, that the foremost point of the contrary ground
may at any time be reached by the sudden exertion of a thought; and it
frequently happens in sentimental differences, that some striking
circumstance, or some forcible reason quickly conceived, will effect
in an instant what neither argument nor example could produce in an
age.

  * In this state of political suspense the pamphlet Common Sense made
its appearance, and the success it met with does not become me to
mention. Dr. Franklin, Mr. Samuel and John Adams, were severally
spoken of as the supposed author. I had not, at that time, the
pleasure either of personally knowing or being known to the two last
gentlemen. The favor of Dr. Franklin's friendship I possessed in
England, and my introduction to this part of the world was through his
patronage. I happened, when a school-boy, to pick up a pleasing
natural history of Virginia, and my inclination from that day of
seeing the western side of the Atlantic never left me. In October,
1775, Dr. Franklin proposed giving me such materials as were in his
hands, towards completing a history of the present transactions, and
seemed desirous of having the first volume out the next Spring. I
had then formed the outlines of Common Sense, and finished nearly
the first part; and as I supposed the doctor's design in getting out a
history was to open the new year with a new system, I expected to
surprise him with a production on that subject, much earlier than he
thought of; and without informing him what I was doing, got it ready
for the press as fast as I conveniently could, and sent him the
first pamphlet that was printed off.

  I find it impossible in the small compass I am limited to, to
trace out the progress which independence has made on the minds of the
different classes of men, and the several reasons by which they were
moved. With some, it was a passionate abhorrence against the king of
England and his ministry, as a set of savages and brutes; and these
men, governed by the agony of a wounded mind, were for trusting
every thing to hope and heaven, and bidding defiance at once. With
others, it was a growing conviction that the scheme of the British
court was to create, ferment and drive on a quarrel, for the sake of
confiscated plunder: and men of this class ripened into independence
in proportion as the evidence increased. While a third class conceived
it was the true interest of America, internally and externally, to
be her own master, and gave their support to independence, step by
step, as they saw her abilities to maintain it enlarge. With many,
it was a compound of all these reasons; while those who were too
callous to be reached by either, remained, and still remain Tories.
  The legal necessity of being independent, with several collateral
reasons, is pointed out in an elegant masterly manner, in a charge
to the grand jury for the district of Charleston, by the Hon.
William Henry Drayton, chief justice of South Carolina, [April 23,
1776]. This performance, and the address of the convention of New
York, are pieces, in my humble opinion, of the first rank in America.
  The principal causes why independence has not been so universally
supported as it ought, are fear and indolence, and the causes why it
has been opposed, are, avarice, down-right villany, and lust of
personal power. There is not such a being in America as a Tory from
conscience; some secret defect or other is interwoven in the character
of all those, be they men or women, who can look with patience on
the brutality, luxury and debauchery of the British court, and the
violations of their army here. A woman's virtue must sit very
lightly on her who can even hint a favorable sentiment in their
behalf. It is remarkable that the whole race of prostitutes in New
York were tories; and the schemes for supporting the Tory cause in
this city, for which several are now in jail, and one hanged, were
concerted and carried on in common bawdy-houses, assisted by those who
kept them.
  The connection between vice and meanness is a fit subject for
satire, but when the satire is a fact, it cuts with the irresistible
power of a diamond. If a Quaker, in defence of his just rights, his
property, and the chastity of his house, takes up a musket, he is
expelled the meeting; but the present king of England, who seduced and
took into keeping a sister of their society, is reverenced and
supported by repeated Testimonies, while, the friendly noodle from
whom she was taken (and who is now in this city) continues a drudge in
the service of his rival, as if proud of being cuckolded by a creature
called a king.
  Our support and success depend on such a variety of men and
circumstances, that every one who does but wish well, is of some
use: there are men who have a strange aversion to arms, yet have
hearts to risk every shilling in the cause, or in support of those who
have better talents for defending it. Nature, in the arrangement of
mankind, has fitted some for every service in life: were all soldiers,
all would starve and go naked, and were none soldiers, all would be
slaves. As disaffection to independence is the badge of a Tory, so
affection to it is the mark of a Whig; and the different services of
the Whigs, down from those who nobly contribute every thing, to
those who have nothing to render but their wishes, tend all to the
same center, though with different degrees of merit and ability. The
larger we make the circle, the more we shall harmonize, and the
stronger we shall be. All we want to shut out is disaffection, and,
that excluded, we must accept from each other such duties as we are
best fitted to bestow. A narrow system of politics, like a narrow
system of religion, is calculated only to sour the temper, and be at
variance with mankind.
  All we want to know in America is simply this, who is for
independence, and who is not? Those who are for it, will support it,
and the remainder will undoubtedly see the reasonableness of paying
the charges; while those who oppose or seek to betray it, must
expect the more rigid fate of the jail and the gibbet. There is a
bastard kind of generosity, which being extended to all men, is as
fatal to society, on one hand, as the want of true generosity is on
the other. A lax manner of administering justice, falsely termed
moderation, has a tendency both to dispirit public virtue, and promote
the growth of public evils. Had the late committee of safety taken
cognizance of the last Testimony of the Quakers and proceeded
against such delinquents as were concerned therein, they had,
probably, prevented the treasonable plans which have been concerted
since. When one villain is suffered to escape, it encourages another
to proceed, either from a hope of escaping likewise, or an
apprehension that we dare not punish. It has been a matter of
general surprise, that no notice was taken of the incendiary
publication of the Quakers, of the 20th of November last; a
publication evidently intended to promote sedition and treason, and
encourage the enemy, who were then within a day's march of this
city, to proceed on and possess it. I here present the reader with a
memorial which was laid before the board of safety a few days after
the Testimony appeared. Not a member of that board, that I conversed
with, but expressed the highest detestation of the perverted
principles and conduct of the Quaker junto, and a wish that the
board would take the matter up; notwithstanding which, it was suffered
to pass away unnoticed, to the encouragement of new acts of treason,
the general danger of the cause, and the disgrace of the state.

         To the honorable the Council of Safety of the State of
                              Pennsylvania.

  At a meeting of a reputable number of the inhabitants of the city of
Philadelphia, impressed with a proper sense of the justice of the
cause which this continent is engaged in, and animated with a generous
fervor for supporting the same, it was resolved, that the following be
laid before the board of safety:

  "We profess liberality of sentiment to all men; with this
distinction only, that those who do not deserve it would become wise
and seek to deserve it. We hold the pure doctrines of universal
liberty of conscience, and conceive it our duty to endeavor to
secure that sacred right to others, as well as to defend it for
ourselves; for we undertake not to judge of the religious rectitude of
tenets, but leave the whole matter to Him who made us.
  "We persecute no man, neither will we abet in the persecution of any
man for religion's sake; our common relation to others being that of
fellow-citizens and fellow-subjects of one single community; and in
this line of connection we hold out the right hand of fellowship to
all men. But we should conceive ourselves to be unworthy members of
the free and independent States of America, were we unconcernedly to
see or to suffer any treasonable wound, public or private, directly or
indirectly, to be given against the peace and safety of the same. We
inquire not into the rank of the offenders, nor into their religious
persuasion; we have no business with either, our part being only to
find them out and exhibit them to justice.
  "A printed paper, dated the 20th of November, and signed 'John
Pemberton,' whom we suppose to be an inhabitant of this city, has
lately been dispersed abroad, a copy of which accompanies this. Had
the framers and publishers of that paper conceived it their duty to
exhort the youth and others of their society, to a patient
submission under the present trying visitations, and humbly to wait
the event of heaven towards them, they had therein shown a Christian
temper, and we had been silent; but the anger and political
virulence with which their instructions are given, and the abuse
with which they stigmatize all ranks of men not thinking like
themselves, leave no doubt on our minds from what spirit their
publication proceeded: and it is disgraceful to the pure cause of
truth, that men can dally with words of the most sacred import, and
play them off as mechanically as if religion consisted only in
contrivance. We know of no instance in which the Quakers have been
compelled to bear arms, or to do any thing which might strain their
conscience; wherefore their advice, 'to withstand and refuse to submit
to the arbitrary instructions and ordinances of men,' appear to us a
false alarm, and could only be treasonably calculated to gain favor
with our enemies, when they are seemingly on the brink of invading
this State, or, what is still worse, to weaken the hands of our
defence, that their entrance into this city might be made
practicable and easy.
  "We disclaim all tumult and disorder in the punishment of offenders;
and wish to be governed, not by temper but by reason, in the manner of
treating them. We are sensible that our cause has suffered by the
two following errors: first, by ill-judged lenity to traitorous
persons in some cases; and, secondly, by only a passionate treatment
of them in others. For the future we disown both, and wish to be
steady in our proceedings, and serious in our punishments.
  "Every State in America has, by the repeated voice of its
inhabitants, directed and authorized the Continental Congress to
publish a formal Declaration of Independence of, and separation
from, the oppressive king and Parliament of Great Britain; and we look
on every man as an enemy, who does not in some line or other, give his
assistance towards supporting the same; at the same time we consider
the offence to be heightened to a degree of unpardonable guilt, when
such persons, under the show of religion, endeavor, either by writing,
speaking, or otherwise, to subvert, overturn, or bring reproach upon
the independence of this continent as declared by Congress.
  "The publishers of the paper signed 'John Pemberton,' have called in
a loud manner to their friends and connections, 'to withstand or
refuse' obedience to whatever 'instructions or ordinances' may be
published, not warranted by (what they call) 'that happy
Constitution under which they and others long enjoyed tranquillity and
peace.' If this be not treason, we know not what may properly be
called by that name.
  "To us it is a matter of surprise and astonishment, that men with
the word 'peace, peace,' continually on their lips, should be so
fond of living under and supporting a government, and at the same time
calling it 'happy,' which is never better pleased than when a war-
that has filled India with carnage and famine, Africa with slavery,
and tampered with Indians and negroes to cut the throats of the
freemen of America. We conceive it a disgrace to this State, to harbor
or wink at such palpable hypocrisy. But as we seek not to hurt the
hair of any man's head, when we can make ourselves safe without, we
wish such persons to restore peace to themselves and us, by removing
themselves to some part of the king of Great Britain's dominions, as
by that means they may live unmolested by us and we by them; for our
fixed opinion is, that those who do not deserve a place among us,
ought not to have one.
  "We conclude with requesting the Council of Safety to take into
consideration the paper signed 'John Pemberton,' and if it shall
appear to them to be of a dangerous tendency, or of a treasonable
nature, that they would commit the signer, together with such other
persons as they can discover were concerned therein, into custody,
until such time as some mode of trial shall ascertain the full
degree of their guilt and punishment; in the doing of which, we wish
their judges, whoever they may be, to disregard the man, his
connections, interest, riches, poverty, or principles of religion, and
to attend to the nature of his offence only."

  The most cavilling sectarian cannot accuse the foregoing with
containing the least ingredient of persecution. The free spirit on
which the American cause is founded, disdains to mix with such an
impurity, and leaves it as rubbish fit only for narrow and
suspicious minds to grovel in. Suspicion and persecution are weeds
of the same dunghill, and flourish together. Had the Quakers minded
their religion and their business, they might have lived through
this dispute in enviable ease, and none would have molested them.
The common phrase with these people is, 'Our principles are peace.' To
which may be replied, and your practices are the reverse; for never
did the conduct of men oppose their own doctrine more notoriously than
the present race of the Quakers. They have artfully changed themselves
into a different sort of people to what they used to be, and yet
have the address to persuade each other that they are not altered;
like antiquated virgins, they see not the havoc deformity has made
upon them, but pleasantly mistaking wrinkles for dimples, conceive
themselves yet lovely and wonder at the stupid world for not
admiring them.
  Did no injury arise to the public by this apostacy of the Quakers
from themselves, the public would have nothing to do with it; but as
both the design and consequences are pointed against a cause in
which the whole community are interested, it is therefore no longer
a subject confined to the cognizance of the meeting only, but comes,
as a matter of criminality, before the authority either of the
particular State in which it is acted, or of the continent against
which it operates. Every attempt, now, to support the authority of the
king and Parliament of Great Britain over America, is treason
against every State; therefore it is impossible that any one can
pardon or screen from punishment an offender against all.
  But to proceed: while the infatuated Tories of this and other States
were last spring talking of commissioners, accommodation, making the
matter up, and the Lord knows what stuff and nonsense, their good king
and ministry were glutting themselves with the revenge of reducing
America to unconditional submission, and solacing each other with
the certainty of conquering it in one campaign. The following
quotations are from the parliamentary register of the debate's of
the House of Lords, March 5th, 1776:

  "The Americans," says Lord Talbot,* "have been obstinate, undutiful,
and ungovernable from the very beginning, from their first early and
infant settlements; and I am every day more and more convinced that
this people never will be brought back to their duty, and the
subordinate relation they stand in to this country, till reduced to
unconditional, effectual submission; no concession on our part, no
lenity, no endurance, will have any other effect but that of
increasing their insolence."

  * Steward of the king's household.

  "The struggle," says Lord Townsend,* "is now a struggle for power;
the die is cast, and the only point which now remains to be determined
is, in what manner the war can be most effectually prosecuted and
speedily finished, in order to procure that unconditional
submission, which has been so ably stated by the noble Earl with the
white staff" (meaning Lord Talbot;) "and I have no reason to doubt
that the measures now pursuing will put an end to the war in the
course of a single campaign. Should it linger longer, we shall then
have reason to expect that some foreign power will interfere, and take
advantage of our domestic troubles and civil distractions."

  * Formerly General Townsend, at Quebec, and late lord-lieutenant
of Ireland.

  Lord Littleton. "My sentiments are pretty well known. I shall only
observe now that lenient measures have had no other effect than to
produce insult after insult; that the more we conceded, the higher
America rose in her demands, and the more insolent she has grown. It
is for this reason that I am now for the most effective and decisive
measures; and am of opinion that no alternative is left us, but to
relinquish America for ever, or finally determine to compel her to
acknowledge the legislative authority of this country; and it is the
principle of an unconditional submission I would be for maintaining."

  Can words be more expressive than these? Surely the Tories will
believe the Tory lords! The truth is, they do believe them and know as
fully as any Whig on the continent knows, that the king and ministry
never had the least design of an accommodation with America, but an
absolute, unconditional conquest. And the part which the Tories were
to act, was, by downright lying, to endeavor to put the continent
off its guard, and to divide and sow discontent in the minds of such
Whigs as they might gain an influence over. In short, to keep up a
distraction here, that the force sent from England might be able to
conquer in "one campaign." They and the ministry were, by a
different game, playing into each other's hands. The cry of the Tories
in England was, "No reconciliation, no accommodation," in order to
obtain the greater military force; while those in America were
crying nothing but "reconciliation and accommodation," that the
force sent might conquer with the less resistance.
  But this "single campaign" is over, and America not conquered. The
whole work is yet to do, and the force much less to do it with.
Their condition is both despicable and deplorable: out of cash- out of
heart, and out of hope. A country furnished with arms and ammunition
as America now is, with three millions of inhabitants, and three
thousand miles distant from the nearest enemy that can approach her,
is able to look and laugh them in the face.
  Howe appears to have two objects in view, either to go up the
North River, or come to Philadelphia.
  By going up the North River, he secures a retreat for his army
through Canada, but the ships must return if they return at all, the
same way they went; as our army would be in the rear, the safety of
their passage down is a doubtful matter. By such a motion he shuts
himself from all supplies from Europe, but through Canada, and exposes
his army and navy to the danger of perishing. The idea of his
cutting off the communication between the eastern and southern states,
by means of the North River, is merely visionary. He cannot do it by
his shipping; because no ship can lay long at anchor in any river
within reach of the shore; a single gun would drive a first rate
from such a station. This was fully proved last October at Forts
Washington and Lee, where one gun only, on each side of the river,
obliged two frigates to cut and be towed off in an hour's time.
Neither can he cut it off by his army; because the several posts
they must occupy would divide them almost to nothing, and expose
them to be picked up by ours like pebbles on a river's bank; but
admitting that he could, where is the injury? Because, while his whole
force is cantoned out, as sentries over the water, they will be very
innocently employed, and the moment they march into the country the
communication opens.
  The most probable object is Philadelphia, and the reasons are
many. Howe's business is to conquer it, and in proportion as he
finds himself unable to the task, he will employ his strength to
distress women and weak minds, in order to accomplish through their
fears what he cannot accomplish by his own force. His coming or
attempting to come to Philadelphia is a circumstance that proves his
weakness: for no general that felt himself able to take the field
and attack his antagonist would think of bringing his army into a city
in the summer time; and this mere shifting the scene from place to
place, without effecting any thing, has feebleness and cowardice on
the face of it, and holds him up in a contemptible light to all who
can reason justly and firmly. By several informations from New York,
it appears that their army in general, both officers and men, have
given up the expectation of conquering America; their eye now is fixed
upon the spoil. They suppose Philadelphia to be rich with stores,
and as they think to get more by robbing a town than by attacking an
army, their movement towards this city is probable. We are not now
contending against an army of soldiers, but against a band of thieves,
who had rather plunder than fight, and have no other hope of
conquest than by cruelty.
  They expect to get a mighty booty, and strike another general panic,
by making a sudden movement and getting possession of this city; but
unless they can march out as well as in, or get the entire command
of the river, to remove off their plunder, they may probably be
stopped with the stolen goods upon them. They have never yet succeeded
wherever they have been opposed, but at Fort Washington. At Charleston
their defeat was effectual. At Ticonderoga they ran away. In every
skirmish at Kingsbridge and the White Plains they were obliged to
retreat, and the instant that our arms were turned upon them in the
Jerseys, they turned likewise, and those that turned not were taken.
  The necessity of always fitting our internal police to the
circumstances of the times we live in, is something so strikingly
obvious, that no sufficient objection can be made against it. The
safety of all societies depends upon it; and where this point is not
attended to, the consequences will either be a general languor or a
tumult. The encouragement and protection of the good subjects of any
state, and the suppression and punishment of bad ones, are the
principal objects for which all authority is instituted, and the
line in which it ought to operate. We have in this city a strange
variety of men and characters, and the circumstances of the times
require that they should be publicly known; it is not the number of
Tories that hurt us, so much as the not finding out who they are;
men must now take one side or the other, and abide by the
consequences: the Quakers, trusting to their short-sighted sagacity,
have, most unluckily for them, made their declaration in their last
Testimony, and we ought now to take them at their word. They have
involuntarily read themselves out of the continental meeting, and
cannot hope to be restored to it again but by payment and penitence.
Men whose political principles are founded on avarice, are beyond
the reach of reason, and the only cure of Toryism of this cast is to
tax it. A substantial good drawn from a real evil, is of the same
benefit to society, as if drawn from a virtue; and where men have
not public spirit to render themselves serviceable, it ought to be the
study of government to draw the best use possible from their vices.
When the governing passion of any man, or set of men, is once known,
the method of managing them is easy; for even misers, whom no public
virtue can impress, would become generous, could a heavy tax be laid
upon covetousness.
  The Tories have endeavored to insure their property with the
enemy, by forfeiting their reputation with us; from which may be
justly inferred, that their governing passion is avarice. Make them as
much afraid of losing on one side as on the other, and you stagger
their Toryism; make them more so, and you reclaim them; for their
principle is to worship the power which they are most afraid of.
  This method of considering men and things together, opens into a
large field for speculation, and affords me an opportunity of offering
some observations on the state of our currency, so as to make the
support of it go hand in hand with the suppression of disaffection and
the encouragement of public spirit.
  The thing which first presents itself in inspecting the state of the
currency, is, that we have too much of it, and that there is a
necessity of reducing the quantity, in order to increase the value.
Men are daily growing poor by the very means that they take to get
rich; for in the same proportion that the prices of all goods on
hand are raised, the value of all money laid by is reduced. A simple
case will make this clear; let a man have 100 L. in cash, and as
many goods on hand as will to-day sell for 20 L.; but not content with
the present market price, he raises them to 40 L. and by so doing
obliges others, in their own defence, to raise cent. per cent.
likewise; in this case it is evident that his hundred pounds laid
by, is reduced fifty pounds in value; whereas, had the market
lowered cent. per cent., his goods would have sold but for ten, but
his hundred pounds would have risen in value to two hundred; because
it would then purchase as many goods again, or support his family as
long again as before. And, strange as it may seem, he is one hundred
and fifty pounds the poorer for raising his goods, to what he would
have been had he lowered them; because the forty pounds which his
goods sold for, is, by the general raise of the market cent. per
cent., rendered of no more value than the ten pounds would be had
the market fallen in the same proportion; and, consequently, the whole
difference of gain or loss is on the difference in value of the
hundred pounds laid by, viz. from fifty to two hundred. This rage
for raising goods is for several reasons much more the fault of the
Tories than the Whigs; and yet the Tories (to their shame and
confusion ought they to be told of it) are by far the most noisy and
discontented. The greatest part of the Whigs, by being now either in
the army or employed in some public service, are buyers only and not
sellers, and as this evil has its origin in trade, it cannot be
charged on those who are out of it.
  But the grievance has now become too general to be remedied by
partial methods, and the only effectual cure is to reduce the quantity
of money: with half the quantity we should be richer than we are
now, because the value of it would be doubled, and consequently our
attachment to it increased; for it is not the number of dollars that a
man has, but how far they will go, that makes him either rich or poor.
  These two points being admitted, viz. that the quantity of money
is too great, and that the prices of goods can only be effectually
reduced by, reducing the quantity of the money, the next point to be
considered is, the method how to reduce it.
  The circumstances of the times, as before observed, require that the
public characters of all men should now be fully understood, and the
only general method of ascertaining it is by an oath or affirmation,
renouncing all allegiance to the king of Great Britain, and to support
the independence of the United States, as declared by Congress. Let,
at the same time, a tax of ten, fifteen, or twenty per cent. per
annum, to be collected quarterly, be levied on all property. These
alternatives, by being perfectly voluntary, will take in all sorts
of people. Here is the test; here is the tax. He who takes the former,
conscientiously proves his affection to the cause, and binds himself
to pay his quota by the best services in his power, and is thereby
justly exempt from the latter; and those who choose the latter, pay
their quota in money, to be excused from the former, or rather, it
is the price paid to us for their supposed, though mistaken, insurance
with the enemy.
  But this is only a part of the advantage which would arise by
knowing the different characters of men. The Whigs stake everything on
the issue of their arms, while the Tories, by their disaffection,
are sapping and undermining their strength; and, of consequence, the
property of the Whigs is the more exposed thereby; and whatever injury
their estates may sustain by the movements of the enemy, must either
be borne by themselves, who have done everything which has yet been
done, or by the Tories, who have not only done nothing, but have, by
their disaffection, invited the enemy on.
  In the present crisis we ought to know, square by square and house
by house, who are in real allegiance with the United Independent
States, and who are not. Let but the line be made clear and
distinct, and all men will then know what they are to trust to. It
would not only be good policy but strict justice, to raise fifty or
one hundred thousand pounds, or more, if it is necessary, out of the
estates and property of the king of England's votaries, resident in
Philadelphia, to be distributed, as a reward to those inhabitants of
the city and State, who should turn out and repulse the enemy,
should they attempt to march this way; and likewise, to bind the
property of all such persons to make good the damages which that of
the Whigs might sustain. In the undistinguishable mode of conducting a
war, we frequently make reprisals at sea, on the vessels of persons in
England, who are friends to our cause compared with the resident
Tories among us.
  In every former publication of mine, from Common Sense down to the
last Crisis, I have generally gone on the charitable supposition, that
the Tories were rather a mistaken than a criminal people, and have
applied argument after argument, with all the candor and temper
which I was capable of, in order to set every part of the case clearly
and fairly before them, and if possible to reclaim them from ruin to
reason. I have done my duty by them and have now done with that
doctrine, taking it for granted, that those who yet hold their
disaffection are either a set of avaricious miscreants, who would
sacrifice the continent to save themselves, or a banditti of hungry
traitors, who are hoping for a division of the spoil. To which may
be added, a list of crown or proprietary dependants, who, rather
than go without a portion of power, would be content to share it
with the devil. Of such men there is no hope; and their obedience will
only be according to the danger set before them, and the power that is
exercised over them.
  A time will shortly arrive, in which, by ascertaining the characters
of persons now, we shall be guarded against their mischiefs then;
for in proportion as the enemy despair of conquest, they will be
trying the arts of seduction and the force of fear by all the
mischiefs which they can inflict. But in war we may be certain of
these two things, viz. that cruelty in an enemy, and motions made with
more than usual parade, are always signs of weakness. He that can
conquer, finds his mind too free and pleasant to be brutish; and he
that intends to conquer, never makes too much show of his strength.
  We now know the enemy we have to do with. While drunk with the
certainty of victory, they disdained to be civil; and in proportion as
disappointment makes them sober, and their apprehensions of an
European war alarm them, they will become cringing and artful;
honest they cannot be. But our answer to them, in either condition
they may be in, is short and full- "As free and independent States
we are willing to make peace with you to-morrow, but we neither can
hear nor reply in any other character."
  If Britain cannot conquer us, it proves that she is neither able
to govern nor protect us, and our particular situation now is such,
that any connection with her would be unwisely exchanging a
half-defeated enemy for two powerful ones. Europe, by every
appearance, is now on the eve, nay, on the morning twilight of a
war, and any alliance with George the Third brings France and Spain
upon our backs; a separation from him attaches them to our side;
therefore, the only road to peace, honor and commerce is Independence.
  Written this fourth year of the UNION, which God preserve.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1777.
                                 IV.

  THOSE who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men,
undergo the fatigues of supporting it. The event of yesterday was
one of those kind of alarms which is just sufficient to rouse us to
duty, without being of consequence enough to depress our fortitude. It
is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are
defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by
degrees, the consequences will be the same.
  Look back at the events of last winter and the present year, there
you will find that the enemy's successes always contributed to
reduce them. What they have gained in ground, they paid so dearly
for in numbers, that their victories have in the end amounted to
defeats. We have always been masters at the last push, and always
shall be while we do our duty. Howe has been once on the banks of
the Delaware, and from thence driven back with loss and disgrace:
and why not be again driven from the Schuylkill? His condition and
ours are very different. He has everybody to fight, we have only his
one army to cope with, and which wastes away at every engagement: we
can not only reinforce, but can redouble our numbers; he is cut off
from all supplies, and must sooner or later inevitably fall into our
hands.
  Shall a band of ten or twelve thousand robbers, who are this day
fifteen hundred or two thousand men less in strength than they were
yesterday, conquer America, or subdue even a single state? The thing
cannot be, unless we sit down and suffer them to do it. Another such a
brush, notwithstanding we lost the ground, would, by still reducing
the enemy, put them in a condition to be afterwards totally defeated.
  Could our whole army have come up to the attack at one time, the
consequences had probably been otherwise; but our having different
parts of the Brandywine creek to guard, and the uncertainty which road
to Philadelphia the enemy would attempt to take, naturally afforded
them an opportunity of passing with their main body at a place where
only a part of ours could be posted; for it must strike every thinking
man with conviction, that it requires a much greater force to oppose
an enemy in several places, than is sufficient to defeat him in any
one place.
  Men who are sincere in defending their freedom, will always feel
concern at every circumstance which seems to make against them; it
is the natural and honest consequence of all affectionate attachments,
and the want of it is a vice. But the dejection lasts only for a
moment; they soon rise out of it with additional vigor; the glow of
hope, courage and fortitude, will, in a little time, supply the
place of every inferior passion, and kindle the whole heart into
heroism.
  There is a mystery in the countenance of some causes, which we
have not always present judgment enough to explain. It is
distressing to see an enemy advancing into a country, but it is the
only place in which we can beat them, and in which we have always
beaten them, whenever they made the attempt. The nearer any disease
approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and
deliverance make their advances together, and it is only the last
push, in which one or the other takes the lead.
  There are many men who will do their duty when it is not wanted; but
a genuine public spirit always appears most when there is most
occasion for it. Thank God! our army, though fatigued, is yet
entire. The attack made by us yesterday, was under many disadvantages,
naturally arising from the uncertainty of knowing which route the
enemy would take; and, from that circumstance, the whole of our
force could not be brought up together time enough to engage all at
once. Our strength is yet reserved; and it is evident that Howe does
not think himself a gainer by the affair, otherwise he would this
morning have moved down and attacked General Washington.
  Gentlemen of the city and country, it is in your power, by a
spirited improvement of the present circumstance, to turn it to a real
advantage. Howe is now weaker than before, and every shot will
contribute to reduce him. You are more immediately interested than any
other part of the continent: your all is at stake; it is not so with
the general cause; you are devoted by the enemy to plunder and
destruction: it is the encouragement which Howe, the chief of
plunderers, has promised his army. Thus circumstanced, you may save
yourselves by a manly resistance, but you can have no hope in any
other conduct. I never yet knew our brave general, or any part of
the army, officers or men, out of heart, and I have seen them in
circumstances a thousand times more trying than the present. It is
only those that are not in action, that feel languor and heaviness,
and the best way to rub it off is to turn out, and make sure work of
it.
  Our army must undoubtedly feel fatigue, and want a reinforcement
of rest though not of valor. Our own interest and happiness call
upon us to give them every support in our power, and make the burden
of the day, on which the safety of this city depends, as light as
possible. Remember, gentlemen, that we have forces both to the
northward and southward of Philadelphia, and if the enemy be but
stopped till those can arrive, this city will be saved, and the
enemy finally routed. You have too much at stake to hesitate. You
ought not to think an hour upon the matter, but to spring to action at
once. Other states have been invaded, have likewise driven off the
invaders. Now our time and turn is come, and perhaps the finishing
stroke is reserved for us. When we look back on the dangers we have
been saved from, and reflect on the success we have been blessed with,
it would be sinful either to be idle or to despair.
  I close this paper with a short address to General Howe. You, sir,
are only lingering out the period that shall bring with it your
defeat. You have yet scarce began upon the war, and the further you
enter, the faster will your troubles thicken. What you now enjoy is
only a respite from ruin; an invitation to destruction; something that
will lead on to our deliverance at your expense. We know the cause
which we are engaged in, and though a passionate fondness for it may
make us grieve at every injury which threatens it, yet, when the
moment of concern is over, the determination to duty returns. We are
not moved by the gloomy smile of a worthless king, but by the ardent
glow of generous patriotism. We fight not to enslave, but to set a
country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live
in. In such a case we are sure that we are right; and we leave to
you the despairing reflection of being the tool of a miserable tyrant.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 12, 1777.
                                  V.

                     TO GENERAL SIR WILLIAM HOWE.

  TO argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of
reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt,
is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to
convert an atheist by scripture. Enjoy, sir, your insensibility of
feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of animals. And no man
will envy you these honors, in which a savage only can be your rival
and a bear your master.
  As the generosity of this country rewarded your brother's services
in the last war, with an elegant monument in Westminster Abbey, it
is consistent that she should bestow some mark of distinction upon
you. You certainly deserve her notice, and a conspicuous place in
the catalogue of extraordinary persons. Yet it would be a pity to pass
you from the world in state, and consign you to magnificent oblivion
among the tombs, without telling the future beholder why. Judas is
as much known as John, yet history ascribes their fame to very
different actions.
  Sir William has undoubtedly merited a monument; but of what kind, or
with what inscription, where placed or how embellished, is a
question that would puzzle all the heralds of St. James's in the
profoundest mood of historical deliberation. We are at no loss, sir,
to ascertain your real character, but somewhat perplexed how to
perpetuate its identity, and preserve it uninjured from the
transformations of time or mistake. A statuary may give a false
expression to your bust, or decorate it with some equivocal emblems,
by which you may happen to steal into reputation and impose upon the
hereafter traditionary world. Ill nature or ridicule may conspire,
or a variety of accidents combine to lessen, enlarge, or change Sir
William's fame; and no doubt but he who has taken so much pains to
be singular in his conduct, would choose to be just as singular in his
exit, his monument and his epitaph.
  The usual honors of the dead, to be sure, are not sufficiently
sublime to escort a character like you to the republic of dust and
ashes; for however men may differ in their ideas of grandeur or of
government here, the grave is nevertheless a perfect republic. Death
is not the monarch of the dead, but of the dying. The moment he
obtains a conquest he loses a subject, and, like the foolish king
you serve, will, in the end, war himself out of all his dominions.
  As a proper preliminary towards the arrangement of your funeral
honors, we readily admit of your new rank of knighthood. The title
is perfectly in character, and is your own, more by merit than
creation. There are knights of various orders, from the knight of
the windmill to the knight of the post. The former is your patron
for exploits, and the latter will assist you in settling your
accounts. No honorary title could be more happily applied! The
ingenuity is sublime! And your royal master has discovered more genius
in fitting you therewith, than in generating the most finished
figure for a button, or descanting on the properties of a button
mould.
  But how, sir, shall we dispose of you? The invention of a statuary
is exhausted, and Sir William is yet unprovided with a monument.
America is anxious to bestow her funeral favors upon you, and wishes
to do it in a manner that shall distinguish you from all the
deceased heroes of the last war. The Egyptian method of embalming is
not known to the present age, and hieroglyphical pageantry hath
outlived the science of deciphering it. Some other method,
therefore, must be thought of to immortalize the new knight of the
windmill and post. Sir William, thanks to his stars, is not
oppressed with very delicate ideas. He has no ambition of being
wrapped up and handed about in myrrh, aloes and cassia. Less expensive
odors will suffice; and it fortunately happens that the simple
genius of America has discovered the art of preserving bodies, and
embellishing them too, with much greater frugality than the
ancients. In balmage, sir, of humble tar, you will be as secure as
Pharaoh, and in a hieroglyphic of feathers, rival in finery all the
mummies of Egypt.
  As you have already made your exit from the moral world, and by
numberless acts both of passionate and deliberate injustice engraved
an "here lieth" on your deceased honor, it must be mere affectation in
you to pretend concern at the humors or opinions of mankind respecting
you. What remains of you may expire at any time. The sooner the
better. For he who survives his reputation, lives out of despite of
himself, like a man listening to his own reproach.
  Thus entombed and ornamented, I leave you to the inspection of the
curious, and return to the history of your yet surviving actions.
The character of Sir William has undergone some extraordinary
revolutions. since his arrival in America. It is now fixed and
known; and we have nothing to hope from your candor or to fear from
your capacity. Indolence and inability have too large a share in
your composition, ever to suffer you to be anything more than the hero
of little villainies and unfinished adventures. That, which to some
persons appeared moderation in you at first, was not produced by any
real virtue of your own, but by a contrast of passions, dividing and
holding you in perpetual irresolution. One vice will frequently
expel another, without the least merit in the man; as powers in
contrary directions reduce each other to rest.
  It became you to have supported a dignified solemnity of
character; to have shown a superior liberality of soul; to have won
respect by an obstinate perseverance in maintaining order, and to have
exhibited on all occasions such an unchangeable graciousness of
conduct, that while we beheld in you the resolution of an enemy, we
might admire in you the sincerity of a man. You came to America
under the high sounding titles of commander and commissioner; not only
to suppress what you call rebellion, by arms, but to shame it out of
countenance by the excellence of your example. Instead of which, you
have been the patron of low and vulgar frauds, the encourager of
Indian cruelties; and have imported a cargo of vices blacker than
those which you pretend to suppress.
  Mankind are not universally agreed in their determination of right
and wrong; but there are certain actions which the consent of all
nations and individuals has branded with the unchangeable name of
meanness. In the list of human vices we find some of such a refined
constitution, they cannot be carried into practice without seducing
some virtue to their assistance; but meanness has neither alliance nor
apology. It is generated in the dust and sweepings of other vices, and
is of such a hateful figure that all the rest conspire to disown it.
Sir William, the commissioner of George the Third, has at last
vouchsafed to give it rank and pedigree. He has placed the fugitive at
the council board, and dubbed it companion of the order of knighthood.
  The particular act of meanness which I allude to in this
description, is forgery. You, sir, have abetted and patronized the
forging and uttering counterfeit continental bills. In the same New
York newspapers in which your own proclamation under your master's
authority was published, offering, or pretending to offer, pardon
and protection to these states, there were repeated advertisements
of counterfeit money for sale, and persons who have come officially
from you, and under the sanction of your flag, have been taken up in
attempting to put them off.
  A conduct so basely mean in a public character is without
precedent or pretence. Every nation on earth, whether friends or
enemies, will unite in despising you. 'Tis an incendiary war upon
society, which nothing can excuse or palliate,- an improvement upon
beggarly villany- and shows an inbred wretchedness of heart made up
between the venomous malignity of a serpent and the spiteful
imbecility of an inferior reptile.
  The laws of any civilized country would condemn you to the gibbet
without regard to your rank or titles, because it is an action foreign
to the usage and custom of war; and should you fall into our hands,
which pray God you may, it will be a doubtful matter whether we are to
consider you as a military prisoner or a prisoner for felony.
  Besides, it is exceedingly unwise and impolitic in you, or any other
persons in the English service, to promote or even encourage, or
wink at the crime of forgery, in any case whatever. Because, as the
riches of England, as a nation, are chiefly in paper, and the far
greater part of trade among individuals is carried on by the same
medium, that is, by notes and drafts on one another, they,
therefore, of all people in the world, ought to endeavor to keep
forgery out of sight, and, if possible, not to revive the idea of
it. It is dangerous to make men familiar with a crime which they may
afterwards practise to much greater advantage against those who
first taught them. Several officers in the English army have made
their exit at the gallows for forgery on their agents; for we all
know, who know any thing of England, that there is not a more
necessitous body of men, taking them generally, than what the
English officers are. They contrive to make a show at the expense of
the tailors, and appear clean at the charge of the washer-women.
  England, has at this time, nearly two hundred million pounds
sterling of public money in paper, for which she has no real property:
besides a large circulation of bank notes, bank post bills, and
promissory notes and drafts of private bankers, merchants and
tradesmen. She has the greatest quantity of paper currency and the
least quantity of gold and silver of any nation in Europe; the real
specie, which is about sixteen millions sterling, serves only as
change in large sums, which are always made in paper, or for payment
in small ones. Thus circumstanced, the nation is put to its wit's end,
and obliged to be severe almost to criminality, to prevent the
practice and growth of forgery. Scarcely a session passes at the Old
Bailey, or an execution at Tyburn, but witnesses this truth, yet
you, sir, regardless of the policy which her necessity obliges her
to adopt, have made your whole army intimate with the crime. And as
all armies at the conclusion of a war, are too apt to carry into
practice the vices of the campaign, it will probably happen, that
England will hereafter abound in forgeries, to which art the
practitioners were first initiated under your authority in America.
You, sir, have the honor of adding a new vice to the military
catalogue; and the reason, perhaps, why the invention was reserved for
you, is, because no general before was mean enough even to think of
it.
  That a man whose soul is absorbed in the low traffic of vulgar vice,
is incapable of moving in any superior region, is clearly shown in you
by the event of every campaign. Your military exploits have been
without plan, object or decision. Can it be possible that you or
your employers suppose that the possession of Philadelphia will be any
ways equal to the expense or expectation of the nation which
supports you? What advantages does England derive from any
achievements of yours? To her it is perfectly indifferent what place
you are in, so long as the business of conquest is unperformed and the
charge of maintaining you remains the same.
  If the principal events of the three campaigns be attended to, the
balance will appear against you at the close of each; but the last, in
point of importance to us, has exceeded the former two. It is pleasant
to look back on dangers past, and equally as pleasant to meditate on
present ones when the way out begins to appear. That period is now
arrived, and the long doubtful winter of war is changing to the
sweeter prospects of victory and joy. At the close of the campaign, in
1775, you were obliged to retreat from Boston. In the summer of
1776, you appeared with a numerous fleet and army in the harbor of New
York. By what miracle the continent was preserved in that season of
danger is a subject of admiration! If instead of wasting your time
against Long Island you had run up the North River, and landed any
where above New York, the consequence must have been, that either
you would have compelled General Washington to fight you with very
unequal numbers, or he must have suddenly evacuated the city with
the loss of nearly all the stores of his army, or have surrendered for
want of provisions; the situation of the place naturally producing one
or the other of these events.
  The preparations made to defend New York were, nevertheless, wise
and military; because your forces were then at sea, their numbers
uncertain; storms, sickness, or a variety of accidents might have
disabled their coming, or so diminished them on their passage, that
those which survived would have been incapable of opening the campaign
with any prospect of success; in which case the defence would have
been sufficient and the place preserved; for cities that have been
raised from nothing with an infinitude of labor and expense, are not
to be thrown away on the bare probability of their being taken. On
these grounds the preparations made to maintain New York were as
judicious as the retreat afterwards. While you, in the interim, let
slip the very opportunity which seemed to put conquest in your power.
  Through the whole of that campaign you had nearly double the
forces which General Washington immediately commanded. The principal
plan at that time, on our part, was to wear away the season with as
little loss as possible, and to raise the army for the next year. Long
Island, New York, Forts Washington and Lee were not defended after
your superior force was known under any expectation of their being
finally maintained, but as a range of outworks, in the attacking of
which your time might be wasted, your numbers reduced, and your vanity
amused by possessing them on our retreat. It was intended to have
withdrawn the garrison from Fort Washington after it had answered
the former of those purposes, but the fate of that day put a prize
into your hands without much honor to yourselves.
  Your progress through the Jerseys was accidental; you had it not
even in contemplation, or you would not have sent a principal part
of your forces to Rhode Island beforehand. The utmost hope of
America in the year 1776, reached no higher than that she might not
then be conquered. She had no expectation of defeating you in that
campaign. Even the most cowardly Tory allowed, that, could she
withstand the shock of that summer, her independence would be past a
doubt. You had then greatly the advantage of her. You were formidable.
Your military knowledge was supposed to be complete. Your fleets and
forces arrived without an accident. You had neither experience nor
reinforcements to wait for. You had nothing to do but to begin, and
your chance lay in the first vigorous onset.
  America was young and unskilled. She was obliged to trust her
defence to time and practice; and has, by mere dint of perseverance,
maintained her cause, and brought the enemy to a condition, in which
she is now capable of meeting him on any grounds.
  It is remarkable that in the campaign of 1776 you gained no more,
notwithstanding your great force, than what was given you by consent
of evacuation, except Fort Washington; while every advantage
obtained by us was by fair and hard fighting. The defeat of Sir
Peter Parker was complete. The conquest of the Hessians at Trenton, by
the remains of a retreating army, which but a few days before you
affected to despise, is an instance of their heroic perseverance
very seldom to be met with. And the victory over the British troops at
Princeton, by a harassed and wearied party, who had been engaged the
day before and marched all night without refreshment, is attended with
such a scene of circumstances and superiority of generalship, as
will ever give it a place in the first rank in the history of great
actions.
  When I look back on the gloomy days of last winter, and see
America suspended by a thread, I feel a triumph of joy at the
recollection of her delivery, and a reverence for the characters which
snatched her from destruction. To doubt now would be a species of
infidelity, and to forget the instruments which saved us then would be
ingratitude.
  The close of that campaign left us with the spirit of conquerors.
The northern districts were relieved by the retreat of General
Carleton over the lakes. The army under your command were hunted
back and had their bounds prescribed. The continent began to feel
its military importance, and the winter passed pleasantly away in
preparations for the next campaign.
  However confident you might be on your first arrival, the result
of the year 1776 gave you some idea of the difficulty, if not
impossibility of conquest. To this reason I ascribe your delay in
opening the campaign of 1777. The face of matters, on the close of the
former year, gave you no encouragement to pursue a discretionary war
as soon as the spring admitted the taking the field; for though
conquest, in that case, would have given you a double portion of fame,
yet the experiment was too hazardous. The ministry, had you failed,
would have shifted the whole blame upon you, charged you with having
acted without orders, and condemned at once both your plan and
execution.
  To avoid the misfortunes, which might have involved you and your
money accounts in perplexity and suspicion, you prudently waited the
arrival of a plan of operations from England, which was that you
should proceed for Philadelphia by way of the Chesapeake, and that
Burgoyne, after reducing Ticonderoga, should take his route by Albany,
and, if necessary, join you.
  The splendid laurels of the last campaign have flourished in the
north. In that quarter America has surprised the world, and laid the
foundation of this year's glory. The conquest of Ticonderoga, (if it
may be called a conquest) has, like all your other victories, led on
to ruin. Even the provisions taken in that fortress (which by
General Burgoyne's return was sufficient in bread and flour for nearly
5000 men for ten weeks, and in beef and pork for the same number of
men for one month) served only to hasten his overthrow, by enabling
him to proceed to Saratoga, the place of his destruction. A short
review of the operations of the last campaign will show the
condition of affairs on both sides.
  You have taken Ticonderoga and marched into Philadelphia. These
are all the events which the year has produced on your part. A
trifling campaign indeed, compared with the expenses of England and
the conquest of the continent. On the other side, a considerable
part of your northern force has been routed by the New York militia
under General Herkemer. Fort Stanwix has bravely survived a compound
attack of soldiers and savages, and the besiegers have fled. The
Battle of Bennington has put a thousand prisoners into our hands, with
all their arms, stores, artillery and baggage. General Burgoyne, in
two engagements, has been defeated; himself, his army, and all that
were his and theirs are now ours. Ticonderoga and Independence [forts]
are retaken, and not the shadow of an enemy remains in all the
northern districts. At this instant we have upwards of eleven thousand
prisoners, between sixty and seventy [captured] pieces of brass
ordnance, besides small arms, tents, stores, etc.
  In order to know the real value of those advantages, we must reverse
the scene, and suppose General Gates and the force he commanded to
be at your mercy as prisoners, and General Burgoyne, with his army
of soldiers and savages, to be already joined to you in
Pennsylvania. So dismal a picture can scarcely be looked at. It has
all the tracings and colorings of horror and despair; and excites
the most swelling emotions of gratitude by exhibiting the miseries
we are so graciously preserved from.
  I admire the distribution of laurels around the continent. It is the
earnest of future union. South Carolina has had her day of
sufferings and of fame; and the other southern States have exerted
themselves in proportion to the force that invaded or insulted them.
Towards the close of the campaign, in 1776, these middle States were
called upon and did their duty nobly. They were witnesses to the
almost expiring flame of human freedom. It was the close struggle of
life and death, the line of invisible division; and on which the
unabated fortitude of a Washington prevailed, and saved the spark that
has since blazed in the north with unrivalled lustre.
  Let me ask, sir, what great exploits have you performed? Through all
the variety of changes and opportunities which the war has produced, I
know no one action of yours that can be styled masterly. You have
moved in and out, backward and forward, round and round, as if valor
consisted in a military jig. The history and figure of your
movements would be truly ridiculous could they be justly delineated.
They resemble the labors of a puppy pursuing his tail; the end is
still at the same distance, and all the turnings round must be done
over again.
  The first appearance of affairs at Ticonderoga wore such an
unpromising aspect, that it was necessary, in July, to detach a part
of the forces to the support of that quarter, which were otherwise
destined or intended to act against you; and this, perhaps, has been
the means of postponing your downfall to another campaign. The
destruction of one army at a time is work enough. We know, sir, what
we are about, what we have to do, and how to do it.
  Your progress from the Chesapeake, was marked by no capital stroke
of policy or heroism. Your principal aim was to get General Washington
between the Delaware and Schuylkill, and between Philadelphia and your
army. In that situation, with a river on each of his flanks, which
united about five miles below the city, and your army above him, you
could have intercepted his reinforcements and supplies, cut off all
his communication with the country, and, if necessary, have despatched
assistance to open a passage for General Burgoyne. This scheme was too
visible to succeed: for had General Washington suffered you to command
the open country above him, I think it a very reasonable conjecture
that the conquest of Burgoyne would not have taken place, because
you could, in that case, have relieved him. It was therefore
necessary, while that important victory was in suspense, to trepan you
into a situation in which you could only be on the defensive,
without the power of affording him assistance. The manoeuvre had its
effect, and Burgoyne was conquered.
  There has been something unmilitary and passive in you from the time
of your passing the Schuylkill and getting possession of Philadelphia,
to the close of the campaign. You mistook a trap for a conquest, the
probability of which had been made known to Europe, and the edge of
your triumph taken off by our own information long before.
  Having got you into this situation, a scheme for a general attack
upon you at Germantown was carried into execution on the 4th of
October, and though the success was not equal to the excellence of the
plan, yet the attempting it proved the genius of America to be on
the rise, and her power approaching to superiority. The obscurity of
the morning was your best friend, for a fog is always favorable to a
hunted enemy. Some weeks after this you likewise planned an attack
on General Washington while at Whitemarsh. You marched out with
infinite parade, but on finding him preparing to attack you next
morning, you prudently turned about, and retreated to Philadelphia
with all the precipitation of a man conquered in imagination.
  Immediately after the battle of Germantown, the probability of
Burgoyne's defeat gave a new policy to affairs in Pennsylvania, and it
was judged most consistent with the general safety of America, to wait
the issue of the northern campaign. Slow and sure is sound work. The
news of that victory arrived in our camp on the 18th of October, and
no sooner did that shout of joy, and the report of the thirteen cannon
reach your ears, than you resolved upon a retreat, and the next day,
that is, on the 19th, you withdrew your drooping army into
Philadelphia. This movement was evidently dictated by fear; and
carried with it a positive confession that you dreaded a second
attack. It was hiding yourself among women and children, and
sleeping away the choicest part of the campaign in expensive
inactivity. An army in a city can never be a conquering army. The
situation admits only of defence. It is mere shelter: and every
military power in Europe will conclude you to be eventually defeated.
  The time when you made this retreat was the very time you ought to
have fought a battle, in order to put yourself in condition of
recovering in Pennsylvania what you had lost in Saratoga. And the
reason why you did not, must be either prudence or cowardice; the
former supposes your inability, and the latter needs no explanation. I
draw no conclusions, sir, but such as are naturally deduced from known
and visible facts, and such as will always have a being while the
facts which produced them remain unaltered.
  After this retreat a new difficulty arose which exhibited the
power of Britain in a very contemptible light; which was the attack
and defence of Mud Island. For several weeks did that little
unfinished fortress stand out against all the attempts of Admiral
and General Howe. It was the fable of Bender realized on the Delaware.
Scheme after scheme, and force upon force were tried and defeated. The
garrison, with scarce anything to cover them but their bravery,
survived in the midst of mud, shot and shells, and were at last
obliged to give it up more to the powers of time and gunpowder than to
military superiority of the besiegers.
  It is my sincere opinion that matters are in much worse condition
with you than what is generally known. Your master's speech at the
opening of Parliament, is like a soliloquy on ill luck. It shows him
to be coming a little to his reason, for sense of pain is the first
symptom of recovery, in profound stupefaction. His condition is
deplorable. He is obliged to submit to all the insults of France and
Spain, without daring to know or resent them; and thankful for the
most trivial evasions to the most humble remonstrances. The time was
when he could not deign an answer to a petition from America, and
the time now is when he dare not give an answer to an affront from
France. The capture of Burgoyne's army will sink his consequence as
much in Europe as in America. In his speech he expresses his
suspicions at the warlike preparations of France and Spain, and as
he has only the one army which you command to support his character in
the world with, it remains very uncertain when, or in what quarter
it will be most wanted, or can be best employed; and this will
partly account for the great care you take to keep it from action
and attacks, for should Burgoyne's fate be yours, which it probably
will, England may take her endless farewell not only of all America
but of all the West Indies.
  Never did a nation invite destruction upon itself with the eagerness
and the ignorance with which Britain has done. Bent upon the ruin of a
young and unoffending country, she has drawn the sword that has
wounded herself to the heart, and in the agony of her resentment has
applied a poison for a cure. Her conduct towards America is a compound
of rage and lunacy; she aims at the government of it, yet preserves
neither dignity nor character in her methods to obtain it. Were
government a mere manufacture or article of commerce, immaterial by
whom it should be made or sold, we might as well employ her as
another, but when we consider it as the fountain from whence the
general manners and morality of a country take their rise, that the
persons entrusted with the execution thereof are by their serious
example an authority to support these principles, how abominably
absurd is the idea of being hereafter governed by a set of men who
have been guilty of forgery, perjury, treachery, theft and every
species of villany which the lowest wretches on earth could practise
or invent. What greater public curse can befall any country than to be
under such authority, and what greater blessing than to be delivered
therefrom. The soul of any man of sentiment would rise in brave
rebellion against them, and spurn them from the earth.
  The malignant and venomous tempered General Vaughan has amused his
savage fancy in burning the whole town of Kingston, in York
government, and the late governor of that state, Mr. Tryon, in his
letter to General Parsons, has endeavored to justify it and declared
his wish to burn the houses of every committeeman in the country. Such
a confession from one who was once intrusted with the powers of
civil government, is a reproach to the character. But it is the wish
and the declaration of a man whom anguish and disappointment have
driven to despair, and who is daily decaying into the grave with
constitutional rottenness.
  There is not in the compass of language a sufficiency of words to
express the baseness of your king, his ministry and his army. They
have refined upon villany till it wants a name. To the fiercer vices
of former ages they have added the dregs and scummings of the most
finished rascality, and are so completely sunk in serpentine deceit,
that there is not left among them one generous enemy.
  From such men and such masters, may the gracious hand of Heaven
preserve America! And though the sufferings she now endures are heavy,
and severe, they are like straws in the wind compared to the weight of
evils she would feel under the government of your king, and his
pensioned Parliament.
  There is something in meanness which excites a species of resentment
that never subsides, and something in cruelty which stirs up the heart
to the highest agony of human hatred; Britain has filled up both these
characters till no addition can be made, and has not reputation left
with us to obtain credit for the slightest promise. The will of God
has parted us, and the deed is registered for eternity. When she shall
be a spot scarcely visible among the nations, America shall flourish
the favorite of heaven, and the friend of mankind.
  For the domestic happiness of Britain and the peace of the world,
I wish she had not a foot of land but what is circumscribed within her
own island. Extent of dominion has been her ruin, and instead of
civilizing others has brutalized herself. Her late reduction of India,
under Clive and his successors, was not so properly a conquest as an
extermination of mankind. She is the only power who could practise the
prodigal barbarity of tying men to mouths of loaded cannon and blowing
them away. It happens that General Burgoyne, who made the report of
that horrid transaction, in the House of Commons, is now a prisoner
with us, and though an enemy, I can appeal to him for the truth of it,
being confident that he neither can nor will deny it. Yet Clive
received the approbation of the last Parliament.
  When we take a survey of mankind, we cannot help cursing the wretch,
who, to the unavoidable misfortunes of nature, shall wilfully add
the calamities of war. One would think there were evils enough in
the world without studying to increase them, and that life is
sufficiently short without shaking the sand that measures it. The
histories of Alexander, and Charles of Sweden, are the histories of
human devils; a good man cannot think of their actions without
abhorrence, nor of their deaths without rejoicing. To see the bounties
of heaven destroyed, the beautiful face of nature laid waste, and
the choicest works of creation and art tumbled into ruin, would
fetch a curse from the soul of piety itself. But in this country the
aggravation is heightened by a new combination of affecting
circumstances. America was young, and, compared with other
countries, was virtuous. None but a Herod of uncommon malice would
have made war upon infancy and innocence: and none but a people of the
most finished fortitude, dared under those circumstances, have
resisted the tyranny. The natives, or their ancestors, had fled from
the former oppressions of England, and with the industry of bees had
changed a wilderness into a habitable world. To Britain they were
indebted for nothing. The country was the gift of heaven, and God
alone is their Lord and Sovereign.
  The time, sir, will come when you, in a melancholy hour, shall
reckon up your miseries by your murders in America. Life, with you,
begins to wear a clouded aspect. The vision of pleasurable delusion is
wearing away, and changing to the barren wild of age and sorrow. The
poor reflection of having served your king will yield you no
consolation in your parting moments. He will crumble to the same
undistinguished ashes with yourself, and have sins enough of his own
to answer for. It is not the farcical benedictions of a bishop, nor
the cringing hypocrisy of a court of chaplains, nor the formality of
an act of Parliament, that can change guilt into innocence, or make
the punishment one pang the less. You may, perhaps, be unwilling to be
serious, but this destruction of the goods of Providence, this havoc
of the human race, and this sowing the world with mischief, must be
accounted for to him who made and governs it. To us they are only
present sufferings, but to him they are deep rebellions.
  If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful
and offensive war. Most other sins are circumscribed within narrow
limits, that is, the power of one man cannot give them a very
general extension, and many kinds of sins have only a mental existence
from which no infection arises; but he who is the author of a war,
lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a
nation to death. We leave it to England and Indians to boast of
these honors; we feel no thirst for such savage glory; a nobler flame,
a purer spirit animates America. She has taken up the sword of
virtuous defence; she has bravely put herself between Tyranny and
Freedom, between a curse and a blessing, determined to expel the one
and protect the other.
  It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there
was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America
is now engaged. She invaded no land of yours. She hired no mercenaries
to burn your towns, nor Indians to massacre their inhabitants. She
wanted nothing from you, and was indebted for nothing to you: and thus
circumstanced, her defence is honorable and her prosperity is certain.
  Yet it is not on the justice only, but likewise on the importance of
this cause that I ground my seeming enthusiastical confidence of our
success. The vast extension of America makes her of too much value
in the scale of Providence, to be cast like a pearl before swine, at
the feet of an European island; and of much less consequence would
it be that Britain were sunk in the sea than that America should
miscarry. There has been such a chain of extraordinary events in the
discovery of this country at first, in the peopling and planting it
afterwards, in the rearing and nursing it to its present state, and in
the protection of it through the present war, that no man can doubt,
but Providence has some nobler end to accomplish than the
gratification of the petty elector of Hanover, or the ignorant and
insignificant king of Britain.
  As the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Christian
church, so the political persecutions of England will and have already
enriched America with industry, experience, union, and importance.
Before the present era she was a mere chaos of uncemented colonies,
individually exposed to the ravages of the Indians and the invasion of
any power that Britain should be at war with. She had nothing that she
could call her own. Her felicity depended upon accident. The
convulsions of Europe might have thrown her from one conqueror to
another, till she had been the slave of all, and ruined by every
one; for until she had spirit enough to become her own master, there
was no knowing to which master she should belong. That period, thank
God, is past, and she is no longer the dependent, disunited colonies
of Britain, but the independent and United States of America,
knowing no master but heaven and herself. You, or your king, may
call this "delusion," "rebellion," or what name you please. To us it
is perfectly indifferent. The issue will determine the character,
and time will give it a name as lasting as his own.
  You have now, sir, tried the fate of three campaigns, and can
fully declare to England, that nothing is to be got on your part,
but blows and broken bones, and nothing on hers but waste of trade and
credit, and an increase of poverty and taxes. You are now only where
you might have been two years ago, without the loss of a single
ship, and yet not a step more forward towards the conquest of the
continent; because, as I have already hinted, "an army in a city can
never be a conquering army." The full amount of your losses, since the
beginning of the war, exceeds twenty thousand men, besides millions of
treasure, for which you have nothing in exchange. Our expenses, though
great, are circulated within ourselves. Yours is a direct sinking of
money, and that from both ends at once; first, in hiring troops out of
the nation, and in paying them afterwards, because the money in
neither case can return to Britain. We are already in possession of
the prize, you only in pursuit of it. To us it is a real treasure,
to you it would be only an empty triumph. Our expenses will repay
themselves with tenfold interest, while yours entail upon you
everlasting poverty.
  Take a review, sir, of the ground which you have gone over, and
let it teach you policy, if it cannot honesty. You stand but on a very
tottering foundation. A change of the ministry in England may probably
bring your measures into question, and your head to the block.
Clive, with all his successes, had some difficulty in escaping, and
yours being all a war of losses, will afford you less pretensions, and
your enemies more grounds for impeachment.
  Go home, sir, and endeavor to save the remains of your ruined
country, by a just representation of the madness of her measures. A
few moments, well applied, may yet preserve her from political
destruction. I am not one of those who wish to see Europe in a
flame, because I am persuaded that such an event will not shorten
the war. The rupture, at present, is confined between the two powers
of America and England. England finds that she cannot conquer America,
and America has no wish to conquer England. You are fighting for
what you can never obtain, and we defending what we never mean to part
with. A few words, therefore, settle the bargain. Let England mind her
own business and we will mind ours. Govern yourselves, and we will
govern ourselves. You may then trade where you please unmolested by
us, and we will trade where we please unmolested by you; and such
articles as we can purchase of each other better than elsewhere may be
mutually done. If it were possible that you could carry on the war for
twenty years you must still come to this point at last, or worse,
and the sooner you think of it the better it will be for you.
  My official situation enables me to know the repeated insults
which Britain is obliged to put up with from foreign powers, and the
wretched shifts that she is driven to, to gloss them over. Her reduced
strength and exhausted coffers in a three years' war with America, has
given a powerful superiority to France and Spain. She is not now a
match for them. But if neither councils can prevail on her to think,
nor sufferings awaken her to reason, she must e'en go on, till the
honor of England becomes a proverb of contempt, and Europe dub her the
Land of Fools.
  I am, Sir, with every wish for an honorable peace,
    Your friend, enemy, and countryman,
                                                   COMMON SENSE.

                      TO THE INHABITANTS OF AMERICA.

  WITH all the pleasure with which a man exchanges bad company for
good, I take my leave of Sir William and return to you. It is now
nearly three years since the tyranny of Britain received its first
repulse by the arms of America. A period which has given birth to a
new world, and erected a monument to the folly of the old.
  I cannot help being sometimes surprised at the complimentary
references which I have seen and heard made to ancient histories and
transactions. The wisdom, civil governments, and sense of honor of the
states of Greece and Rome, are frequently held up as objects of
excellence and imitation. Mankind have lived to very little purpose,
if, at this period of the world, they must go two or three thousand
years back for lessons and examples. We do great injustice to
ourselves by placing them in such a superior line. We have no just
authority for it, neither can we tell why it is that we should suppose
ourselves inferior.
  Could the mist of antiquity be cleared away, and men and things be
viewed as they really were, it is more than probable that they would
admire us, rather than we them. America has surmounted a greater
variety and combination of difficulties, than, I believe, ever fell to
the share of any one people, in the same space of time, and has
replenished the world with more useful knowledge and sounder maxims of
civil government than were ever produced in any age before. Had it not
been for America, there had been no such thing as freedom left
throughout the whole universe. England has lost hers in a long chain
of right reasoning from wrong principles, and it is from this country,
now, that she must learn the resolution to redress herself, and the
wisdom how to accomplish it.
  The Grecians and Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit of
liberty but not the principle, for at the time that they were
determined not to be slaves themselves, they employed their power to
enslave the rest of mankind. But this distinguished era is blotted
by no one misanthropical vice. In short, if the principle on which the
cause is founded, the universal blessings that are to arise from it,
the difficulties that accompanied it, the wisdom with which it has
been debated, the fortitude by which it has been supported, the
strength of the power which we had to oppose, and the condition in
which we undertook it, be all taken in one view, we may justly style
it the most virtuous and illustrious revolution that ever graced the
history of mankind.
  A good opinion of ourselves is exceedingly necessary in private
life, but absolutely necessary in public life, and of the utmost
importance in supporting national character. I have no notion of
yielding the palm of the United States to any Grecians or Romans
that were ever born. We have equalled the bravest in times of
danger, and excelled the wisest in construction of civil governments.
  From this agreeable eminence let us take a review of present
affairs. The spirit of corruption is so inseparably interwoven with
British politics, that their ministry suppose all mankind are governed
by the same motives. They have no idea of a people submitting even
to temporary inconvenience from an attachment to rights and
privileges. Their plans of business are calculated by the hour and for
the hour, and are uniform in nothing but the corruption which gives
them birth. They never had, neither have they at this time, any
regular plan for the conquest of America by arms. They know not how to
go about it, neither have they power to effect it if they did know.
The thing is not within the compass of human practicability, for
America is too extensive either to be fully conquered or passively
defended. But she may be actively defended by defeating or making
prisoners of the army that invades her. And this is the only system of
defence that can be effectual in a large country.
  There is something in a war carried on by invasion which makes it
differ in circumstances from any other mode of war, because he who
conducts it cannot tell whether the ground he gains be for him, or
against him, when he first obtains it. In the winter of 1776,
General Howe marched with an air of victory through the Jerseys, the
consequence of which was his defeat; and General Burgoyne at
Saratoga experienced the same fate from the same cause. The Spaniards,
about two years ago, were defeated by the Algerines in the same
manner, that is, their first triumphs became a trap in which they were
totally routed. And whoever will attend to the circumstances and
events of a war carried on by invasion, will find, that any invader,
in order to be finally conquered must first begin to conquer.
  I confess myself one of those who believe the loss of Philadelphia
to be attended with more advantages than injuries. The case stood
thus: The enemy imagined Philadelphia to be of more importance to us
than it really was; for we all know that it had long ceased to be a
port: not a cargo of goods had been brought into it for near a
twelvemonth, nor any fixed manufactories, nor even ship-building,
carried on in it; yet as the enemy believed the conquest of it to be
practicable, and to that belief added the absurd idea that the soul of
all America was centred there, and would be conquered there, it
naturally follows that their possession of it, by not answering the
end proposed, must break up the plans they had so foolishly gone upon,
and either oblige them to form a new one, for which their present
strength is not sufficient, or to give over the attempt.
  We never had so small an army to fight against, nor so fair an
opportunity of final success as now. The death wound is already given.
The day is ours if we follow it up. The enemy, by his situation, is
within our reach, and by his reduced strength is within our power. The
ministers of Britain may rage as they please, but our part is to
conquer their armies. Let them wrangle and welcome, but let, it not
draw our attention from the one thing needful. Here, in this spot is
our own business to be accomplished, our felicity secured. What we
have now to do is as clear as light, and the way to do it is as
straight as a line. It needs not to be commented upon, yet, in order
to be perfectly understood I will put a case that cannot admit of a
mistake.
  Had the armies under Generals Howe and Burgoyne been united, and
taken post at Germantown, and had the northern army under General
Gates been joined to that under General Washington, at Whitemarsh, the
consequence would have been a general action; and if in that action we
had killed and taken the same number of officers and men, that is,
between nine and ten thousand, with the same quantity of artillery,
arms, stores, etc., as have been taken at the northward, and obliged
General Howe with the remains of his army, that is, with the same
number he now commands, to take shelter in Philadelphia, we should
certainly have thought ourselves the greatest heroes in the world; and
should, as soon as the season permitted, have collected together all
the force of the continent and laid siege to the city, for it requires
a much greater force to besiege an enemy in a town than to defeat
him in the field. The case now is just the same as if it had been
produced by the means I have here supposed. Between nine and ten
thousand have been killed and taken, all their stores are in our
possession, and General Howe, in consequence of that victory, has
thrown himself for shelter into Philadelphia. He, or his trifling
friend Galloway, may form what pretences they please, yet no just
reason can be given for their going into winter quarters so early as
the 19th of October, but their apprehensions of a defeat if they
continued out, or their conscious inability of keeping the field
with safety. I see no advantage which can arise to America by
hunting the enemy from state to state. It is a triumph without a
prize, and wholly unworthy the attention of a people determined to
conquer. Neither can any state promise itself security while the enemy
remains in a condition to transport themselves from one part of the
continent to another. Howe, likewise, cannot conquer where we have
no army to oppose, therefore any such removals in him are mean and
cowardly, and reduces Britain to a common pilferer. If he retreats
from Philadelphia, he will be despised; if he stays, he may be shut up
and starved out, and the country, if he advances into it, may become
his Saratoga. He has his choice of evils and we of opportunities. If
he moves early, it is not only a sign but a proof that he expects no
reinforcement, and his delay will prove that he either waits for the
arrival of a plan to go upon, or force to execute it, or both; in
which case our strength will increase more than his, therefore in
any case we cannot be wrong if we do but proceed.
  The particular condition of Pennsylvania deserves the attention of
all the other States. Her military strength must not be estimated by
the number of inhabitants. Here are men of all nations, characters,
professions and interests. Here are the firmest Whigs, surviving, like
sparks in the ocean, unquenched and uncooled in the midst of
discouragement and disaffection. Here are men losing their all with
cheerfulness, and collecting fire and fortitude from the flames of
their own estates. Here are others skulking in secret, many making a
market of the times, and numbers who are changing to Whig or Tory with
the circumstances of every day.
  It is by a mere dint of fortitude and perseverance that the Whigs of
this State have been able to maintain so good a countenance, and do
even what they have done. We want help, and the sooner it can arrive
the more effectual it will be. The invaded State, be it which it
may, will always feel an additional burden upon its back, and be
hard set to support its civil power with sufficient authority; and
this difficulty will rise or fall, in proportion as the other states
throw in their assistance to the common cause.
  The enemy will most probably make many manoeuvres at the opening
of this campaign, to amuse and draw off the attention of the several
States from the one thing needful. We may expect to hear of alarms and
pretended expeditions to this place and that place, to the
southward, the eastward, and the northward, all intended to prevent
our forming into one formidable body. The less the enemy's strength
is, the more subtleties of this kind will they make use of. Their
existence depends upon it, because the force of America, when
collected, is sufficient to swallow their present army up. It is
therefore our business to make short work of it, by bending our
whole attention to this one principal point, for the instant that
the main body under General Howe is defeated, all the inferior
alarms throughout the continent, like so many shadows, will follow his
downfall.
  The only way to finish a war with the least possible bloodshed, or
perhaps without any, is to collect an army, against the power of which
the enemy shall have no chance. By not doing this, we prolong the war,
and double both the calamities and expenses of it. What a rich and
happy country would America be, were she, by a vigorous exertion, to
reduce Howe as she has reduced Burgoyne. Her currency would rise to
millions beyond its present value. Every man would be rich, and
every man would have it in his power to be happy. And why not do these
things? What is there to hinder? America is her own mistress and can
do what she pleases.
  If we had not at this time a man in the field, we could,
nevertheless, raise an army in a few weeks sufficient to overwhelm all
the force which General Howe at present commands. Vigor and
determination will do anything and everything. We began the war with
this kind of spirit, why not end it with the same? Here, gentlemen, is
the enemy. Here is the army. The interest, the happiness of all
America, is centred in this half ruined spot. Come and help us. Here
are laurels, come and share them. Here are Tories, come and help us to
expel them. Here are Whigs that will make you welcome, and enemies
that dread your coming.
  The worst of all policies is that of doing things by halves.
Penny-wise and pound-foolish, has been the ruin of thousands. The
present spring, if rightly improved, will free us from our troubles,
and save us the expense of millions. We have now only one army to cope
with. No opportunity can be fairer; no prospect more promising. I
shall conclude this paper with a few outlines of a plan, either for
filling up the battalions with expedition, or for raising an
additional force, for any limited time, on any sudden emergency.
  That in which every man is interested, is every man's duty to
support. And any burden which falls equally on all men, and from which
every man is to receive an equal benefit, is consistent with the
most perfect ideas of liberty. I would wish to revive something of
that virtuous ambition which first called America into the field. Then
every man was eager to do his part, and perhaps the principal reason
why we have in any degree fallen therefrom, is because we did not
set a right value by it at first, but left it to blaze out of
itself, instead of regulating and preserving it by just proportions of
rest and service.
  Suppose any State whose number of effective inhabitants was
80,000, should be required to furnish 3,200 men towards the defence of
the continent on any sudden emergency.
  1st, Let the whole number of effective inhabitants be divided into
hundreds; then if each of those hundreds turn out four men, the
whole number of 3,200 will be had.
  2d, Let the name of each hundred men be entered in a book, and let
four dollars be collected from each man, with as much more as any of
the gentlemen, whose abilities can afford it, shall please to throw
in, which gifts likewise shall be entered against the names of the
donors.
  3d, Let the sums so collected be offered as a present, over and
above the bounty of twenty dollars, to any four who may be inclined to
propose themselves as volunteers: if more than four offer, the
majority of the subscribers present shall determine which; if none
offer, then four out of the hundred shall be taken by lot, who shall
be entitled to the said sums, and shall either go, or provide others
that will, in the space of six days.
  4th, As it will always happen that in the space of ground on which a
hundred men shall live, there will be always a number of persons
who, by age and infirmity, are incapable of doing personal service,
and as such persons are generally possessed of the greatest part of
property in any country, their portion of service, therefore, will
be to furnish each man with a blanket, which will make a regimental
coat, jacket, and breeches, or clothes in lieu thereof, and another
for a watch cloak, and two pair of shoes; for however choice people
may be of these things matters not in cases of this kind; those who
live always in houses can find many ways to keep themselves warm,
but it is a shame and a sin to suffer a soldier in the field to want a
blanket while there is one in the country.
  Should the clothing not be wanted, the superannuated or infirm
persons possessing property, may, in lieu thereof, throw in their
money subscriptions towards increasing the bounty; for though age will
naturally exempt a person from personal service, it cannot exempt
him from his share of the charge, because the men are raised for the
defence of property and liberty jointly.
  There never was a scheme against which objections might not be
raised. But this alone is not a sufficient reason for rejection. The
only line to judge truly upon is to draw out and admit all the
objections which can fairly be made, and place against them all the
contrary qualities, conveniences and advantages, then by striking a
balance you come at the true character of any scheme, principle or
position.
  The most material advantages of the plan here proposed are, ease,
expedition, and cheapness; yet the men so raised get a much larger
bounty than is any where at present given; because all the expenses,
extravagance, and consequent idleness of recruiting are saved or
prevented. The country incurs no new debt nor interest thereon; the
whole matter being all settled at once and entirely done with. It is a
subscription answering all the purposes of a tax, without either the
charge or trouble of collecting. The men are ready for the field
with the greatest possible expedition, because it becomes the duty
of the inhabitants themselves, in every part of the country, to find
their proportion of men instead of leaving it to a recruiting
sergeant, who, be he ever so industrious, cannot know always where
to apply.
  I do not propose this as a regular digested plan, neither will the
limits of this paper admit of any further remarks upon it. I believe
it to be a hint capable of much improvement, and as such submit it
to the public.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  LANCASTER, March 21, 1778.
                                 VI.

            TO THE EARL OF CARLISLE, GENERAL CLINTON, AND
              WILLIAM EDEN, ESQ., BRITISH COMMISSIONERS
                             AT NEW YORK.

  THERE is a dignity in the warm passions of a Whig, which is never to
be found in the cold malice of a Tory. In the one nature is only
heated- in the other she is poisoned. The instant the former has it in
his power to punish, he feels a disposition to forgive; but the canine
venom of the latter knows no relief but revenge. This general
distinction will, I believe, apply in all cases, and suits as well the
meridian of England as America.
  As I presume your last proclamation will undergo the strictures of
other pens, I shall confine my remarks to only a few parts thereof.
All that you have said might have been comprised in half the
compass. It is tedious and unmeaning, and only a repetition of your
former follies, with here and there an offensive aggravation. Your
cargo of pardons will have no market. It is unfashionable to look at
them- even speculation is at an end. They have become a perfect
drug, and no way calculated for the climate.
  In the course of your proclamation you say, "The policy as well as
the benevolence of Great Britain have thus far checked the extremes of
war, when they tended to distress a people still considered as their
fellow subjects, and to desolate a country shortly to become again a
source of mutual advantage." What you mean by "the benevolence of
Great Britain" is to me inconceivable. To put a plain question; do you
consider yourselves men or devils? For until this point is settled, no
determinate sense can be put upon the expression. You have already
equalled and in many cases excelled, the savages of either Indies; and
if you have yet a cruelty in store you must have imported it,
unmixed with every human material, from the original warehouse of
hell.
  To the interposition of Providence, and her blessings on our
endeavors, and not to British benevolence are we indebted for the
short chain that limits your ravages. Remember you do not, at this
time, command a foot of land on the continent of America. Staten
Island, York Island, a small part of Long Island, and Rhode Island,
circumscribe your power; and even those you hold at the expense of the
West Indies. To avoid a defeat, or prevent a desertion of your troops,
you have taken up your quarters in holes and corners of inaccessible
security; and in order to conceal what every one can perceive, you now
endeavor to impose your weakness upon us for an act of mercy. If you
think to succeed by such shadowy devices, you are but infants in the
political world; you have the A, B, C, of stratagem yet to learn,
and are wholly ignorant of the people you have to contend with. Like
men in a state of intoxication, you forget that the rest of the
world have eyes, and that the same stupidity which conceals you from
yourselves exposes you to their satire and contempt.
  The paragraph which I have quoted, stands as an introduction to
the following: "But when that country [America] professes the
unnatural design, not only of estranging herself from us, but of
mortgaging herself and her resources to our enemies, the whole contest
is changed: and the question is how far Great Britain may, by every
means in her power, destroy or render useless, a connection
contrived for her ruin, and the aggrandizement of France. Under such
circumstances, the laws of self-preservation must direct the conduct
of Britain, and, if the British colonies are to become an accession to
France, will direct her to render that accession of as little avail as
possible to her enemy."
  I consider you in this declaration, like madmen biting in the hour
of death. It contains likewise a fraudulent meanness; for, in order to
justify a barbarous conclusion, you have advanced a false position.
The treaty we have formed with France is open, noble, and generous. It
is true policy, founded on sound philosophy, and neither a surrender
or mortgage, as you would scandalously insinuate. I have seen every
article, and speak from positive knowledge. In France, we have found
an affectionate friend and faithful ally; in Britain, we have found
nothing but tyranny, cruelty, and infidelity.
  But the happiness is, that the mischief you threaten, is not in your
power to execute; and if it were, the punishment would return upon you
in a ten-fold degree. The humanity of America has hitherto
restrained her from acts of retaliation, and the affection she retains
for many individuals in England, who have fed, clothed and comforted
her prisoners, has, to the present day, warded off her resentment, and
operated as a screen to the whole. But even these considerations
must cease, when national objects interfere and oppose them.
Repeated aggravations will provoke a retort, and policy justify the
measure. We mean now to take you seriously up upon your own ground and
principle, and as you do, so shall you be done by.
  You ought to know, gentlemen, that England and Scotland, are far
more exposed to incendiary desolation than America, in her present
state, can possibly be. We occupy a country, with but few towns, and
whose riches consist in land and annual produce. The two last can
suffer but little, and that only within a very limited compass. In
Britain it is otherwise. Her wealth lies chiefly in cities and large
towns, the depositories of manufactures and fleets of merchantmen.
There is not a nobleman's country seat but may be laid in ashes by a
single person. Your own may probably contribute to the proof: in
short, there is no evil which cannot be returned when you come to
incendiary mischief. The ships in the Thames, may certainly be as
easily set on fire, as the temporary bridge was a few years ago; yet
of that affair no discovery was ever made; and the loss you would
sustain by such an event, executed at a proper season, is infinitely
greater than any you can inflict. The East India House and the Bank,
neither are nor can be secure from this sort of destruction, and, as
Dr. Price justly observes, a fire at the latter would bankrupt the
nation. It has never been the custom of France and England when at
war, to make those havocs on each other, because the ease with which
they could retaliate rendered it as impolitic as if each had destroyed
his own.
  But think not, gentlemen, that our distance secures you, or our
invention fails us. We can much easier accomplish such a point than
any nation in Europe. We talk the same language, dress in the same
habit, and appear with the same manners as yourselves. We can pass
from one part of England to another unsuspected; many of us are as
well acquainted with the country as you are, and should you
impolitically provoke us, you will most assuredly lament the effects
of it. Mischiefs of this kind require no army to execute them. The
means are obvious, and the opportunities unguardable. I hold up a
warning to our senses, if you have any left, and "to the unhappy
people likewise, whose affairs are committed to you."* I call not with
the rancor of an enemy, but the earnestness of a friend, on the
deluded people of England, lest, between your blunders and theirs,
they sink beneath the evils contrived for us.

  * General [Sir H.] Clinton's letter to Congress.

  "He who lives in a glass house," says a Spanish proverb, "should
never begin throwing stones." This, gentlemen, is exactly your case,
and you must be the most ignorant of mankind, or suppose us so, not to
see on which side the balance of accounts will fall. There are many
other modes of retaliation, which, for several reasons, I choose not
to mention. But be assured of this, that the instant you put your
threat into execution, a counter-blow will follow it. If you openly
profess yourselves savages, it is high time we should treat you as
such, and if nothing but distress can recover you to reason, to punish
will become an office of charity.
  While your fleet lay last winter in the Delaware, I offered my
service to the Pennsylvania Navy Board then at Trenton, as one who
would make a party with them, or any four or five gentlemen, on an
expedition down the river to set fire to it, and though it was not
then accepted, nor the thing personally attempted, it is more than
probable that your own folly will provoke a much more ruinous act. Say
not when mischief is done, that you had not warning, and remember that
we do not begin it, but mean to repay it. Thus much for your savage
and impolitic threat.
  In another part of your proclamation you say, "But if the honors
of a military life are become the object of the Americans, let them
seek those honors under the banners of their rightful sovereign, and
in fighting the battles of the united British Empire, against our late
mutual and natural enemies." Surely! the union of absurdity with
madness was never marked in more distinguishable lines than these.
Your rightful sovereign, as you call him, may do well enough for
you, who dare not inquire into the humble capacities of the man; but
we, who estimate persons and things by their real worth, cannot suffer
our judgments to be so imposed upon; and unless it is your wish to see
him exposed, it ought to be your endeavor to keep him out of sight.
The less you have to say about him the better. We have done with
him, and that ought to be answer enough. You have been often told
so. Strange! that the answer must be so often repeated. You go
a-begging with your king as with a brat, or with some unsaleable
commodity you were tired of; and though every body tells you no, no,
still you keep hawking him about. But there is one that will have
him in a little time, and as we have no inclination to disappoint
you of a customer, we bid nothing for him.
  The impertinent folly of the paragraph that I have just quoted,
deserves no other notice than to be laughed at and thrown by, but
the principle on which it is founded is detestable. We are invited
to submit to a man who has attempted by every cruelty to destroy us,
and to join him in making war against France, who is already at war
against him for our support.
  Can Bedlam, in concert with Lucifer, form a more mad and devilish
request? Were it possible a people could sink into such apostacy
they would deserve to be swept from the earth like the inhabitants
of Sodom and Gomorrah. The proposition is an universal affront to
the rank which man holds in the creation, and an indignity to him
who placed him there. It supposes him made up without a spark of
honor, and under no obligation to God or man.
  What sort of men or Christians must you suppose the Americans to be,
who, after seeing their most humble petitions insultingly rejected;
the most grievous laws passed to distress them in every quarter; an
undeclared war let loose upon them, and Indians and negroes invited to
the slaughter; who, after seeing their kinsmen murdered, their
fellow citizens starved to death in prisons, and their houses and
property destroyed and burned; who, after the most serious appeals
to heaven, the most solemn abjuration by oath of all government
connected with you, and the most heart-felt pledges and
protestations of faith to each other; and who, after soliciting the
friendship, and entering into alliances with other nations, should
at last break through all these obligations, civil and divine, by
complying with your horrid and infernal proposal. Ought we ever
after to be considered as a part of the human race? Or ought we not
rather to be blotted from the society of mankind, and become a
spectacle of misery to the world? But there is something in
corruption, which, like a jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself
to the object it looks upon, and sees every thing stained and
impure; for unless you were capable of such conduct yourselves, you
would never have supposed such a character in us. The offer fixes your
infamy. It exhibits you as a nation without faith; with whom oaths and
treaties are considered as trifles, and the breaking them as the
breaking of a bubble. Regard to decency, or to rank, might have taught
you better; or pride inspired you, though virtue could not. There is
not left a step in the degradation of character to which you can now
descend; you have put your foot on the ground floor, and the key of
the dungeon is turned upon you.
  That the invitation may want nothing of being a complete monster,
you have thought proper to finish it with an assertion which has no
foundation, either in fact or philosophy; and as Mr. Ferguson, your
secretary, is a man of letters, and has made civil society his
study, and published a treatise on that subject, I address this part
to him.
  In the close of the paragraph which I last quoted, France is
styled the "natural enemy" of England, and by way of lugging us into
some strange idea, she is styled "the late mutual and natural enemy"
of both countries. I deny that she ever was the natural enemy of
either; and that there does not exist in nature such a principle.
The expression is an unmeaning barbarism, and wholly
unphilosophical, when applied to beings of the same species, let their
station in the creation be what it may. We have a perfect idea of a
natural enemy when we think of the devil, because the enmity is
perpetual, unalterable and unabateable. It admits, neither of peace,
truce, or treaty; consequently the warfare is eternal, and therefore
it is natural. But man with man cannot arrange in the same opposition.
Their quarrels are accidental and equivocally created. They become
friends or enemies as the change of temper, or the cast of interest
inclines them. The Creator of man did not constitute them the
natural enemy of each other. He has not made any one order of beings
so. Even wolves may quarrel, still they herd together. If any two
nations are so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not
nature but custom, and the offence frequently originates with the
accuser. England is as truly the natural enemy of France, as France is
of England, and perhaps more so. Separated from the rest of Europe,
she has contracted an unsocial habit of manners, and imagines in
others the jealousy she creates in herself. Never long satisfied
with peace, she supposes the discontent universal, and buoyed up
with her own importance, conceives herself the only object pointed at.
The expression has been often used, and always with a fraudulent
design; for when the idea of a natural enemy is conceived, it prevents
all other inquiries, and the real cause of the quarrel is hidden in
the universality of the conceit. Men start at the notion of a
natural enemy, and ask no other question. The cry obtains credit
like the alarm of a mad dog, and is one of those kind of tricks,
which, by operating on the common passions, secures their interest
through their folly.
  But we, sir, are not to be thus imposed upon. We live in a large
world, and have extended our ideas beyond the limits and prejudices of
an island. We hold out the right hand of friendship to all the
universe, and we conceive that there is a sociality in the manners
of France, which is much better disposed to peace and negotiation than
that of England, and until the latter becomes more civilized, she
cannot expect to live long at peace with any power. Her common
language is vulgar and offensive, and children suck in with their milk
the rudiments of insult- "The arm of Britain! The mighty arm of
Britain! Britain that shakes the earth to its center and its poles!
The scourge of France! The terror of the world! That governs with a
nod, and pours down vengeance like a God." This language neither makes
a nation great or little; but it shows a savageness of manners, and
has a tendency to keep national animosity alive. The entertainments of
the stage are calculated to the same end, and almost every public
exhibition is tinctured with insult. Yet England is always in dread of
France,- terrified at the apprehension of an invasion, suspicious of
being outwitted in a treaty, and privately cringing though she is
publicly offending. Let her, therefore, reform her manners and do
justice, and she will find the idea of a natural enemy to be only a
phantom of her own imagination.
  Little did I think, at this period of the war, to see a proclamation
which could promise you no one useful purpose whatever, and tend
only to expose you. One would think that you were just awakened from a
four years' dream, and knew nothing of what had passed in the
interval. Is this a time to be offering pardons, or renewing the
long forgotten subjects of charters and taxation? Is it worth your
while, after every force has failed you, to retreat under the
shelter of argument and persuasion? Or can you think that we, with
nearly half your army prisoners, and in alliance with France, are to
be begged or threatened into submission by a piece of paper? But as
commissioners at a hundred pounds sterling a week each, you conceive
yourselves bound to do something, and the genius of ill-fortune told
you, that you must write.
  For my own part, I have not put pen to paper these several months.
Convinced of our superiority by the issue of every campaign, I was
inclined to hope, that that which all the rest of the world now see,
would become visible to you, and therefore felt unwilling to ruffle
your temper by fretting you with repetitions and discoveries. There
have been intervals of hesitation in your conduct, from which it
seemed a pity to disturb you, and a charity to leave you to
yourselves. You have often stopped, as if you intended to think, but
your thoughts have ever been too early or too late.
  There was a time when Britain disdained to answer, or even hear a
petition from America. That time is past and she in her turn is
petitioning our acceptance. We now stand on higher ground, and offer
her peace; and the time will come when she, perhaps in vain, will
ask it from us. The latter case is as probable as the former ever was.
She cannot refuse to acknowledge our independence with greater
obstinacy than she before refused to repeal her laws; and if America
alone could bring her to the one, united with France she will reduce
her to the other. There is something in obstinacy which differs from
every other passion; whenever it fails it never recovers, but either
breaks like iron, or crumbles sulkily away like a fractured arch. Most
other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest; their suffering
and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound
is mortal. You have already begun to give it up, and you will, from
the natural construction of the vice, find yourselves both obliged and
inclined to do so.
  If you look back you see nothing but loss and disgrace. If you
look forward the same scene continues, and the close is an
impenetrable gloom. You may plan and execute little mischiefs, but are
they worth the expense they cost you, or will such partial evils
have any effect on the general cause? Your expedition to Egg Harbor,
will be felt at a distance like an attack upon a hen-roost, and expose
you in Europe, with a sort of childish frenzy. Is it worth while to
keep an army to protect you in writing proclamations, or to get once a
year into winter quarters? Possessing yourselves of towns is not
conquest, but convenience, and in which you will one day or other be
trepanned. Your retreat from Philadelphia, was only a timely escape,
and your next expedition may be less fortunate.
  It would puzzle all the politicians in the universe to conceive what
you stay for, or why you should have stayed so long. You are
prosecuting a war in which you confess you have neither object nor
hope, and that conquest, could it be effected, would not repay the
charges: in the mean while the rest of your affairs are running to
ruin, and a European war kindling against you. In such a situation,
there is neither doubt nor difficulty; the first rudiments of reason
will determine the choice, for if peace can be procured with more
advantages than even a conquest can be obtained, he must be an idiot
indeed that hesitates.
  But you are probably buoyed up by a set of wretched mortals, who,
having deceived themselves, are cringing, with the duplicity of a
spaniel, for a little temporary bread. Those men will tell you just
what you please. It is their interest to amuse, in order to lengthen
out their protection. They study to keep you amongst them for that
very purpose; and in proportion as you disregard their advice, and
grow callous to their complaints, they will stretch into
improbability, and season their flattery the higher. Characters like
these are to be found in every country, and every country will despise
them.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 20, 1778.
                                 VII.

                      TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

  THERE are stages in the business of serious life in which to amuse
is cruel, but to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little
consequence, in the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or
submit, by a kind of mutual consent, to the impositions of each other.
That England has long been under the influence of delusion or mistake,
needs no other proof than the unexpected and wretched situation that
she is now involved in: and so powerful has been the influence, that
no provision was ever made or thought of against the misfortune,
because the possibility of its happening was never conceived.
  The general and successful resistance of America, the conquest of
Burgoyne, and a war in France, were treated in parliament as the
dreams of a discontented opposition, or a distempered imagination.
They were beheld as objects unworthy of a serious thought, and the
bare intimation of them afforded the ministry a triumph of laughter.
Short triumph indeed! For everything which has been predicted has
happened, and all that was promised has failed. A long series of
politics so remarkably distinguished by a succession of misfortunes,
without one alleviating turn, must certainly have something in it
systematically wrong. It is sufficient to awaken the most credulous
into suspicion, and the most obstinate into thought. Either the
means in your power are insufficient, or the measures ill planned;
either the execution has been bad, or the thing attempted
impracticable; or, to speak more emphatically, either you are not able
or heaven is not willing. For, why is it that you have not conquered
us? Who, or what has prevented you? You have had every opportunity
that you could desire, and succeeded to your utmost wish in every
preparatory means. Your fleets and armies have arrived in America
without an accident. No uncommon fortune has intervened. No foreign
nation has interfered until the time which you had allotted for
victory was passed. The opposition, either in or out of parliament,
neither disconcerted your measures, retarded or diminished your force.
They only foretold your fate. Every ministerial scheme was carried
with as high a hand as if the whole nation had been unanimous. Every
thing wanted was asked for, and every thing asked for was granted.
  A greater force was not within the compass of your abilities to
send, and the time you sent it was of all others the most favorable.
You were then at rest with the whole world beside. You had the range
of every court in Europe uncontradicted by us. You amused us with a
tale of commissioners of peace, and under that disguise collected a
numerous army and came almost unexpectedly upon us. The force was much
greater than we looked for; and that which we had to oppose it with,
was unequal in numbers, badly armed, and poorly disciplined; beside
which, it was embodied only for a short time, and expired within a few
months after your arrival. We had governments to form; measures to
concert; an army to train, and every necessary article to import or to
create. Our non-importation scheme had exhausted our stores, and
your command by sea intercepted our supplies. We were a people
unknown, and unconnected with the political world, and strangers to
the disposition of foreign powers. Could you possibly wish for a
more favorable conjunction of circumstances? Yet all these have
happened and passed away, and, as it were, left you with a laugh.
There are likewise, events of such an original nativity as can never
happen again, unless a new world should arise from the ocean.
  If any thing can be a lesson to presumption, surely the
circumstances of this war will have their effect. Had Britain been
defeated by any European power, her pride would have drawn consolation
from the importance of her conquerors; but in the present case, she is
excelled by those that she affected to despise, and her own opinions
retorting upon herself, become an aggravation of her disgrace.
Misfortune and experience are lost upon mankind, when they produce
neither reflection nor reformation. Evils, like poisons, have their
uses, and there are diseases which no other remedy can reach. It has
been the crime and folly of England to suppose herself invincible, and
that, without acknowledging or perceiving that a full third of her
strength was drawn from the country she is now at war with. The arm of
Britain has been spoken of as the arm of the Almighty, and she has
lived of late as if she thought the whole world created for her
diversion. Her politics, instead of civilizing, has tended to
brutalize mankind, and under the vain, unmeaning title of "Defender of
the Faith," she has made war like an Indian against the religion of
humanity. Her cruelties in the East Indies will never be forgotten,
and it is somewhat remarkable that the produce of that ruined country,
transported to America, should there kindle up a war to punish the
destroyer. The chain is continued, though with a mysterious kind of
uniformity both in the crime and the punishment. The latter runs
parallel with the former, and time and fate will give it a perfect
illustration.
  When information is withheld, ignorance becomes a reasonable excuse;
and one would charitably hope that the people of England do not
encourage cruelty from choice but from mistake. Their recluse
situation, surrounded by the sea, preserves them from the calamities
of war, and keeps them in the dark as to the conduct of their own
armies. They see not, therefore they feel not. They tell the tale that
is told them and believe it, and accustomed to no other news than
their own, they receive it, stripped of its horrors and prepared for
the palate of the nation, through the channel of the London Gazette.
They are made to believe that their generals and armies differ from
those of other nations, and have nothing of rudeness or barbarity in
them. They suppose them what they wish them to be. They feel a
disgrace in thinking otherwise, and naturally encourage the belief
from a partiality to themselves. There was a time when I felt the same
prejudices, and reasoned from the same errors; but experience, sad and
painful experience, has taught me better. What the conduct of former
armies was, I know not, but what the conduct of the present is, I well
know. It is low, cruel, indolent and profligate; and had the people of
America no other cause for separation than what the army has
occasioned, that alone is cause sufficient.
  The field of politics in England is far more extensive than that
of news. Men have a right to reason for themselves, and though they
cannot contradict the intelligence in the London Gazette, they may
frame upon it what sentiments they please. But the misfortune is, that
a general ignorance has prevailed over the whole nation respecting
America. The ministry and the minority have both been wrong. The
former was always so, the latter only lately so. Politics, to be
executively right, must have a unity of means and time, and a defect
in either overthrows the whole. The ministry rejected the plans of the
minority while they were practicable, and joined in them when they
became impracticable. From wrong measures they got into wrong time,
and have now completed the circle of absurdity by closing it upon
themselves.
  I happened to come to America a few months before the breaking out
of hostilities. I found the disposition of the people such, that
they might have been led by a thread and governed by a reed. Their
suspicion was quick and penetrating, but their attachment to Britain
was obstinate, and it was at that time a kind of treason to speak
against it. They disliked the ministry, but they esteemed the
nation. Their idea of grievance operated without resentment, and their
single object was reconciliation. Bad as I believed the ministry to
be, I never conceived them capable of a measure so rash and wicked
as the commencing of hostilities; much less did I imagine the nation
would encourage it. I viewed the dispute as a kind of law-suit, in
which I supposed the parties would find a way either to decide or
settle it. I had no thoughts of independence or of arms. The world
could not then have persuaded me that I should be either a soldier
or an author. If I had any talents for either, they were buried in me,
and might ever have continued so, had not the necessity of the times
dragged and driven them into action. I had formed my plan of life, and
conceiving myself happy, wished every body else so. But when the
country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my
ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir. Those
who had been long settled had something to defend; those who had
just come had something to pursue; and the call and the concern was
equal and universal. For in a country where all men were once
adventurers, the difference of a few years in their arrival could make
none in their right.
  The breaking out of hostilities opened a new suspicion in the
politics of America, which, though at that time very rare, has since
been proved to be very right. What I allude to is, "a secret and fixed
determination in the British Cabinet to annex America to the crown
of England as a conquered country." If this be taken as the object,
then the whole line of conduct pursued by the ministry, though rash in
its origin and ruinous in its consequences, is nevertheless uniform
and consistent in its parts. It applies to every case and resolves
every difficulty. But if taxation, or any thing else, be taken in
its room, there is no proportion between the object and the charge.
Nothing but the whole soil and property of the country can be placed
as a possible equivalent against the millions which the ministry
expended. No taxes raised in America could possibly repay it. A
revenue of two millions sterling a year would not discharge the sum
and interest accumulated thereon, in twenty years.
  Reconciliation never appears to have been the wish or the object
of the administration; they looked on conquest as certain and
infallible, and, under that persuasion, sought to drive the
Americans into what they might style a general rebellion, and then,
crushing them with arms in their hands, reap the rich harvest of a
general confiscation, and silence them for ever. The dependents at
court were too numerous to be provided for in England. The market
for plunder in the East Indies was over; and the profligacy of
government required that a new mine should be opened, and that mine
could be no other than America, conquered and forfeited. They had no
where else to go. Every other channel was drained; and extravagance,
with the thirst of a drunkard, was gaping for supplies.
  If the ministry deny this to have been their plan, it becomes them
to explain what was their plan. For either they have abused us in
coveting property they never labored for, or they have abused you in
expending an amazing sum upon an incompetent object. Taxation, as I
mentioned before, could never be worth the charge of obtaining it by
arms; and any kind of formal obedience which America could have
made, would have weighed with the lightness of a laugh against such
a load of expense. It is therefore most probable that the ministry
will at last justify their policy by their dishonesty, and openly
declare, that their original design was conquest: and, in this case,
it well becomes the people of England to consider how far the nation
would have been benefited by the success.
  In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge
of making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can
never be worth their while to go to war for profit's sake. If they are
made war upon, their country invaded, or their existence at stake,
it is their duty to defend and preserve themselves, but in every other
light, and from every other cause, is war inglorious and detestable.
But to return to the case in question-
  When conquests are made of foreign countries, it is supposed that
the commerce and dominion of the country which made them are extended.
But this could neither be the object nor the consequence of the
present war. You enjoyed the whole commerce before. It could receive
no possible addition by a conquest, but on the contrary, must diminish
as the inhabitants were reduced in numbers and wealth. You had the
same dominion over the country which you used to have, and had no
complaint to make against her for breach of any part of the contract
between you or her, or contending against any established custom,
commercial, political or territorial. The country and commerce were
both your own when you began to conquer, in the same manner and form
as they had been your own a hundred years before. Nations have
sometimes been induced to make conquests for the sake of reducing
the power of their enemies, or bringing it to a balance with their
own. But this could be no part of your plan. No foreign authority
was claimed here, neither was any such authority suspected by you,
or acknowledged or imagined by us. What then, in the name of heaven,
could you go to war for? Or what chance could you possibly have in the
event, but either to hold the same country which you held before,
and that in a much worse condition, or to lose, with an amazing
expense, what you might have retained without a farthing of charges?
  War never can be the interest of a trading nation, any more than
quarrelling can be profitable to a man in business. But to make war
with those who trade with us, is like setting a bull-dog upon a
customer at the shop-door. The least degree of common sense shows
the madness of the latter, and it will apply with the same force of
conviction to the former. Piratical nations, having neither commerce
or commodities of their own to lose, may make war upon all the
world, and lucratively find their account in it; but it is quite
otherwise with Britain: for, besides the stoppage of trade in time
of war, she exposes more of her own property to be lost, than she
has the chance of taking from others. Some ministerial gentlemen in
parliament have mentioned the greatness of her trade as an apology for
the greatness of her loss. This is miserable politics indeed!
Because it ought to have been given as a reason for her not engaging
in a war at first. The coast of America commands the West India
trade almost as effectually as the coast of Africa does that of the
Straits; and England can no more carry on the former without the
consent of America, than she can the latter without a Mediterranean
pass.
  In whatever light the war with America is considered upon commercial
principles, it is evidently the interest of the people of England
not to support it; and why it has been supported so long, against
the clearest demonstrations of truth and national advantage, is, to
me, and must be to all the reasonable world, a matter of astonishment.
Perhaps it may be said that I live in America, and write this from
interest. To this I reply, that my principle is universal. My
attachment is to all the world, and not to any particular part, and if
what I advance is right, no matter where or who it comes from. We have
given the proclamation of your commissioners a currency in our
newspapers, and I have no doubt you will give this a place in yours.
To oblige and be obliged is fair.
  Before I dismiss this part of my address, I shall mention one more
circumstance in which I think the people of England have been
equally mistaken: and then proceed to other matters.
  There is such an idea existing in the world, as that of national
honor, and this, falsely understood, is oftentimes the cause of war.
In a Christian and philosophical sense, mankind seem to have stood
still at individual civilization, and to retain as nations all the
original rudeness of nature. Peace by treaty is only a cessation of
violence for a reformation of sentiment. It is a substitute for a
principle that is wanting and ever will be wanting till the idea of
national honor be rightly understood. As individuals we profess
ourselves Christians, but as nations we are heathens, Romans, and what
not. I remember the late Admiral Saunders declaring in the House of
Commons, and that in the time of peace, "That the city of Madrid
laid in ashes was not a sufficient atonement for the Spaniards
taking off the rudder of an English sloop of war." I do not ask
whether this is Christianity or morality, I ask whether it is decency?
whether it is proper language for a nation to use? In private life
we call it by the plain name of bullying, and the elevation of rank
cannot alter its character. It is, I think, exceedingly easy to define
what ought to be understood by national honor; for that which is the
best character for an individual is the best character for a nation;
and wherever the latter exceeds or falls beneath the former, there
is a departure from the line of true greatness.
  I have thrown out this observation with a design of applying it to
Great Britain. Her ideas of national honor seem devoid of that
benevolence of heart, that universal expansion of philanthropy, and
that triumph over the rage of vulgar prejudice, without which man is
inferior to himself, and a companion of common animals. To know who
she shall regard or dislike, she asks what country they are of, what
religion they profess, and what property they enjoy. Her idea of
national honor seems to consist in national insult, and that to be a
great people, is to be neither a Christian, a philosopher, or a
gentleman, but to threaten with the rudeness of a bear, and to
devour with the ferocity of a lion. This perhaps may sound harsh and
uncourtly, but it is too true, and the more is the pity.
  I mention this only as her general character. But towards America
she has observed no character at all; and destroyed by her conduct
what she assumed in her title. She set out with the title of parent,
or mother country. The association of ideas which naturally
accompany this expression, are filled with everything that is fond,
tender and forbearing. They have an energy peculiar to themselves,
and, overlooking the accidental attachment of common affections, apply
with infinite softness to the first feelings of the heart. It is a
political term which every mother can feel the force of, and every
child can judge of. It needs no painting of mine to set it off, for
nature only can do it justice.
  But has any part of your conduct to America corresponded with the
title you set up? If in your general national character you are
unpolished and severe, in this you are inconsistent and unnatural, and
you must have exceeding false notions of national honor to suppose
that the world can admire a want of humanity or that national honor
depends on the violence of resentment, the inflexibility of temper, or
the vengeance of execution.
  I would willingly convince you, and that with as much temper as
the times will suffer me to do, that as you opposed your own
interest by quarrelling with us, so likewise your national honor,
rightly conceived and understood, was no ways called upon to enter
into a war with America; had you studied true greatness of heart,
the first and fairest ornament of mankind, you would have acted
directly contrary to all that you have done, and the world would
have ascribed it to a generous cause. Besides which, you had (though
with the assistance of this country) secured a powerful name by the
last war. You were known and dreaded abroad; and it would have been
wise in you to have suffered the world to have slept undisturbed under
that idea. It was to you a force existing without expense. It produced
to you all the advantages of real power; and you were stronger through
the universality of that charm, than any future fleets and armies
may probably make you. Your greatness was so secured and interwoven
with your silence that you ought never to have awakened mankind, and
had nothing to do but to be quiet. Had you been true politicians you
would have seen all this, and continued to draw from the magic of a
name, the force and authority of a nation.
  Unwise as you were in breaking the charm, you were still more unwise
in the manner of doing it. Samson only told the secret, but you have
performed the operation; you have shaven your own head, and wantonly
thrown away the locks. America was the hair from which the charm was
drawn that infatuated the world. You ought to have quarrelled with
no power; but with her upon no account. You had nothing to fear from
any condescension you might make. You might have humored her, even
if there had been no justice in her claims, without any risk to your
reputation; for Europe, fascinated by your fame, would have ascribed
it to your benevolence, and America, intoxicated by the grant, would
have slumbered in her fetters.
  But this method of studying the progress of the passions, in order
to ascertain the probable conduct of mankind, is a philosophy in
politics which those who preside at St. James's have no conception of.
They know no other influence than corruption and reckon all their
probabilities from precedent. A new case is to them a new world, and
while they are seeking for a parallel they get lost. The talents of
Lord Mansfield can be estimated at best no higher than those of a
sophist. He understands the subtleties but not the elegance of nature;
and by continually viewing mankind through the cold medium of the law,
never thinks of penetrating into the warmer region of the mind. As for
Lord North, it is his happiness to have in him more philosophy than
sentiment, for he bears flogging like a top, and sleeps the better for
it. His punishment becomes his support, for while he suffers the
lash for his sins, he keeps himself up by twirling about. In politics,
he is a good arithmetician, and in every thing else nothing at all.
  There is one circumstance which comes so much within Lord North's
province as a financier, that I am surprised it should escape him,
which is, the different abilities of the two countries in supporting
the expense; for, strange as it may seem, England is not a match for
America in this particular. By a curious kind of revolution in
accounts, the people of England seem to mistake their poverty for
their riches; that is, they reckon their national debt as a part of
their national wealth. They make the same kind of error which a man
would do, who after mortgaging his estate, should add the money
borrowed, to the full value of the estate, in order to count up his
worth, and in this case he would conceive that he got rich by
running into debt. Just thus it is with England. The government owed
at the beginning of this war one hundred and thirty-five millions
sterling, and though the individuals to whom it was due had a right to
reckon their shares as so much private property, yet to the nation
collectively it was so much poverty. There are as effectual limits
to public debts as to private ones, for when once the money borrowed
is so great as to require the whole yearly revenue to discharge the
interest thereon, there is an end to further borrowing; in the same
manner as when the interest of a man's debts amounts to the yearly
income of his estate, there is an end to his credit. This is nearly
the case with England, the interest of her present debt being at least
equal to one half of her yearly revenue, so that out of ten millions
annually collected by taxes, she has but five that she can call her
own.
  The very reverse of this was the case with America; she began the
war without any debt upon her, and in order to carry it on, she
neither raised money by taxes, nor borrowed it upon interest, but
created it; and her situation at this time continues so much the
reverse of yours that taxing would make her rich, whereas it would
make you poor. When we shall have sunk the sum which we have
created, we shall then be out of debt, be just as rich as when we
began, and all the while we are doing it shall feel no difference,
because the value will rise as the quantity decreases.
  There was not a country in the world so capable of bearing the
expense of a war as America; not only because she was not in debt when
she began, but because the country is young and capable of infinite
improvement, and has an almost boundless tract of new lands in
store; whereas England has got to her extent of age and growth, and
has not unoccupied land or property in reserve. The one is like a
young heir coming to a large improvable estate; the other like an
old man whose chances are over, and his estate mortgaged for half
its worth.
  In the second number of the Crisis, which I find has been
republished in England, I endeavored to set forth the impracticability
of conquering America. I stated every case, that I conceived could
possibly happen, and ventured to predict its consequences. As my
conclusions were drawn not artfully, but naturally, they have all
proved to be true. I was upon the spot; knew the politics of
America, her strength and resources, and by a train of services, the
best in my power to render, was honored with the friendship of the
congress, the army and the people. I considered the cause a just
one. I know and feel it a just one, and under that confidence never
made my own profit or loss an object. My endeavor was to have the
matter well understood on both sides, and I conceived myself tendering
a general service, by setting forth to the one the impossibility of
being conquered, and to the other the impossibility of conquering.
Most of the arguments made use of by the ministry for supporting the
war, are the very arguments that ought to have been used against
supporting it; and the plans, by which they thought to conquer, are
the very plans in which they were sure to be defeated. They have taken
every thing up at the wrong end. Their ignorance is astonishing, and
were you in my situation you would see it. They may, perhaps, have
your confidence, but I am persuaded that they would make very
indifferent members of Congress. I know what England is, and what
America is, and from the compound of knowledge, am better enabled to
judge of the issue than what the king or any of his ministers can be.
  In this number I have endeavored to show the ill policy and
disadvantages of the war. I believe many of my remarks are new.
Those which are not so, I have studied to improve and place in a
manner that may be clear and striking. Your failure is, I am
persuaded, as certain as fate. America is above your reach. She is
at least your equal in the world, and her independence neither rests
upon your consent, nor can it be prevented by your arms. In short, you
spend your substance in vain, and impoverish yourselves without a
hope.
  But suppose you had conquered America, what advantages, collectively
or individually, as merchants, manufacturers, or conquerors, could you
have looked for? This is an object you seemed never to have attended
to. Listening for the sound of victory, and led away by the frenzy
of arms, you neglected to reckon either the cost or the
consequences. You must all pay towards the expense; the poorest
among you must bear his share, and it is both your right and your duty
to weigh seriously the matter. Had America been conquered, she might
have been parcelled out in grants to the favorites at court, but no
share of it would have fallen to you. Your taxes would not have been
lessened, because she would have been in no condition to have paid any
towards your relief. We are rich by contrivance of our own, which
would have ceased as soon as you became masters. Our paper money
will be of no use in England, and silver and gold we have none. In the
last war you made many conquests, but were any of your taxes
lessened thereby? On the contrary, were you not taxed to pay for the
charge of making them, and has not the same been the case in every
war?
  To the Parliament I wish to address myself in a more particular
manner. They appear to have supposed themselves partners in the chase,
and to have hunted with the lion from an expectation of a right in the
booty; but in this it is most probable they would, as legislators,
have been disappointed. The case is quite a new one, and many
unforeseen difficulties would have arisen thereon. The Parliament
claimed a legislative right over America, and the war originated
from that pretence. But the army is supposed to belong to the crown,
and if America had been conquered through their means, the claim of
the legislature would have been suffocated in the conquest. Ceded,
or conquered, countries are supposed to be out of the authority of
Parliament. Taxation is exercised over them by prerogative and not
by law. It was attempted to be done in the Grenadas a few years ago,
and the only reason why it was not done was because the crown had made
a prior relinquishment of its claim. Therefore, Parliament have been
all this while supporting measures for the establishment of their
authority, in the issue of which, they would have been triumphed
over by the prerogative. This might have opened a new and
interesting opposition between the Parliament and the crown. The crown
would have said that it conquered for itself, and that to conquer
for Parliament was an unknown case. The Parliament might have replied,
that America not being a foreign country, but a country in
rebellion, could not be said to be conquered, but reduced; and thus
continued their claim by disowning the term. The crown might have
rejoined, that however America might be considered at first, she
became foreign at last by a declaration of independence, and a
treaty with France; and that her case being, by that treaty, put
within the law of nations, was out of the law of Parliament, who might
have maintained, that as their claim over America had never been
surrendered, so neither could it be taken away. The crown might have
insisted, that though the claim of Parliament could not be taken away,
yet, being an inferior, it might be superseded; and that, whether
the claim was withdrawn from the object, or the object taken from
the claim, the same separation ensued; and that America being
subdued after a treaty with France, was to all intents and purposes
a regal conquest, and of course the sole property of the king. The
Parliament, as the legal delegates of the people, might have contended
against the term "inferior," and rested the case upon the antiquity of
power, and this would have brought on a set of very interesting and
rational questions.
  1st, What is the original fountain of power and honor in any
country?
  2d, Whether the prerogative does not belong to the people?
  3d, Whether there is any such thing as the English constitution?
  4th, Of what use is the crown to the people?
  5th, Whether he who invented a crown was not an enemy to mankind?
  6th, Whether it is not a shame for a man to spend a million a year
and do no good for it, and whether the money might not be better
applied?
  7th, Whether such a man is not better dead than alive?
  8th, Whether a Congress, constituted like that of America, is not
the most happy and consistent form of government in the world?- With a
number of others of the same import.
  In short, the contention about the dividend might have distracted
the nation; for nothing is more common than to agree in the conquest
and quarrel for the prize; therefore it is, perhaps, a happy
circumstance, that our successes have prevented the dispute.
  If the Parliament had been thrown out in their claim, which it is
most probable they would, the nation likewise would have been thrown
out in their expectation; for as the taxes would have been laid on
by the crown without the Parliament, the revenue arising therefrom, if
any could have arisen, would not have gone into the exchequer, but
into the privy purse, and so far from lessening the taxes, would not
even have been added to them, but served only as pocket money to the
crown. The more I reflect on this matter, the more I am satisfied at
the blindness and ill policy of my countrymen, whose wisdom seems to
operate without discernment, and their strength without an object.
  To the great bulwark of the nation, I mean the mercantile and
manufacturing part thereof, I likewise present my address. It is
your interest to see America an independent, and not a conquered
country. If conquered, she is ruined; and if ruined, poor;
consequently the trade will be a trifle, and her credit doubtful. If
independent, she flourishes, and from her flourishing must your
profits arise. It matters nothing to you who governs America, if
your manufactures find a consumption there. Some articles will
consequently be obtained from other places, and it is right that
they should; but the demand for others will increase, by the great
influx of inhabitants which a state of independence and peace will
occasion, and in the final event you may be enriched. The commerce
of America is perfectly free, and ever will be so. She will consign
away no part of it to any nation. She has not to her friends, and
certainly will not to her enemies; though it is probable that your
narrow-minded politicians, thinking to please you thereby, may some
time or other unnecessarily make such a proposal. Trade flourishes
best when it is free, and it is weak policy to attempt to fetter it.
Her treaty with France is on the most liberal and generous principles,
and the French, in their conduct towards her, have proved themselves
to be philosophers, politicians, and gentlemen.
  To the ministry I likewise address myself. You, gentlemen, have
studied the ruin of your country, from which it is not within your
abilities to rescue her. Your attempts to recover her are as
ridiculous as your plans which involved her are detestable. The
commissioners, being about to depart, will probably bring you this,
and with it my sixth number, addressed to them; and in so doing they
carry back more Common Sense than they brought, and you likewise
will have more than when you sent them.
  Having thus addressed you severally, I conclude by addressing you
collectively. It is a long lane that has no turning. A period of
sixteen years of misconduct and misfortune, is certainly long enough
for any one nation to suffer under; and upon a supposition that war is
not declared between France and you, I beg to place a line of
conduct before you that will easily lead you out of all your troubles.
It has been hinted before, and cannot be too much attended to.
  Suppose America had remained unknown to Europe till the present
year, and that Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, in another voyage round the
world, had made the first discovery of her, in the same condition that
she is now in, of arts, arms, numbers, and civilization. What, I
ask, in that case, would have been your conduct towards her? For
that will point out what it ought to be now. The problems and their
solutions are equal, and the right line of the one is the parallel
of the other. The question takes in every circumstance that can
possibly arise. It reduces politics to a simple thought, and is
moreover a mode of investigation, in which, while you are studying
your interest the simplicity of the case will cheat you into good
temper. You have nothing to do but to suppose that you have found
America, and she appears found to your hand, and while in the joy of
your heart you stand still to admire her, the path of politics rises
straight before you.
  Were I disposed to paint a contrast, I could easily set off what you
have done in the present case, against what you would have done in
that case, and by justly opposing them, conclude a picture that
would make you blush. But, as, when any of the prouder passions are
hurt, it is much better philosophy to let a man slip into a good
temper than to attack him in a bad one, for that reason, therefore,
I only state the case, and leave you to reflect upon it.
  To go a little back into politics, it will be found that the true
interest of Britain lay in proposing and promoting the independence of
America immediately after the last peace; for the expense which
Britain had then incurred by defending America as her own dominions,
ought to have shown her the policy and necessity of changing the style
of the country, as the best probable method of preventing future
wars and expense, and the only method by which she could hold the
commerce without the charge of sovereignty. Besides which, the title
which she assumed, of parent country, led to, and pointed out the
propriety, wisdom and advantage of a separation; for, as in private
life, children grow into men, and by setting up for themselves, extend
and secure the interest of the whole family, so in the settlement of
colonies large enough to admit of maturity, the same policy should
be pursued, and the same consequences would follow. Nothing hurts
the affections both of parents and children so much, as living too
closely connected, and keeping up the distinction too long.
Domineering will not do over those, who, by a progress in life, have
become equal in rank to their parents, that is, when they have
families of their own; and though they may conceive themselves the
subjects of their advice, will not suppose them the objects of their
government. I do not, by drawing this parallel, mean to admit the
title of parent country, because, if it is due any where, it is due to
Europe collectively, and the first settlers from England were driven
here by persecution. I mean only to introduce the term for the sake of
policy and to show from your title the line of your interest.
  When you saw the state of strength and opulence, and that by her own
industry, which America arrived at, you ought to have advised her to
set up for herself, and proposed an alliance of interest with her, and
in so doing you would have drawn, and that at her own expense, more
real advantage, and more military supplies and assistance, both of
ships and men, than from any weak and wrangling government that you
could exercise over her. In short, had you studied only the domestic
politics of a family, you would have learned how to govern the
state; but, instead of this easy and natural line, you flew out into
every thing which was wild and outrageous, till, by following the
passion and stupidity of the pilot, you wrecked the vessel within
sight of the shore.
  Having shown what you ought to have done, I now proceed to show
why it was not done. The caterpillar circle of the court had an
interest to pursue, distinct from, and opposed to yours; for though by
the independence of America and an alliance therewith, the trade would
have continued, if not increased, as in many articles neither
country can go to a better market, and though by defending and
protecting herself, she would have been no expense to you, and
consequently your national charges would have decreased, and your
taxes might have been proportionably lessened thereby; yet the
striking off so many places from the court calendar was put in
opposition to the interest of the nation. The loss of thirteen
government ships, with their appendages, here and in England, is a
shocking sound in the ear of a hungry courtier. Your present king
and ministry will be the ruin of you; and you had better risk a
revolution and call a Congress, than be thus led on from madness to
despair, and from despair to ruin. America has set you the example,
and you may follow it and be free.
  I now come to the last part, a war with France. This is what no
man in his senses will advise you to, and all good men would wish to
prevent. Whether France will declare war against you, is not for me in
this place to mention, or to hint, even if I knew it; but it must be
madness in you to do it first. The matter is come now to a full
crisis, and peace is easy if willingly set about. Whatever you may
think, France has behaved handsomely to you. She would have been
unjust to herself to have acted otherwise than she did; and having
accepted our offer of alliance she gave you genteel notice of it.
There was nothing in her conduct reserved or indelicate, and while she
announced her determination to support her treaty, she left you to
give the first offence. America, on her part, has exhibited a
character of firmness to the world. Unprepared and unarmed, without
form or government, she, singly opposed a nation that domineered
over half the globe. The greatness of the deed demands respect; and
though you may feel resentment, you are compelled both to wonder and
admire.
  Here I rest my arguments and finish my address. Such as it is, it is
a gift, and you are welcome. It was always my design to dedicate a
Crisis to you, when the time should come that would properly make it a
Crisis; and when, likewise, I should catch myself in a temper to write
it, and suppose you in a condition to read it. That time has now
arrived, and with it the opportunity for conveyance. For the
commissioners- poor commissioners! having proclaimed, that "yet
forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown," have waited out the date,
and, discontented with their God, are returning to their gourd. And
all the harm I wish them is, that it may not wither about their
ears, and that they may not make their exit in the belly of a whale.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 21, 1778.

  P.S.- Though in the tranquillity of my mind I have concluded with
a laugh, yet I have something to mention to the commissioners,
which, to them, is serious and worthy their attention. Their authority
is derived from an Act of Parliament, which likewise describes and
limits their official powers. Their commission, therefore, is only a
recital, and personal investiture, of those powers, or a nomination
and description of the persons who are to execute them. Had it
contained any thing contrary to, or gone beyond the line of, the
written law from which it is derived, and by which it is bound, it
would, by the English constitution, have been treason in the crown,
and the king been subject to an impeachment. He dared not,
therefore, put in his commission what you have put in your
proclamation, that is, he dared not have authorised you in that
commission to burn and destroy any thing in America. You are both in
the act and in the commission styled commissioners for restoring
peace, and the methods for doing it are there pointed out. Your last
proclamation is signed by you as commissioners under that act. You
make Parliament the patron of its contents. Yet, in the body of it,
you insert matters contrary both to the spirit and letter of the
act, and what likewise your king dared not have put in his
commission to you. The state of things in England, gentlemen, is too
ticklish for you to run hazards. You are accountable to Parliament for
the execution of that act according to the letter of it. Your heads
may pay for breaking it, for you certainly have broke it by
exceeding it. And as a friend, who would wish you to escape the paw of
the lion, as well as the belly of the whale, I civilly hint to you, to
keep within compass.
  Sir Harry Clinton, strictly speaking, is as accountable as the rest;
for though a general, he is likewise a commissioner, acting under a
superior authority. His first obedience is due to the act; and his
plea of being a general, will not and cannot clear him as a
commissioner, for that would suppose the crown, in its single
capacity, to have a power of dispensing with an Act of Parliament.
Your situation, gentlemen, is nice and critical, and the more so
because England is unsettled. Take heed! Remember the times of Charles
the First! For Laud and Stafford fell by trusting to a hope like
yours.
  Having thus shown you the danger of your proclamation, I now show
you the folly of it. The means contradict your design: you threaten to
lay waste, in order to render America a useless acquisition of
alliance to France. I reply, that the more destruction you commit
(if you could do it) the more valuable to France you make that
alliance. You can destroy only houses and goods; and by so doing you
increase our demand upon her for materials and merchandise; for the
wants of one nation, provided it has freedom and credit, naturally
produce riches to the other; and, as you can neither ruin the land nor
prevent the vegetation, you would increase the exportation of our
produce in payment, which would be to her a new fund of wealth. In
short, had you cast about for a plan on purpose to enrich your
enemies, you could not have hit upon a better.
                                                   C. S.
                                VIII.

                  ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

  "TRUSTING (says the king of England in his speech of November last,)
in the divine providence, and in the justice of my cause, I am
firmly resolved to prosecute the war with vigor, and to make every
exertion in order to compel our enemies to equitable terms of peace
and accommodation." To this declaration the United States of
America, and the confederated powers of Europe will reply, if
Britain will have war, she shall have enough of it.
  Five years have nearly elapsed since the commencement of
hostilities, and every campaign, by a gradual decay, has lessened your
ability to conquer, without producing a serious thought on your
condition or your fate. Like a prodigal lingering in an habitual
consumption, you feel the relics of life, and mistake them for
recovery. New schemes, like new medicines, have administered fresh
hopes, and prolonged the disease instead of curing it. A change of
generals, like a change of physicians, served only to keep the
flattery alive, and furnish new pretences for new extravagance.
  "Can Britain fail?"* has been proudly asked at the undertaking of
every enterprise; and that "whatever she wills is fate,"*(2) has
been given with the solemnity of prophetic confidence; and though
the question has been constantly replied to by disappointment, and the
prediction falsified by misfortune, yet still the insult continued,
and your catalogue of national evils increased therewith. Eager to
persuade the world of her power, she considered destruction as the
minister of greatness, and conceived that the glory of a nation like
that of an [American] Indian, lay in the number of its scalps and
the miseries which it inflicts.

  * Whitehead's New Year's ode for 1776.
  *(2) Ode at the installation of Lord North, for Chancellor of the
University of Oxford.

  Fire, sword and want, as far as the arms of Britain could extend
them, have been spread with wanton cruelty along the coast of America;
and while you, remote from the scene of suffering, had nothing to lose
and as little to dread, the information reached you like a tale of
antiquity, in which the distance of time defaces the conception, and
changes the severest sorrows into conversable amusement.
  This makes the second paper, addressed perhaps in vain, to the
people of England. That advice should be taken wherever example has
failed, or precept be regarded where warning is ridiculed, is like a
picture of hope resting on despair: but when time shall stamp with
universal currency the facts you have long encountered with a laugh,
and the irresistible evidence of accumulated losses, like the
handwriting on the wall, shall add terror to distress, you will
then, in a conflict of suffering, learn to sympathize with others by
feeling for yourselves.
  The triumphant appearance of the combined fleets in the channel
and at your harbor's mouth, and the expedition of Captain Paul
Jones, on the western and eastern coasts of England and Scotland,
will, by placing you in the condition of an endangered country, read
to you a stronger lecture on the calamities of invasion, and bring
to your minds a truer picture of promiscuous distress, than the most
finished rhetoric can describe or the keenest imagination conceive.
  Hitherto you have experienced the expenses, but nothing of the
miseries of war. Your disappointments have been accompanied with no
immediate suffering, and your losses came to you only by intelligence.
Like fire at a distance you heard not even the cry; you felt not the
danger, you saw not the confusion. To you every thing has been foreign
but the taxes to support it. You knew not what it was to be alarmed at
midnight with an armed enemy in the streets. You were strangers to the
distressing scene of a family in flight, and to the thousand
restless cares and tender sorrows that incessantly arose. To see women
and children wandering in the severity of winter, with the broken
remains of a well furnished house, and seeking shelter in every crib
and hut, were matters that you had no conception of. You knew not what
it was to stand by and see your goods chopped for fuel, and your
beds ripped to pieces to make packages for plunder. The misery of
others, like a tempestuous night, added to the pleasures of your own
security. You even enjoyed the storm, by contemplating the
difference of conditions, and that which carried sorrow into the
breasts of thousands served but to heighten in you a species of
tranquil pride. Yet these are but the fainter sufferings of war,
when compared with carnage and slaughter, the miseries of a military
hospital, or a town in flames.
  The people of America, by anticipating distress, had fortified their
minds against every species you could inflict. They had resolved to
abandon their homes, to resign them to destruction, and to seek new
settlements rather than submit. Thus familiarized to misfortune,
before it arrived, they bore their portion with the less regret: the
justness of their cause was a continual source of consolation, and the
hope of final victory, which never left them, served to lighten the
load and sweeten the cup allotted them to drink.
  But when their troubles shall become yours, and invasion be
transferred upon the invaders, you will have neither their extended
wilderness to fly to, their cause to comfort you, nor their hope to
rest upon. Distress with them was sharpened by no self-reflection.
They had not brought it on themselves. On the contrary, they had by
every proceeding endeavored to avoid it, and had descended even
below the mark of congressional character, to prevent a war. The
national honor or the advantages of independence were matters which,
at the commencement of the dispute, they had never studied, and it was
only at the last moment that the measure was resolved on. Thus
circumstanced, they naturally and conscientiously felt a dependence
upon providence. They had a clear pretension to it, and had they
failed therein, infidelity had gained a triumph.
  But your condition is the reverse of theirs. Every thing you
suffer you have sought: nay, had you created mischiefs on purpose to
inherit them, you could not have secured your title by a firmer
deed. The world awakens with no pity it your complaints. You felt none
for others; you deserve none for yourselves. Nature does not
interest herself in cases like yours, but, on the contrary, turns from
them with dislike, and abandons them to punishment. You may now
present memorials to what court you please, but so far as America is
the object, none will listen. The policy of Europe, and the propensity
there in every mind to curb insulting ambition, and bring cruelty to
judgment, are unitedly against you; and where nature and interest
reinforce with each other, the compact is too intimate to be
dissolved.
  Make but the case of others your own, and your own theirs, and you
will then have a clear idea of the whole. Had France acted towards her
colonies as you have done, you would have branded her with every
epithet of abhorrence; and had you, like her, stepped in to succor a
struggling people, all Europe must have echoed with your own
applauses. But entangled in the passion of dispute you see it not as
you ought, and form opinions thereon which suit with no interest but
your own. You wonder that America does not rise in union with you to
impose on herself a portion of your taxes and reduce herself to
unconditional submission. You are amazed that the southern powers of
Europe do not assist you in conquering a country which is afterwards
to be turned against themselves; and that the northern ones do not
contribute to reinstate you in America who already enjoy the market
for naval stores by the separation. You seem surprised that Holland
does not pour in her succors to maintain you mistress of the seas,
when her own commerce is suffering by your act of navigation; or
that any country should study her own interest while yours is on the
carpet.
  Such excesses of passionate folly, and unjust as well as unwise
resentment, have driven you on, like Pharaoh, to unpitied miseries,
and while the importance of the quarrel shall perpetuate your
disgrace, the flag of America will carry it round the world. The
natural feelings of every rational being will be against you, and
wherever the story shall be told, you will have neither excuse nor
consolation left. With an unsparing hand, and an insatiable mind,
you have desolated the world, to gain dominion and to lose it; and
while, in a frenzy of avarice and ambition, the east and the west
are doomed to tributary bondage, you rapidly earned destruction as the
wages of a nation.
  At the thoughts of a war at home, every man amongst you ought to
tremble. The prospect is far more dreadful there than in America. Here
the party that was against the measures of the continent were in
general composed of a kind of neutrals, who added strength to
neither army. There does not exist a being so devoid of sense and
sentiment as to covet "unconditional submission," and therefore no man
in America could be with you in principle. Several might from a
cowardice of mind, prefer it to the hardships and dangers of
opposing it; but the same disposition that gave them such a choice,
unfitted them to act either for or against us. But England is rent
into parties, with equal shares of resolution. The principle which
produced the war divides the nation. Their animosities are in the
highest state of fermentation, and both sides, by a call of the
militia, are in arms. No human foresight can discern, no conclusion
can be formed, what turn a war might take, if once set on foot by an
invasion. She is not now in a fit disposition to make a common cause
of her own affairs, and having no conquests to hope for abroad, and
nothing but expenses arising at home, her everything is staked upon
a defensive combat, and the further she goes the worse she is off.
  There are situations that a nation may be in, in which peace or war,
abstracted from every other consideration, may be politically right or
wrong. When nothing can be lost by a war, but what must be lost
without it, war is then the policy of that country; and such was the
situation of America at the commencement of hostilities: but when no
security can be gained by a war, but what may be accomplished by a
peace, the case becomes reversed, and such now is the situation of
England.
  That America is beyond the reach of conquest, is a fact which
experience has shown and time confirmed, and this admitted, what, I
ask, is now the object of contention? If there be any honor in
pursuing self-destruction with inflexible passion- if national suicide
be the perfection of national glory, you may, with all the pride of
criminal happiness, expire unenvied and unrivalled. But when the
tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present passions be
succeeded by calm reflection, or when those, who, surviving its
fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes, when
the yearly revenue scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the
one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different
from the present will arise, and embitter the remembrance of former
follies. A mind disarmed of its rage feels no pleasure in
contemplating a frantic quarrel. Sickness of thought, the sure
consequence of conduct like yours, leaves no ability for enjoyment, no
relish for resentment; and though, like a man in a fit, you feel not
the injury of the struggle, nor distinguish between strength and
disease, the weakness will nevertheless be proportioned to the
violence, and the sense of pain increase with the recovery.
  To what persons or to whose system of politics you owe your
present state of wretchedness, is a matter of total indifference to
America. They have contributed, however unwillingly, to set her
above themselves, and she, in the tranquillity of conquest, resigns
the inquiry. The case now is not so properly who began the war, as who
continues it. That there are men in all countries to whom a state of
war is a mine of wealth, is a fact never to be doubted. Characters
like these naturally breed in the putrefaction of distempered times,
and after fattening on the disease, they perish with it, or,
impregnated with the stench, retreat into obscurity.
  But there are several erroneous notions to which you likewise owe
a share of your misfortunes, and which, if continued, will only
increase your trouble and your losses. An opinion hangs about the
gentlemen of the minority, that America would relish measures under
their administration, which she would not from the present cabinet. On
this rock Lord Chatham would have split had he gained the helm, and
several of his survivors are steering the same course. Such
distinctions in the infancy of the argument had some degree of
foundation, but they now serve no other purpose than to lengthen out a
war, in which the limits of a dispute, being fixed by the fate of
arms, and guaranteed by treaties, are not to be changed or altered
by trivial circumstances.
  The ministry, and many of the minority, sacrifice their time in
disputing on a question with which they have nothing to do, namely,
whether America shall be independent or not. Whereas the only question
that can come under their determination is, whether they will accede
to it or not. They confound a military question with a political
one, and undertake to supply by a vote what they lost by a battle. Say
she shall not be independent, and it will signify as much as if they
voted against a decree of fate, or say that she shall, and she will be
no more independent than before. Questions which, when determined,
cannot be executed, serve only to show the folly of dispute and the
weakness of disputants.
  From a long habit of calling America your own, you suppose her
governed by the same prejudices and conceits which govern
yourselves. Because you have set up a particular denomination of
religion to the exclusion of all others, you imagine she must do the
same, and because you, with an unsociable narrowness of mind, have
cherished enmity against France and Spain, you suppose her alliance
must be defective in friendship. Copying her notions of the world from
you, she formerly thought as you instructed, but now feeling herself
free, and the prejudice removed, she thinks and acts upon a
different system. It frequently happens that in proportion as we are
taught to dislike persons and countries, not knowing why, we feel an
ardor of esteem upon the removal of the mistake: it seems as if
something was to be made amends for, and we eagerly give in to every
office of friendship, to atone for the injury of the error.
  But, perhaps, there is something in the extent of countries,
which, among the generality of people, insensibly communicates
extension of the mind. The soul of an islander, in its native state,
seems bounded by the foggy confines of the water's edge, and all
beyond affords to him matters only for profit or curiosity, not for
friendship. His island is to him his world, and fixed to that, his
every thing centers in it; while those who are inhabitants of a
continent, by casting their eye over a larger field, take in
likewise a larger intellectual circuit, and thus approaching nearer to
an acquaintance with the universe, their atmosphere of thought is
extended, and their liberality fills a wider space. In short, our
minds seem to be measured by countries when we are men, as they are by
places when we are children, and until something happens to
disentangle us from the prejudice, we serve under it without
perceiving it.
  In addition to this, it may be remarked, that men who study any
universal science, the principles of which are universally known, or
admitted, and applied without distinction to the common benefit of all
countries, obtain thereby a larger share of philanthropy than those
who only study national arts and improvements. Natural philosophy,
mathematics and astronomy, carry the mind from the country to the
creation, and give it a fitness suited to the extent. It was not
Newton's honor, neither could it be his pride, that he was an
Englishman, but that he was a philosopher, the heavens had liberated
him from the prejudices of an island, and science had expanded his
soul as boundless as his studies.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, March, 1780.
                                 IX.

  HAD America pursued her advantages with half the spirit that she
resisted her misfortunes, she would, before now, have been a
conquering and a peaceful people; but lulled in the lap of soft
tranquillity, she rested on her hopes, and adversity only has
convulsed her into action. Whether subtlety or sincerity at the
close of the last year induced the enemy to an appearance for peace,
is a point not material to know; it is sufficient that we see the
effects it has had on our politics, and that we sternly rise to resent
the delusion.
  The war, on the part of America, has been a war of natural feelings.
Brave in distress; serene in conquest; drowsy while at rest; and in
every situation generously disposed to peace; a dangerous calm, and
a most heightened zeal have, as circumstances varied, succeeded each
other. Every passion but that of despair has been called to a tour
of duty; and so mistaken has been the enemy, of our abilities and
disposition, that when she supposed us conquered, we rose the
conquerors. The extensiveness of the United States, and the variety of
their resources; the universality of their cause, the quick
operation of their feelings, and the similarity of their sentiments,
have, in every trying situation, produced a something, which,
favored by providence, and pursued with ardor, has accomplished in
an instant the business of a campaign. We have never deliberately
sought victory, but snatched it; and bravely undone in an hour the
blotted operations of a season.
  The reported fate of Charleston, like the misfortunes of 1776, has
at last called forth a spirit, and kindled up a flame, which perhaps
no other event could have produced. If the enemy has circulated a
falsehood, they have unwisely aggravated us into life, and if they
have told us the truth, they have unintentionally done us a service.
We were returning with folded arms from the fatigues of war, and
thinking and sitting leisurely down to enjoy repose. The dependence
that has been put upon Charleston threw a drowsiness over America.
We looked on the business done- the conflict over- the matter settled-
or that all which remained unfinished would follow of itself. In
this state of dangerous relaxation, exposed to the poisonous infusions
of the enemy, and having no common danger to attract our attention, we
were extinguishing, by stages, the ardor we began with, and
surrendering by piece-meal the virtue that defended us.
  Afflicting as the loss of Charleston may be, yet if it universally
rouse us from the slumber of twelve months past, and renew in us the
spirit of former days, it will produce an advantage more important
than its loss. America ever is what she thinks herself to be. Governed
by sentiment, and acting her own mind, she becomes, as she pleases,
the victor or the victim.
  It is not the conquest of towns, nor the accidental capture of
garrisons, that can reduce a country so extensive as this. The
sufferings of one part can never be relieved by the exertions of
another, and there is no situation the enemy can be placed in that
does not afford to us the same advantages which he seeks himself. By
dividing his force, he leaves every post attackable. It is a mode of
war that carries with it a confession of weakness, and goes on the
principle of distress rather than conquest.
  The decline of the enemy is visible, not only in their operations,
but in their plans; Charleston originally made but a secondary
object in the system of attack, and it is now become their principal
one, because they have not been able to succeed elsewhere. It would
have carried a cowardly appearance in Europe had they formed their
grand expedition, in 1776, against a part of the continent where there
was no army, or not a sufficient one to oppose them; but failing
year after year in their impressions here, and to the eastward and
northward, they deserted their capital design, and prudently
contenting themselves with what they can get, give a flourish of honor
to conceal disgrace.
  But this piece-meal work is not conquering the continent. It is a
discredit in them to attempt it, and in us to suffer it. It is now
full time to put an end to a war of aggravations, which, on one
side, has no possible object, and on the other has every inducement
which honor, interest, safety and happiness can inspire. If we
suffer them much longer to remain among us, we shall become as bad
as themselves. An association of vice will reduce us more than the
sword. A nation hardened in the practice of iniquity knows better
how to profit by it, than a young country newly corrupted. We are
not a match for them in the line of advantageous guilt, nor they for
us on the principles which we bravely set out with. Our first days
were our days of honor. They have marked the character of America
wherever the story of her wars are told; and convinced of this, we
have nothing to do but wisely and unitedly to tread the well known
track. The progress of a war is often as ruinous to individuals, as
the issue of it is to a nation; and it is not only necessary that
our forces be such that we be conquerors in the end, but that by
timely exertions we be secure in the interim. The present campaign
will afford an opportunity which has never presented itself before,
and the preparations for it are equally necessary, whether
Charleston stand or fall. Suppose the first, it is in that case only a
failure of the enemy, not a defeat. All the conquest that a besieged
town can hope for, is, not to be conquered; and compelling an enemy to
raise the siege, is to the besieged a victory. But there must be a
probability amounting almost to a certainty, that would justify a
garrison marching out to attack a retreat. Therefore should Charleston
not be taken, and the enemy abandon the siege, every other part of the
continent should prepare to meet them; and, on the contrary, should it
be taken, the same preparations are necessary to balance the loss, and
put ourselves in a position to co-operate with our allies, immediately
on their arrival.
  We are not now fighting our battles alone, as we were in 1776;
England, from a malicious disposition to America, has not only not
declared war against France and Spain, but, the better to prosecute
her passions here, has afforded those powers no military object, and
avoids them, to distress us. She will suffer her West India islands to
be overrun by France, and her southern settlements to be taken by
Spain, rather than quit the object that gratifies her revenge. This
conduct, on the part of Britain, has pointed out the propriety of
France sending a naval and land force to co-operate with America on
the spot. Their arrival cannot be very distant, nor the ravages of the
enemy long. The recruiting the army, and procuring the supplies, are
the two things most necessary to be accomplished, and a capture of
either of the enemy's divisions will restore to America peace and
plenty.
  At a crisis, big, like the present, with expectation and events, the
whole country is called to unanimity and exertion. Not an ability
ought now to sleep, that can produce but a mite to the general good,
nor even a whisper to pass that militates against it. The necessity of
the case, and the importance of the consequences, admit no delay
from a friend, no apology from an enemy. To spare now, would be the
height of extravagance, and to consult present ease, would be to
sacrifice it perhaps forever.
  America, rich in patriotism and produce, can want neither men nor
supplies, when a serious necessity calls them forth. The slow
operation of taxes, owing to the extensiveness of collection, and
their depreciated value before they arrived in the treasury, have,
in many instances, thrown a burden upon government, which has been
artfully interpreted by the enemy into a general decline throughout
the country. Yet this, inconvenient as it may at first appear, is
not only remediable, but may be turned to an immediate advantage;
for it makes no real difference, whether a certain number of men, or
company of militia (and in this country every man is a militia-man),
are directed by law to send a recruit at their own expense, or whether
a tax is laid on them for that purpose, and the man hired by
government afterwards. The first, if there is any difference, is
both cheapest and best, because it saves the expense which would
attend collecting it as a tax, and brings the man sooner into the
field than the modes of recruiting formerly used; and, on this
principle, a law has been passed in this state, for recruiting two men
from each company of militia, which will add upwards of a thousand
to the force of the country.
  But the flame which has broken forth in this city since the report
from New York, of the loss of Charleston, not only does honor to the
place, but, like the blaze of 1776, will kindle into action the
scattered sparks throughout America. The valor of a country may be
learned by the bravery of its soldiery, and the general cast of its
inhabitants, but confidence of success is best discovered by the
active measures pursued by men of property; and when the spirit of
enterprise becomes so universal as to act at once on all ranks of men,
a war may then, and not till then, be styled truly popular.
  In 1776, the ardor of the enterprising part was considerably checked
by the real revolt of some, and the coolness of others. But in the
present case, there is a firmness in the substance and property of the
country to the public cause. An association has been entered into by
the merchants, tradesmen, and principal inhabitants of the city
[Philadelphia], to receive and support the new state money at the
value of gold and silver; a measure which, while it does them honor,
will likewise contribute to their interest, by rendering the
operations of the campaign convenient and effectual.
  Nor has the spirit of exertion stopped here. A voluntary
subscription is likewise begun, to raise a fund of hard money, to be
given as bounties, to fill up the full quota of the Pennsylvania line.
It has been the remark of the enemy, that every thing in America has
been done by the force of government; but when she sees individuals
throwing in their voluntary aid, and facilitating the public
measures in concert with the established powers of the country, it
will convince her that the cause of America stands not on the will
of a few but on the broad foundation of property and popularity.
  Thus aided and thus supported, disaffection will decline, and the
withered head of tyranny expire in America. The ravages of the enemy
will be short and limited, and like all their former ones, will
produce a victory over themselves.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, June 9, 1780.

  P. S. At the time of writing this number of the Crisis, the loss
of Charleston, though believed by some, was more confidently
disbelieved by others. But there ought to be no longer a doubt upon
the matter. Charleston is gone, and I believe for the want of a
sufficient supply of provisions. The man that does not now feel for
the honor of the best and noblest cause that ever a country engaged
in, and exert himself accordingly, is no longer worthy of a
peaceable residence among a people determined to be free.
                                                   C. S.
                       THE CRISIS EXTRAORDINARY

                     ON THE SUBJECT OF TAXATION.

  IT IS impossible to sit down and think seriously on the affairs of
America, but the original principles upon which she resisted, and
the glow and ardor which they inspired, will occur like the
undefaced remembrance of a lovely scene. To trace over in
imagination the purity of the cause, the voluntary sacrifices that
were made to support it, and all the various turnings of the war in
its defence, is at once both paying and receiving respect. The
principles deserve to be remembered, and to remember them rightly is
repossessing them. In this indulgence of generous recollection, we
become gainers by what we seem to give, and the more we bestow the
richer we become.
  So extensively right was the ground on which America proceeded, that
it not only took in every just and liberal sentiment which could
impress the heart, but made it the direct interest of every class
and order of men to defend the country. The war, on the part of
Britain, was originally a war of covetousness. The sordid and not
the splendid passions gave it being. The fertile fields and prosperous
infancy of America appeared to her as mines for tributary wealth.
She viewed the hive, and disregarding the industry that had enriched
it, thirsted for the honey. But in the present stage of her affairs,
the violence of temper is added to the rage of avarice; and therefore,
that which at the first setting out proceeded from purity of principle
and public interest, is now heightened by all the obligations of
necessity; for it requires but little knowledge of human nature to
discern what would be the consequence, were America again reduced to
the subjection of Britain. Uncontrolled power, in the hands of an
incensed, imperious, and rapacious conqueror, is an engine of dreadful
execution, and woe be to that country over which it can be
exercised. The names of Whig and Tory would then be sunk in the
general term of rebel, and the oppression, whatever it might be,
would, with very few instances of exception, light equally on all.
  Britain did not go to war with America for the sake of dominion,
because she was then in possession; neither was it for the extension
of trade and commerce, because she had monopolized the whole, and
the country had yielded to it; neither was it to extinguish what she
might call rebellion, because before she began no resistance
existed. It could then be from no other motive than avarice, or a
design of establishing, in the first instance, the same taxes in
America as are paid in England (which, as I shall presently show,
are above eleven times heavier than the taxes we now pay for the
present year, 1780) or, in the second instance, to confiscate the
whole property of America, in case of resistance and conquest of the
latter, of which she had then no doubt.
  I shall now proceed to show what the taxes in England are, and
what the yearly expense of the present war is to her- what the taxes
of this country amount to, and what the annual expense of defending it
effectually will be to us; and shall endeavor concisely to point out
the cause of our difficulties, and the advantages on one side, and the
consequences on the other, in case we do, or do not, put ourselves
in an effectual state of defence. I mean to be open, candid, and
sincere. I see a universal wish to expel the enemy from the country, a
murmuring because the war is not carried on with more vigor, and my
intention is to show, as shortly as possible, both the reason and
the remedy.
  The number of souls in England (exclusive of Scotland and Ireland)
is seven millions,* and the number of souls in America is three
millions.

  * This is taking the highest number that the people of England
have been, or can be rated at.

  The amount of taxes in England (exclusive of Scotland and Ireland)
was, before the present war commenced, eleven millions six hundred and
forty-two thousand six hundred and fifty-three pounds sterling; which,
on an average, is no less a sum than one pound thirteen shillings
and three-pence sterling per head per annum, men, women, and children;
besides county taxes, taxes for the support of the poor, and a tenth
of all the produce of the earth for the support of the bishops and
clergy.* Nearly five millions of this sum went annually to pay the
interest of the national debt, contracted by former wars, and the
remaining sum of six millions six hundred and forty-two thousand six
hundred pounds was applied to defray the yearly expense of government,
the peace establishment of the army and navy, placemen, pensioners,
etc.; consequently the whole of the enormous taxes being thus
appropriated, she had nothing to spare out of them towards defraying
the expenses of the present war or any other. Yet had she not been
in debt at the beginning of the war, as we were not, and, like us, had
only a land and not a naval war to carry on, her then revenue of
eleven millions and a half pounds sterling would have defrayed all her
annual expenses of war and government within each year.

  * The following is taken from Dr. Price's state of the taxes of
England.
  An account of the money drawn from the public by taxes, annually,
being the medium of three years before the year 1776.
    Amount of customs in England                         2,528,275 L.
    Amount of the excise in England                      4,649,892
    Land tax at 3s.                                      1,300,000
    Land tax at 1s. in the pound                           450,000
    Salt duties                                            218,739
    Duties on stamps, cards, dice, advertisements,
      bonds, leases, indentures, newspapers,
      almanacks, etc.                                      280,788
    Duties on houses and windows                           385,369
    Post office, seizures, wine licences, hackney
      coaches, etc.                                        250,000
    Annual profits from lotteries                          150,000
    Expense of collecting the excise in England            297,887
    Expense of collecting the customs in England           468,703
    Interest of loans on the land tax at 4s. expenses
      of collection, militia, etc.                         250,000
    Perquisites, etc. to custom-house officers, &c.
      supposed                                             250,000
    Expense of collecting the salt duties in England
      10 1/2 per cent.                                      27,000
    Bounties on fish exported                               18,000
    Expense of collecting the duties on stamps, cards,
      advertisements, etc. at 5 and 1/4 per cent.           18,000

                                                  Total 11,642,653 L.

  But this not being the case with her, she is obliged to borrow about
ten millions pounds sterling, yearly, to prosecute the war that she is
now engaged in, (this year she borrowed twelve) and lay on new taxes
to discharge the interest; allowing that the present war has cost
her only fifty millions sterling, the interest thereon, at five per
cent., will be two millions and an half; therefore the amount of her
taxes now must be fourteen millions, which on an average is no less
than forty shillings sterling, per head, men, women and children,
throughout the nation. Now as this expense of fifty millions was
borrowed on the hopes of conquering America, and as it was avarice
which first induced her to commence the war, how truly wretched and
deplorable would the condition of this country be, were she, by her
own remissness, to suffer an enemy of such a disposition, and so
circumstanced, to reduce her to subjection.
  I now proceed to the revenues of America.
  I have already stated the number of souls in America to be three
millions, and by a calculation that I have made, which I have every
reason to believe is sufficiently correct, the whole expense of the
war, and the support of the several governments, may be defrayed for
two million pounds sterling annually; which, on an average, is
thirteen shillings and four pence per head, men, women, and
children, and the peace establishment at the end of the war will be
but three quarters of a million, or five shillings sterling per
head. Now, throwing out of the question everything of honor,
principle, happiness, freedom, and reputation in the world, and taking
it up on the simple ground of interest, I put the following case:
  Suppose Britain was to conquer America, and, as a conqueror, was
to lay her under no other conditions than to pay the same proportion
towards her annual revenue which the people of England pay: our share,
in that case, would be six million pounds sterling yearly. Can it then
be a question, whether it is best to raise two millions to defend
the country, and govern it ourselves, and only three quarters of a
million afterwards, or pay six millions to have it conquered, and
let the enemy govern it?
  Can it be supposed that conquerors would choose to put themselves in
a worse condition than what they granted to the conquered? In England,
the tax on rum is five shillings and one penny sterling per gallon,
which is one silver dollar and fourteen coppers. Now would it not be
laughable to imagine, that after the expense they have been at, they
would let either Whig or Tory drink it cheaper than themselves?
Coffee, which is so inconsiderable an article of consumption and
support here, is there loaded with a duty which makes the price
between five and six shillings per pound, and a penalty of fifty
pounds sterling on any person detected in roasting it in his own
house. There is scarcely a necessary of life that you can eat,
drink, wear, or enjoy, that is not there loaded with a tax; even the
light from heaven is only permitted to shine into their dwellings by
paying eighteen pence sterling per window annually; and the humblest
drink of life, small beer, cannot there be purchased without a tax
of nearly two coppers per gallon, besides a heavy tax upon the malt,
and another on the hops before it is brewed, exclusive of a land-tax
on the earth which produces them. In short, the condition of that
country, in point of taxation, is so oppressive, the number of her
poor so great, and the extravagance and rapaciousness of the court
so enormous, that, were they to effect a conquest of America, it is
then only that the distresses of America would begin. Neither would it
signify anything to a man whether he be Whig or Tory. The people of
England, and the ministry of that country, know us by no such
distinctions. What they want is clear, solid revenue, and the modes
which they would take to procure it, would operate alike on all. Their
manner of reasoning would be short, because they would naturally
infer, that if we were able to carry on a war of five or six years
against them, we were able to pay the same taxes which they do.
  I have already stated that the expense of conducting the present
war, and the government of the several states, may be done for two
millions sterling, and the establishment in the time of peace, for
three quarters of a million.*

  * I have made the calculations in sterling, because it is a rate
generally known in all the states, and because, likewise, it admits of
an easy comparison between our expenses to support the war, and
those of the enemy. Four silver dollars and a half is one pound
sterling, and three pence over.

  As to navy matters, they flourish so well, and are so well
attended to by individuals, that I think it consistent on every
principle of real use and economy, to turn the navy into hard money
(keeping only three or four packets) and apply it to the service of
the army. We shall not have a ship the less; the use of them, and
the benefit from them, will be greatly increased, and their expense
saved. We are now allied with a formidable naval power, from whom we
derive the assistance of a navy. And the line in which we can
prosecute the war, so as to reduce the common enemy and benefit the
alliance most effectually, will be by attending closely to the land
service.
  I estimate the charge of keeping up and maintaining an army,
officering them, and all expenses included, sufficient for the defence
of the country, to be equal to the expense of forty thousand men at
thirty pounds sterling per head, which is one million two hundred
thousand pounds.
  I likewise allow four hundred thousand pounds for continental
expenses at home and abroad.
  And four hundred thousand pounds for the support of the several
state governments- the amount will then be:

    For the army                                         1,200,000 L.
    Continental expenses at home and abroad                400,000
    Government of the several states                       400,000

                                                   Total 2,000,000 L.

  I take the proportion of this state, Pennsylvania, to be an eighth
part of the thirteen United States; the quota then for us to raise
will be two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling; two hundred
thousand of which will be our share for the support and pay of the
army, and continental expenses at home and abroad, and fifty
thousand pounds for the support of the state government.
  In order to gain an idea of the proportion in which the raising such
a sum will fall, I make the following calculation:
  Pennsylvania contains three hundred and seventy-five thousand
inhabitants, men, women and children; which is likewise an eighth of
the number of inhabitants of the whole United States: therefore, two
hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling to be raised among three
hundred and seventy-five thousand persons, is, on an average, thirteen
shillings and four pence per head, per annum, or something more than
one shilling sterling per month. And our proportion of three
quarters of a million for the government of the country, in time of
peace, will be ninety-three thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds
sterling; fifty thousand of which will be for the government
expenses of the state, and forty-three thousand seven hundred and
fifty pounds for continental expenses at home and abroad.
  The peace establishment then will, on an average, be five
shillings sterling per head. Whereas, was England now to stop, and the
war cease, her peace establishment would continue the same as it is
now, viz. forty shillings per head; therefore was our taxes
necessary for carrying on the war, as much per head as hers now is,
and the difference to be only whether we should, at the end of the
war, pay at the rate of five shillings per head, or forty shillings
per head, the case needs no thinking of. But as we can securely defend
and keep the country for one third less than what our burden would
be if it was conquered, and support the governments afterwards for one
eighth of what Britain would levy on us, and could I find a miser
whose heart never felt the emotion of a spark of principle, even
that man, uninfluenced by every love but the love of money, and
capable of no attachment but to his interest, would and must, from the
frugality which governs him, contribute to the defence of the country,
or he ceases to be a miser and becomes an idiot. But when we take in
with it every thing that can ornament mankind; when the line of our
interest becomes the line of our happiness; when all that can cheer
and animate the heart, when a sense of honor, fame, character, at home
and abroad, are interwoven not only with the security but the increase
of property, there exists not a man in America, unless he be an
hired emissary, who does not see that his good is connected with
keeping up a sufficient defence.
  I do not imagine that an instance can be produced in the world, of a
country putting herself to such an amazing charge to conquer and
enslave another, as Britain has done. The sum is too great for her
to think of with any tolerable degree of temper; and when we
consider the burden she sustains, as well as the disposition she has
shown, it would be the height of folly in us to suppose that she would
not reimburse herself by the most rapid means, had she America once
more within her power. With such an oppression of expense, what
would an empty conquest be to her! What relief under such
circumstances could she derive from a victory without a prize? It
was money, it was revenue she first went to war for, and nothing but
that would satisfy her. It is not the nature of avarice to be
satisfied with any thing else. Every passion that acts upon mankind
has a peculiar mode of operation. Many of them are temporary and
fluctuating; they admit of cessation and variety. But avarice is a
fixed, uniform passion. It neither abates of its vigor nor changes its
object; and the reason why it does not, is founded in the nature of
things, for wealth has not a rival where avarice is a ruling
passion. One beauty may excel another, and extinguish from the mind of
man the pictured remembrance of a former one: but wealth is the
phoenix of avarice, and therefore it cannot seek a new object, because
there is not another in the world.
  I now pass on to show the value of the present taxes, and compare
them with the annual expense; but this I shall preface with a few
explanatory remarks.
  There are two distinct things which make the payment of taxes
difficult; the one is the large and real value of the sum to be
paid, and the other is the scarcity of the thing in which the
payment is to be made; and although these appear to be one and the
same, they are in several instances riot only different, but the
difficulty springs from different causes.
  Suppose a tax to be laid equal to one half of what a man's yearly
income is, such a tax could not be paid, because the property could
not be spared; and on the other hand, suppose a very trifling tax
was laid, to be collected in pearls, such a tax likewise could not
be paid, because they could not be had. Now any person may see that
these are distinct cases, and the latter of them is a representation
of our own.
  That the difficulty cannot proceed from the former, that is, from
the real value or weight of the tax, is evident at the first view to
any person who will consider it.
  The amount of the quota of taxes for this State for the year,
1780, (and so in proportion for every other State,) is twenty millions
of dollars, which at seventy for one, is but sixty-four thousand two
hundred and eighty pounds three shillings sterling, and on an average,
is no more than three shillings and five pence sterling per head,
per annum, per man, woman and child, or threepence two-fifths per head
per month. Now here is a clear, positive fact, that cannot be
contradicted, and which proves that the difficulty cannot be in the
weight of the tax, for in itself it is a trifle, and far from being
adequate to our quota of the expense of the war. The quit-rents of one
penny sterling per acre on only one half of the state, come to upwards
of fifty thousand pounds, which is almost as much as all the taxes
of the present year, and as those quit-rents made no part of the taxes
then paid, and are now discontinued, the quantity of money drawn for
public-service this year, exclusive of the militia fines, which I
shall take notice of in the process of this work, is less than what
was paid and payable in any year preceding the revolution, and since
the last war; what I mean is, that the quit-rents and taxes taken
together came to a larger sum then, than the present taxes without the
quit-rents do now.
  My intention by these arguments and calculations is to place the
difficulty to the right cause, and show that it does not proceed
from the weight or worth of the tax, but from the scarcity of the
medium in which it is paid; and to illustrate this point still
further, I shall now show, that if the tax of twenty millions of
dollars was of four times the real value it now is, or nearly so,
which would be about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling,
and would be our full quota, this sum would have been raised with more
ease, and have been less felt, than the present sum of only sixty-four
thousand two hundred and eighty pounds.
  The convenience or inconvenience of paying a tax in money arises
from the quantity of money that can be spared out of trade.
  When the emissions stopped, the continent was left in possession
of two hundred millions of dollars, perhaps as equally dispersed as it
was possible for trade to do it. And as no more was to be issued,
the rise or fall of prices could neither increase nor diminish the
quantity. It therefore remained the same through all the
fluctuations of trade and exchange.
  Now had the exchange stood at twenty for one, which was the rate
Congress calculated upon when they arranged the quota of the several
states, the latter end of last year, trade would have been carried
on for nearly four times less money than it is now, and consequently
the twenty millions would have been spared with much greater ease, and
when collected would have been of almost four times the value that
they now are. And on the other hand, was the depreciation to be ninety
or one hundred for one, the quantity required for trade would be
more than at sixty or seventy for one, and though the value of them
would be less, the difficulty of sparing the money out of trade
would be greater. And on these facts and arguments I rest the
matter, to prove that it is not the want of property, but the scarcity
of the medium by which the proportion of property for taxation is to
be measured out, that makes the embarrassment which we lie under.
There is not money enough, and, what is equally as true, the people
will not let there be money enough.
  While I am on the subject of the currency, I shall offer one
remark which will appear true to everybody, and can be accounted for
by nobody, which is, that the better the times were, the worse the
money grew; and the worse the times were, the better the money
stood. It never depreciated by any advantage obtained by the enemy.
The troubles of 1776, and the loss of Philadelphia in 1777, made no
sensible impression on it, and every one knows that the surrender of
Charleston did not produce the least alteration in the rate of
exchange, which, for long before, and for more than three months
after, stood at sixty for one. It seems as if the certainty of its
being our own, made us careless of its value, and that the most
distant thoughts of losing it made us hug it the closer, like
something we were loth to part with; or that we depreciate it for
our pastime, which, when called to seriousness by the enemy, we
leave off to renew again at our leisure. In short, our good luck seems
to break us, and our bad makes us whole.
  Passing on from this digression, I shall now endeavor to bring
into one view the several parts which I have already stated, and
form thereon some propositions, and conclude.
  I have placed before the reader, the average tax per head, paid by
the people of England; which is forty shillings sterling.
  And I have shown the rate on an average per head, which will
defray all the expenses of the war to us, and support the several
governments without running the country into debt, which is thirteen
shillings and four pence.
  I have shown what the peace establishment may be conducted for,
viz., an eighth part of what it would be, if under the government of
Britain.
  And I have likewise shown what the average per head of the present
taxes is, namely, three shillings and fivepence sterling, or
threepence two-fifths per month; and that their whole yearly value, in
sterling, is only sixty-four thousand two hundred and eighty pounds.
Whereas our quota, to keep the payments equal with the expenses, is
two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Consequently, there is a
deficiency of one hundred and eighty-five thousand seven hundred and
twenty pounds, and the same proportion of defect, according to the
several quotas, happens in every other state. And this defect is the
cause why the army has been so indifferently fed, clothed and paid. It
is the cause, likewise, of the nerveless state of the campaign, and
the insecurity of the country. Now, if a tax equal to thirteen and
fourpence per head, will remove all these difficulties, and make
people secure in their homes, leave them to follow the business of
their stores and farms unmolested, and not only drive out but keep out
the enemy from the country; and if the neglect of raising this sum
will let them in, and produce the evils which might be prevented- on
which side, I ask, does the wisdom, interest and policy lie? Or,
rather, would it not be an insult to reason, to put the question?
The sum, when proportioned out according to the several abilities of
the people, can hurt no one, but an inroad from the enemy ruins
hundreds of families.
  Look at the destruction done in this city [Philadelphia]. The many
houses totally destroyed, and others damaged; the waste of fences in
the country round it, besides the plunder of furniture, forage, and
provisions. I do not suppose that half a million sterling would
reinstate the sufferers; and, does this, I ask, bear any proportion to
the expense that would make us secure? The damage, on an average, is
at least ten pounds sterling per head, which is as much as thirteen
shillings and fourpence per head comes to for fifteen years. The
same has happened on the frontiers, and in the Jerseys, New York,
and other places where the enemy has been- Carolina and Georgia are
likewise suffering the same fate.
  That the people generally do not understand the insufficiency of the
taxes to carry on the war, is evident, not only from common
observation, but from the construction of several petitions which were
presented to the Assembly of this state, against the recommendation of
Congress of the 18th of March last, for taking up and funding the
present currency at forty to one, and issuing new money in its
stead. The prayer of the petition was, that the currency might be
appreciated by taxes (meaning the present taxes) and that part of
the taxes be applied to the support of the army, if the army could not
be otherwise supported. Now it could not have been possible for such a
petition to have been presented, had the petitioners known, that so
far from part of the taxes being sufficient for the support of the
whole of them falls three-fourths short of the year's expenses.
  Before I proceed to propose methods by which a sufficiency of
money may be raised, I shall take a short view of the general state of
the country.
  Notwithstanding the weight of the war, the ravages of the enemy, and
the obstructions she has thrown in the way of trade and commerce, so
soon does a young country outgrow misfortune, that America has already
surmounted many that heavily oppressed her. For the first year or
two of the war, we were shut up within our ports, scarce venturing
to look towards the ocean. Now our rivers are beautified with large
and valuable vessels, our stores filled with merchandise, and the
produce of the country has a ready market, and an advantageous
price. Gold and silver, that for a while seemed to have retreated
again within the bowels of the earth, have once more risen into
circulation, and every day adds new strength to trade, commerce and
agriculture. In a pamphlet, written by Sir John Dalrymple, and
dispersed in America in the year 1775, he asserted that two twenty-gun
ships, nay, says he, tenders of those ships, stationed between
Albermarle sound and Chesapeake bay, would shut up the trade of
America for 600 miles. How little did Sir John Dalrymple know of the
abilities of America!
  While under the government of Britain, the trade of this country was
loaded with restrictions. It was only a few foreign ports which we
were allowed to sail to. Now it is otherwise; and allowing that the
quantity of trade is but half what it was before the war, the case
must show the vast advantage of an open trade, because the present
quantity under her restrictions could not support itself; from which I
infer, that if half the quantity without the restrictions can bear
itself up nearly, if not quite, as well as the whole when subject to
them, how prosperous must the condition of America be when the whole
shall return open with all the world. By the trade I do not mean the
employment of a merchant only, but the whole interest and business
of the country taken collectively.
  It is not so much my intention, by this publication, to propose
particular plans for raising money, as it is to show the necessity and
the advantages to be derived from it. My principal design is to form
the disposition of the people to the measures which I am fully
persuaded it is their interest and duty to adopt, and which need no
other force to accomplish them than the force of being felt. But as
every hint may be useful, I shall throw out a sketch, and leave others
to make such improvements upon it as to them may appear reasonable.
  The annual sum wanted is two millions, and the average rate in which
it falls, is thirteen shillings and fourpence per head.
  Suppose, then, that we raise half the sum and sixty thousand
pounds over. The average rate thereof will be seven shillings per
head.
  In this case we shall have half the supply that we want, and an
annual fund of sixty thousand pounds whereon to borrow the other
million; because sixty thousand pounds is the interest of a million at
six per cent.; and if at the end of another year we should be obliged,
by the continuance of the war, to borrow another million, the taxes
will be increased to seven shillings and sixpence; and thus for
every million borrowed, an additional tax, equal to sixpence per head,
must be levied.
  The sum to be raised next year will be one million and sixty
thousand pounds: one half of which I would propose should be raised by
duties on imported goods, and prize goods, and the other half by a tax
on landed property and houses, or such other means as each state may
devise.
  But as the duties on imports and prize goods must be the same in all
the states, therefore the rate per cent., or what other form the
duty shall be laid, must be ascertained and regulated by Congress, and
ingrafted in that form into the law of each state; and the monies
arising therefrom carried into the treasury of each state. The
duties to be paid in gold or silver.
  There are many reasons why a duty on imports is the most
convenient duty or tax that can be collected; one of which is, because
the whole is payable in a few places in a country, and it likewise
operates with the greatest ease and equality, because as every one
pays in proportion to what he consumes, so people in general consume
in proportion to what they can afford; and therefore the tax is
regulated by the abilities which every man supposes himself to have,
or in other words, every man becomes his own assessor, and pays by a
little at a time, when it suits him to buy. Besides, it is a tax which
people may pay or let alone by not consuming the articles; and
though the alternative may have no influence on their conduct, the
power of choosing is an agreeable thing to the mind. For my own
part, it would be a satisfaction to me was there a duty on all sorts
of liquors during the war, as in my idea of things it would be an
addition to the pleasures of society to know, that when the health
of the army goes round, a few drops, from every glass becomes
theirs. How often have I heard an emphatical wish, almost
accompanied by a tear, "Oh, that our poor fellows in the field had
some of this!" Why then need we suffer under a fruitless sympathy,
when there is a way to enjoy both the wish and the entertainment at
once.
  But the great national policy of putting a duty upon imports is,
that it either keeps the foreign trade in our own hands, or draws
something for the defence of the country from every foreigner who
participates in it with us.
  Thus much for the first half of the taxes, and as each state will
best devise means to raise the other half, I shall confine my
remarks to the resources of this state.
  The quota, then, of this state, of one million and sixty thousand
pounds, will be one hundred and thirty-three thousand two hundred
and fifty pounds, the half of which is sixty-six thousand six
hundred and twenty-five pounds; and supposing one fourth part of
Pennsylvania inhabited, then a tax of one bushel of wheat on every
twenty acres of land, one with another, would produce the sum, and all
the present taxes to cease. Whereas, the tithes of the bishops and
clergy in England, exclusive of the taxes, are upwards of half a
bushel of wheat on every single acre of land, good and bad, throughout
the nation.
  In the former part of this paper, I mentioned the militia fines, but
reserved speaking of the matter, which I shall now do. The ground I
shall put it upon is, that two millions sterling a year will support a
sufficient army, and all the expenses of war and government, without
having recourse to the inconvenient method of continually calling
men from their employments, which, of all others, is the most
expensive and the least substantial. I consider the revenues created
by taxes as the first and principal thing, and fines only as secondary
and accidental things. It was not the intention of the militia law
to apply the fines to anything else but the support of the militia,
neither do they produce any revenue to the state, yet these fines
amount to more than all the taxes: for taking the muster-roll to be
sixty thousand men, the fine on forty thousand who may not attend,
will be sixty thousand pounds sterling, and those who muster, will
give up a portion of time equal to half that sum, and if the eight
classes should be called within the year, and one third turn out,
the fine on the remaining forty thousand would amount to seventy-two
millions of dollars, besides the fifteen shillings on every hundred
pounds of property, and the charge of seven and a half per cent. for
collecting, in certain instances which, on the whole, would be upwards
of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling.
  Now if those very fines disable the country from raising a
sufficient revenue without producing an equivalent advantage, would it
not be for the ease and interest of all parties to increase the
revenue, in the manner I have proposed, or any better, if a better can
be devised, and cease the operation of the fines? I would still keep
the militia as an organized body of men, and should there be a real
necessity to call them forth, pay them out of the proper revenues of
the state, and increase the taxes a third or fourth per cent. on those
who do not attend. My limits will not allow me to go further into this
matter, which I shall therefore close with this remark; that fines
are, of all modes of revenue, the most unsuited to the minds of a free
country. When a man pays a tax, he knows that the public necessity
requires it, and therefore feels a pride in discharging his duty;
but a fine seems an atonement for neglect of duty, and of
consequence is paid with discredit, and frequently levied with
severity.
  I have now only one subject more to speak of, with which I shall
conclude, which is, the resolve of Congress of the 18th of March last,
for taking up and funding the present currency at forty for one, and
issuing new money in its stead.
  Every one knows that I am not the flatterer of Congress, but in this
instance they are right; and if that measure is supported, the
currency will acquire a value, which, without it, it will not. But
this is not all: it will give relief to the finances until such time
as they can be properly arranged, and save the country from being
immediately doubled taxed under the present mode. In short, support
that measure, and it will support you.
  I have now waded through a tedious course of difficult business, and
over an untrodden path. The subject, on every point in which it
could be viewed, was entangled with perplexities, and enveloped in
obscurity, yet such are the resources of America, that she wants
nothing but system to secure success.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 4, 1780.

  P. S. While this paper was preparing for the press, the treachery of
General Arnold became known, and engrossed the attention and
conversation of the public; and that, not so much on account of the
traitor as the magnitude of the treason, and the providence evident in
the discovery. The matter, as far as it is at present known, is thus
briefly related:
  General Arnold about six weeks before had obtained the command of
the important post of West Point, situated on the North River, about
sixty miles above New York, and an hundred below Albany, there being
no other defenceable pass between it and the last mentioned place.
At what time, or in what manner, he first entered into a negotiation
with the enemy for betraying the fort and garrison into their hands,
does not yet appear.
  While Arnold commanded at West Point, General Washington and the
Minister of France went to Hartford in Connecticut, to consult on
matters, in concert with Admiral Terney, commander of the French fleet
stationed at Rhode Island. In the mean time Arnold held a conference
with Major Andre, Adjutant-General to General Clinton, whom he
traitorously furnished with plans of the fort, state of the
garrison, minutes of the last council of war, and the manner in
which he would post the troops when the enemy should attempt a
surprise; and then gave him a pass, by the name of Mr. John
Anderson, to go to the lines at the White Plains or lower, if he Mr.
Anderson thought proper, he being (the pass said) on public business.
  Thus furnished Andre parted from Arnold, set off for New York, and
had nearly arrived at the extent of our lines, when he was stopped
by a party of militia, to whom he produced his pass, but they, not
being satisfied with his account, insisted on taking him before the
commanding officer, Lieut. Col. Jamieson. Finding himself in this
situation, and hoping to escape by a bribe, he offered them his purse,
watch and a promise of any quantity of goods they would accept,
which these honest men nobly and virtuously scorned, and confident
with their duty took him to the proper officer. On examination there
was found on him the above mentioned papers and several others, all in
the handwriting of General Arnold, and finding himself thus
detected, he confessed his proper name and character. He was
accordingly made a close prisoner, and the papers sent off by
express to West Point, at which place General Washington had arrived
soon after the arrival of the packet. On this disclosure, he went in
quest of Arnold, whom he had not seen that day, but all that could
be learned was that Arnold had received a letter some short time
before which had much confused him, since which he had disappeared.
Colonel Hamilton, one of General Washington's aids, with some others
were sent after him, but he, having the start, eluded the pursuit,
took boat under pretence of a flag, and got on board the Vulture sloop
of war lying in the North River; on which it may be truly said, that
one vulture was receiving another. From on board this vessel he
addressed a letter to General Washington, which, in whatever light
it may be viewed, confirms him a finished villain.
  The true character of Arnold is that of a desperado. His whole
life has been a life of jobs; and where either plunder or profit was
the object, no danger deterred, no principle restrained him. In his
person he was smart and active, somewhat diminutive, weak in his
capacities and trifling in his conversation; and though gallant in the
field, was defective in the talents necessary for command. The early
convulsion of the times afforded him an introduction into life, to the
elegance of which he was before a stranger, and the eagerness of the
public to reward and encourage enterprise, procured him at once both
applause and promotion. His march to Quebec gave him fame, and the
plunder of Montreal put the first stamp to his public character. His
behavior, at Danbury and Saratoga once more covered over his crimes,
which again broke forth in the plunder of Philadelphia, under pretence
of supplying the army. From this time, the true spring of his
conduct being known, he became both disregarded and disesteemed, and
this last instance of his treachery has proved the public judgment
right.
  When we take a review of the history of former times it will turn
out to the honor of America that, notwithstanding the trying variety
of her situation, this is the only instance of defection in a
general officer; and even in this case, the unshaken honesty of
those who detected him heightens the national character, to which
his apostasy serves as a foil. From the nature of his crime, and his
disposition to monopolize, it is reasonable to conclude he had few
or no direct accomplices. His sole object was to make a monied
bargain; and to be consistent with himself, he would as readily betray
the side he has deserted to, as that he deserted from.
  But there is one reflection results from this black business that
deserves notice, which is that it shows the declining power of the
enemy. An attempt to bribe is a sacrifice of military fame, and a
confession of inability to conquer; as a proud people they ought to be
above it, and as soldiers to despise it; and however they may feel
on the occasion, the world at large will despise them for it, and
consider America superior to their arms.
                                                   C. S.
                                  X.

                   ON THE KING OF ENGLAND'S SPEECH.

  OF all the innocent passions which actuate the human mind there is
none more universally prevalent than curiosity. It reaches all
mankind, and in matters which concern us, or concern us not, it
alike provokes in us a desire to know them.
  Although the situation of America, superior to every effort to
enslave her, and daily rising to importance and opulence, has placed
her above the region of anxiety, it has still left her within the
circle of curiosity; and her fancy to see the speech of a man who
had proudly threatened to bring her to his feet, was visibly marked
with that tranquil confidence which cared nothing about its
contents. It was inquired after with a smile, read with a laugh, and
dismissed with disdain.
  But, as justice is due, even to an enemy, it is right to say, that
the speech is as well managed as the embarrassed condition of their
affairs could well admit of; and though hardly a line of it is true,
except the mournful story of Cornwallis, it may serve to amuse the
deluded commons and people of England, for whom it was calculated.
  "The war," says the speech, "is still unhappily prolonged by that
restless ambition which first excited our enemies to commence it,
and which still continues to disappoint my earnest wishes and diligent
exertions to restore the public tranquillity."
  How easy it is to abuse truth and language, when men, by habitual
wickedness, have learned to set justice at defiance. That the very man
who began the war, who with the most sullen insolence refused to
answer, and even to hear the humblest of all petitions, who has
encouraged his officers and his army in the most savage cruelties, and
the most scandalous plunderings, who has stirred up the Indians on one
side, and the negroes on the other, and invoked every aid of hell in
his behalf, should now, with an affected air of pity, turn the
tables from himself, and charge to another the wickedness that is
his own, can only be equalled by the baseness of the heart that
spoke it.
  To be nobly wrong is more manly than to be meanly right, is an
expression I once used on a former occasion, and it is equally
applicable now. We feel something like respect for consistency even in
error. We lament the virtue that is debauched into a vice, but the
vice that affects a virtue becomes the more detestable: and amongst
the various assumptions of character, which hypocrisy has taught,
and men have practised, there is none that raises a higher relish of
disgust, than to see disappointed inveteracy twisting itself, by the
most visible falsehoods, into an appearance of piety which it has no
pretensions to.

  "But I should not," continues the speech, "answer the trust
committed to the sovereign of a free people, nor make a suitable
return to my subjects for their constant, zealous, and affectionate
attachment to my person, family and government, if I consented to
sacrifice, either to my own desire of peace, or to their temporary
ease and relief, those essential rights and permanent interests,
upon the maintenance and preservation of which, the future strength
and security of this country must principally depend."

  That the man whose ignorance and obstinacy first involved and
still continues the nation in the most hopeless and expensive of all
wars, should now meanly flatter them with the name of a free people,
and make a merit of his crime, under the disguise of their essential
rights and permanent interests, is something which disgraces even
the character of perverseness. Is he afraid they will send him to
Hanover, or what does he fear? Why is the sycophant thus added to
the hypocrite, and the man who pretends to govern, sunk into the
humble and submissive memorialist?
  What those essential rights and permanent interests are, on which
the future strength and security of England must principally depend,
are not so much as alluded to. They are words which impress nothing
but the ear, and are calculated only for the sound.
  But if they have any reference to America, then do they amount to
the disgraceful confession, that England, who once assumed to be her
protectress, has now become her dependant. The British king and
ministry are constantly holding up the vast importance which America
is of to England, in order to allure the nation to carry on the war:
now, whatever ground there is for this idea, it ought to have operated
as a reason for not beginning it; and, therefore, they support their
present measures to their own disgrace, because the arguments which
they now use, are a direct reflection on their former policy.
  "The favorable appearance of affairs," continues the speech, "in the
East Indies, and the safe arrival of the numerous commercial fleets of
my kingdom, must have given you satisfaction."
  That things are not quite so bad every where as in America may be
some cause of consolation, but can be none for triumph. One broken leg
is better than two, but still it is not a source of joy: and let the
appearance of affairs in the East Indies be ever so favorable, they
are nevertheless worse than at first, without a prospect of their ever
being better. But the mournful story of Cornwallis was yet to be told,
and it was necessary to give it the softest introduction possible.
  "But in the course of this year," continues the speech, "my
assiduous endeavors to guard the extensive dominions of my crown
have not been attended with success equal to the justice and
uprightness of my views."- What justice and uprightness there was in
beginning a war with America, the world will judge of, and the
unequalled barbarity with which it has been conducted, is not to be
worn from the memory by the cant of snivelling hypocrisy.
  "And it is with great concern that I inform you that the events of
war have been very unfortunate to my arms in Virginia, having ended in
the loss of my forces in that province."- And our great concern is
that they are not all served in the same manner.

  "No endeavors have been wanted on my part," says the speech, "to
extinguish that spirit of rebellion which our enemies have found means
to foment and maintain in the colonies; and to restore to my deluded
subjects in America that happy and prosperous condition which they
formerly derived from a due obedience to the laws."

  The expression of deluded subjects is become so hacknied and
contemptible, and the more so when we see them making prisoners of
whole armies at a time, that the pride of not being laughed at would
induce a man of common sense to leave it off. But the most offensive
falsehood in the paragraph is the attributing the prosperity of
America to a wrong cause. It was the unremitted industry of the
settlers and their descendants, the hard labor and toil of persevering
fortitude, that were the true causes of the prosperity of America. The
former tyranny of England served to people it, and the virtue of the
adventurers to improve it. Ask the man, who, with his axe, has cleared
a way in the wilderness, and now possesses an estate, what made him
rich, and he will tell you the labor of his hands, the sweat of his
brow, and the blessing of heaven. Let Britain but leave America to
herself and she asks no more. She has risen into greatness without the
knowledge and against the will of England, and has a right to the
unmolested enjoyment of her own created wealth.

  "I will order," says the speech, "the estimates of the ensuing
year to be laid before you. I rely on your wisdom and public spirit
for such supplies as the circumstances of our affairs shall be found
to require. Among the many ill consequences which attend the
continuation of the present war, I most sincerely regret the
additional burdens which it must unavoidably bring upon my faithful
subjects."

  It is strange that a nation must run through such a labyrinth of
trouble, and expend such a mass of wealth to gain the wisdom which
an hour's reflection might have taught. The final superiority of
America over every attempt that an island might make to conquer her,
was as naturally marked in the constitution of things, as the future
ability of a giant over a dwarf is delineated in his features while an
infant. How far providence, to accomplish purposes which no human
wisdom could foresee, permitted such extraordinary errors, is still
a secret in the womb of time, and must remain so till futurity shall
give it birth.

  "In the prosecution of this great and important contest," says the
speech, "in which we are engaged, I retain a firm confidence in the
protection of divine providence, and a perfect conviction in the
justice of my cause, and I have no doubt, but, that by the concurrence
and support of my Parliament, by the valour of my fleets and armies,
and by a vigorous, animated, and united exertion of the faculties
and resources of my people, I shall be enabled to restore the
blessings of a safe and honorable peace to all my dominions."

  The King of England is one of the readiest believers in the world.
In the beginning of the contest he passed an act to put America out of
the protection of the crown of England, and though providence, for
seven years together, has put him out of her protection, still the man
has no doubt. Like Pharaoh on the edge of the Red Sea, he sees not the
plunge he is making, and precipitately drives across the flood that is
closing over his head.
  I think it is a reasonable supposition, that this part of the speech
was composed before the arrival of the news of the capture of
Cornwallis: for it certainly has no relation to their condition at the
time it was spoken. But, be this as it may, it is nothing to us. Our
line is fixed. Our lot is cast; and America, the child of fate, is
arriving at maturity. We have nothing to do but by a spirited and
quick exertion, to stand prepared for war or peace. Too great to
yield, and too noble to insult; superior to misfortune, and generous
in success, let us untaintedly preserve the character which we have
gained, and show to future ages an example of unequalled
magnanimity. There is something in the cause and consequence of
America that has drawn on her the attention of all mankind. The
world has seen her brave. Her love of liberty; her ardour in
supporting it; the justice of her claims, and the constancy of her
fortitude have won her the esteem of Europe, and attached to her
interest the first power in that country.
  Her situation now is such, that to whatever point, past, present
or to come, she casts her eyes, new matter rises to convince her
that she is right. In her conduct towards her enemy, no reproachful
sentiment lurks in secret. No sense of injustice is left upon the
mind. Untainted with ambition, and a stranger to revenge, her progress
has been marked by providence, and she, in every stage of the
conflict, has blest her with success.
  But let not America wrap herself up in delusive hope and suppose the
business done. The least remissness in preparation, the least
relaxation in execution, will only serve to prolong the war, and
increase expenses. If our enemies can draw consolation from
misfortune, and exert themselves upon despair, how much more ought we,
who are to win a continent by the conquest, and have already an
earnest of success?
  Having, in the preceding part, made my remarks on the several
matters which the speech contains, I shall now make my remarks on what
it does not contain.
  There is not a syllable in its respecting alliances. Either the
injustice of Britain is too glaring, or her condition too desperate,
or both, for any neighboring power to come to her support. In the
beginning of the contest, when she had only America to contend with,
she hired assistance from Hesse, and other smaller states of
Germany, and for nearly three years did America, young, raw,
undisciplined and unprovided, stand against the power of Britain,
aided by twenty thousand foreign troops, and made a complete
conquest of one entire army. The remembrance of those things ought
to inspire us with confidence and greatness of mind, and carry us
through every remaining difficulty with content and cheerfulness. What
are the little sufferings of the present day, compared with the
hardships that are past? There was a time, when we had neither house
nor home in safety; when every hour was the hour of alarm and
danger; when the mind, tortured with anxiety, knew no repose, and
every thing, but hope and fortitude, was bidding us farewell.
  It is of use to look back upon these things; to call to mind the
times of trouble and the scenes of complicated anguish that are past
and gone. Then every expense was cheap, compared with the dread of
conquest and the misery of submission. We did not stand debating
upon trifles, or contending about the necessary and unavoidable
charges of defence. Every one bore his lot of suffering, and looked
forward to happier days, and scenes of rest.
  Perhaps one of the greatest dangers which any country can be exposed
to, arises from a kind of trifling which sometimes steals upon the
mind, when it supposes the danger past; and this unsafe situation
marks at this time the peculiar crisis of America. What would she once
have given to have known that her condition at this day should be what
it now is? And yet we do not seem to place a proper value upon it, nor
vigorously pursue the necessary measures to secure it. We know that we
cannot be defended, nor yet defend ourselves, without trouble and
expense. We have no right to expect it; neither ought we to look for
it. We are a people, who, in our situation, differ from all the world.
We form one common floor of public good, and, whatever is our
charge, it is paid for our own interest and upon our own account.
  Misfortune and experience have now taught us system and method;
and the arrangements for carrying on the war are reduced to rule and
order. The quotas of the several states are ascertained, and I
intend in a future publication to show what they are, and the
necessity as well as the advantages of vigorously providing for them.
  In the mean time, I shall conclude this paper with an instance of
British clemency, from Smollett's History of England, vol. xi.,
printed in London. It will serve to show how dismal the situation
of a conquered people is, and that the only security is an effectual
defence.
  We all know that the Stuart family and the house of Hanover
opposed each other for the crown of England. The Stuart family stood
first in the line of succession, but the other was the most
successful.
  In July, 1745, Charles, the son of the exiled king, landed in
Scotland, collected a small force, at no time exceeding five or six
thousand men, and made some attempts to re-establish his claim. The
late Duke of Cumberland, uncle to the present King of England, was
sent against him, and on the 16th of April following, Charles was
totally defeated at Culloden, in Scotland. Success and power are the
only situations in which clemency can be shown, and those who are
cruel, because they are victorious, can with the same facility act any
other degenerate character.

  "Immediately after the decisive action at Culloden, the Duke of
Cumberland took possession of Inverness; where six and thirty
deserters, convicted by a court martial, were ordered to be
executed: then he detached several parties to ravage the country.
One of these apprehended The Lady Mackintosh, who was sent prisoner to
Inverness, plundered her house, and drove away her cattle, though
her husband was actually in the service of the government. The
castle of Lord Lovat was destroyed. The French prisoners were sent
to Carlisle and Penrith: Kilmarnock, Balmerino, Cromartie, and his
son, The Lord Macleod, were conveyed by sea to London; and those of an
inferior rank were confined in different prisons. The Marquis of
Tullibardine, together with a brother of the Earl of Dunmore, and
Murray, the pretender's secretary, were seized and transported to
the Tower of London, to which the Earl of Traquaire had been committed
on suspicion; and the eldest son of Lord Lovat was imprisoned in the
castle of Edinburgh. In a word, all the jails in Great Britain, from
the capital, northwards, were filled with those unfortunate
captives; and great numbers of them were crowded together in the holds
of ships, where they perished in the most deplorable manner, for
want of air and exercise. Some rebel chiefs escaped in two French
frigates that arrived on the coast of Lochaber about the end of April,
and engaged three vessels belonging to his Britannic majesty, which
they obliged to retire. Others embarked on board a ship on the coast
of Buchan, and were conveyed to Norway, from whence they travelled
to Sweden. In the month of May, the Duke of Cumberland advanced with
the army into the Highlands, as far as Fort Augustus, where he
encamped; and sent off detachments on all hands, to hunt down the
fugitives, and lay waste the country with fire and sword. The
castles of Glengary and Lochiel were plundered and burned; every
house, hut, or habitation, met with the same fate, without
distinction; and all the cattle and provision were carried off; the
men were either shot upon the mountains, like wild beasts, or put to
death in cold blood, without form of trial; the women, after having
seen their husbands and fathers murdered, were subjected to brutal
violation, and then turned out naked, with their children, to starve
on the barren heaths. One whole family was enclosed in a barn, and
consumed to ashes. Those ministers of vengeance were so alert in the
execution of their office, that in a few days there was neither house,
cottage, man, nor beast, to be seen within the compass of fifty miles;
all was ruin, silence, and desolation."

  I have here presented the reader with one of the most shocking
instances of cruelty ever practised, and I leave it, to rest on his
mind, that he may be fully impressed with a sense of the destruction
he has escaped, in case Britain had conquered America; and likewise,
that he may see and feel the necessity, as well for his own personal
safety, as for the honor, the interest, and happiness of the whole
community, to omit or delay no one preparation necessary to secure the
ground which we so happily stand upon.
                       TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA

         On the expenses, arrangements and disbursements for
           carrying on the war, and finishing it with honor
                            and advantage

  WHEN any necessity or occasion has pointed out the convenience of
addressing the public, I have never made it a consideration whether
the subject was popular or unpopular, but whether it was right or
wrong; for that which is right will become popular, and that which
is wrong, though by mistake it may obtain the cry or fashion of the
day, will soon lose the power of delusion, and sink into disesteem.
  A remarkable instance of this happened in the case of Silas Deane;
and I mention this circumstance with the greater ease, because the
poison of his hypocrisy spread over the whole country, and every
man, almost without exception, thought me wrong in opposing him. The
best friends I then had, except Mr. [Henry] Laurens, stood at a
distance, and this tribute, which is due to his constancy, I pay to
him with respect, and that the readier, because he is not here to hear
it. If it reaches him in his imprisonment, it will afford him an
agreeable reflection.
  "As he rose like a rocket, he would fall like a stick," is a
metaphor which I applied to Mr. Deane, in the first piece which I
published respecting him, and he has exactly fulfilled the
description. The credit he so unjustly obtained from the public, he
lost in almost as short a time. The delusion perished as it fell,
and he soon saw himself stripped of popular support. His more intimate
acquaintances began to doubt, and to desert him long before he left
America, and at his departure, he saw himself the object of general
suspicion. When he arrived in France, he endeavored to effect by
treason what he had failed to accomplish by fraud. His plans,
schemes and projects, together with his expectation of being sent to
Holland to negotiate a loan of money, had all miscarried. He then
began traducing and accusing America of every crime, which could
injure her reputation. "That she was a ruined country; that she only
meant to make a tool of France, to get what money she could out of
her, and then to leave her and accommodate with Britain." Of all which
and much more, Colonel Laurens and myself, when in France, informed
Dr. Franklin, who had not before heard of it. And to complete the
character of traitor, he has, by letters to his country since, some of
which, in his own handwriting, are now in the possession of
Congress, used every expression and argument in his power, to injure
the reputation of France, and to advise America to renounce her
alliance, and surrender up her independence.* Thus in France he abuses
America, and in his letters to America he abuses France; and is
endeavoring to create disunion between two countries, by the same arts
of double-dealing by which he caused dissensions among the
commissioners in Paris, and distractions in America. But his life
has been fraud, and his character has been that of a plodding,
plotting, cringing mercenary, capable of any disguise that suited
his purpose. His final detection has very happily cleared up those
mistakes, and removed that uneasiness, which his unprincipled
conduct occasioned. Every one now sees him in the same light; for
towards friends or enemies he acted with the same deception and
injustice, and his name, like that of Arnold, ought now to be
forgotten among us. As this is the first time that I have mentioned
him since my return from France, it is my intention that it shall be
the last. From this digression, which for several reasons I thought
necessary to give, I now proceed to the purport of my address.

  * Mr. William Marshall, of this city [Philadelphia], formerly a
pilot, who had been taken at sea and carried to England, and got
from thence to France, brought over letters from Mr. Deane to America,
one of which was directed to "Robert Morris, Esq." Mr. Morris sent
it unopened to Congress, and advised Mr. Marshall to deliver the
others there, which he did. The letters were of the same purport
with those which have been already published under the signature of S.
Deane, to which they had frequent reference.

  I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's
war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf,
for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of
their own property. It is not the war of Congress, the war of the
assemblies, or the war of government in any line whatever. The country
first, by mutual compact, resolved to defend their rights and maintain
their independence, at the hazard of their lives and fortunes; they
elected their representatives, by whom they appointed their members of
Congress, and said, act you for us, and we will support you. This is
the true ground and principle of the war on the part of America,
and, consequently, there remains nothing to do, but for every one to
fulfil his obligation.
  It was next to impossible that a new country, engaged in a new
undertaking, could set off systematically right at first. She saw
not the extent of the struggle that she was involved in, neither could
she avoid the beginning. She supposed every step that she took, and
every resolution which she formed, would bring her enemy to reason and
close the contest. Those failing, she was forced into new measures;
and these, like the former, being fitted to her expectations, and
failing in their turn, left her continually unprovided, and without
system. The enemy, likewise, was induced to prosecute the war, from
the temporary expedients we adopted for carrying it on. We were
continually expecting to see their credit exhausted, and they were
looking to see our currency fail; and thus, between their watching us,
and we them, the hopes of both have been deceived, and the
childishness of the expectation has served to increase the expense.
  Yet who, through this wilderness of error, has been to blame?
Where is the man who can say the fault, in part, has not been his?
They were the natural, unavoidable errors of the day. They were the
errors of a whole country, which nothing but experience could detect
and time remove. Neither could the circumstances of America admit of
system, till either the paper currency was fixed or laid aside. No
calculation of a finance could be made on a medium failing without
reason, and fluctuating without rule.
  But there is one error which might have been prevented and was
not; and as it is not my custom to flatter, but to serve mankind, I
will speak it freely. It certainly was the duty of every assembly on
the continent to have known, at all times, what was the condition of
its treasury, and to have ascertained at every period of depreciation,
how much the real worth of the taxes fell short of their nominal
value. This knowledge, which might have been easily gained, in the
time of it, would have enabled them to have kept their constituents
well informed, and this is one of the greatest duties of
representation. They ought to have studied and calculated the expenses
of the war, the quota of each state, and the consequent proportion
that would fall on each man's property for his defence; and this
must have easily shown to them, that a tax of one hundred pounds could
not be paid by a bushel of apples or an hundred of flour, which was
often the case two or three years ago. But instead of this, which
would have been plain and upright dealing, the little line of
temporary popularity, the feather of an hour's duration, was too
much pursued; and in this involved condition of things, every state,
for the want of a little thinking, or a little information, supposed
that it supported the whole expenses of the war, when in fact it fell,
by the time the tax was levied and collected, above three-fourths
short of its own quota.
  Impressed with a sense of the danger to which the country was
exposed by this lax method of doing business, and the prevailing
errors of the day, I published, last October was a twelvemonth, the
Crisis Extraordinary, on the revenues of America, and the yearly
expense of carrying on the war. My estimation of the latter,
together with the civil list of Congress, and the civil list of the
several states, was two million pounds sterling, which is very
nearly nine millions of dollars.
  Since that time, Congress have gone into a calculation, and have
estimated the expenses of the War Department and the civil list of
Congress (exclusive of the civil list of the several governments) at
eight millions of dollars; and as the remaining million will be
fully sufficient for the civil list of the several states, the two
calculations are exceedingly near each other.
  The sum of eight millions of dollars have called upon the states
to furnish, and their quotas are as follows, which I shall preface
with the resolution itself.

        "By the United States in Congress assembled.

                                                   "October 30, 1781.

  "Resolved, That the respective states be called upon to furnish
the treasury of the United States with their quotas of eight
millions of dollars, for the War Department and civil list for the
ensuing year, to be paid quarterly, in equal proportions, the first
payment to be made on the first day of April next.
  "Resolved, That a committee, consisting of a member from each state,
be appointed to apportion to the several states the quota of the above
sum.
  "November 2d. The committee appointed to ascertain the proportions
of the several states of the monies to be raised for the expenses of
the ensuing year, report the following resolutions:
  "That the sum of eight millions of dollars, as required to be raised
by the resolutions of the 30th of October last, be paid by the
states in the following proportion:

               New Hampshire....... $  373,598
               Massachusetts.......  1,307,596
               Rhode Island........    216,684
               Connecticut.........    747,196
               New York............    373,598
               New Jersey..........    485,679
               Pennsylvania........  1,120,794
               Delaware............    112,085
               Maryland............    933,996
               Virginia............  1,307,594
               North Carolina......    622,677
               South Carolina......    373,598
               Georgia.............     24,905

                                    $8,000,000

  "Resolved, That it be recommended to the several states, to lay
taxes for raising their quotas of money for the United States,
separate from those laid for their own particular use."

  On these resolutions I shall offer several remarks.
  1st, On the sum itself, and the ability of the country.
  2d, On the several quotas, and the nature of a union. And,
  3d, On the manner of collection and expenditure.
  1st, On the sum itself, and the ability of the country. As I know my
own calculation is as low as possible, and as the sum called for by
congress, according to their calculation, agrees very nearly
therewith, I am sensible it cannot possibly be lower. Neither can it
be done for that, unless there is ready money to go to market with;
and even in that case, it is only by the utmost management and economy
that it can be made to do.
  By the accounts which were laid before the British Parliament last
spring, it appeared that the charge of only subsisting, that is,
feeding their army in America, cost annually four million pounds
sterling, which is very nearly eighteen millions of dollars. Now if,
for eight millions, we can feed, clothe, arm, provide for, and pay
an army sufficient for our defence, the very comparison shows that the
money must be well laid out.
  It may be of some use, either in debate or conversation, to attend
to the progress of the expenses of an army, because it will enable
us to see on what part any deficiency will fall.
  The first thing is, to feed them and prepare for the sick.
  Second, to clothe them.
  Third, to arm and furnish them.
  Fourth, to provide means for removing them from place to place. And,
  Fifth, to pay them.
  The first and second are absolutely necessary to them as men. The
third and fourth are equally as necessary to them as an army. And
the fifth is their just due. Now if the sum which shall be raised
should fall short, either by the several acts of the states for
raising it, or by the manner of collecting it, the deficiency will
fall on the fifth head, the soldiers' pay, which would be defrauding
them, and eternally disgracing ourselves. It would be a blot on the
councils, the country, and the revolution of America, and a man
would hereafter be ashamed to own that he had any hand in it.
  But if the deficiency should be still shorter, it would next fall on
the fourth head, the means of removing the army from place to place;
and, in this case, the army must either stand still where it can be of
no use, or seize on horses, carts, wagons, or any means of
transportation which it can lay hold of; and in this instance the
country suffers. In short, every attempt to do a thing for less than
it can he done for, is sure to become at last both a loss and a
dishonor.
  But the country cannot bear it, say some. This has been the most
expensive doctrine that ever was held out, and cost America millions
of money for nothing. Can the country bear to be overrun, ravaged, and
ruined by an enemy? This will immediately follow where defence is
wanting, and defence will ever be wanting, where sufficient revenues
are not provided. But this is only one part of the folly. The second
is, that when the danger comes, invited in part by our not preparing
against it, we have been obliged, in a number of instances, to
expend double the sums to do that which at first might have been
done for half the money. But this is not all. A third mischief has
been, that grain of all sorts, flour, beef fodder, horses, carts,
wagons, or whatever was absolutely or immediately wanted, have been
taken without pay. Now, I ask, why was all this done, but from that
extremely weak and expensive doctrine, that the country could not bear
it? That is, that she could not bear, in the first instance, that
which would have saved her twice as much at last; or, in proverbial
language, that she could not bear to pay a penny to save a pound;
the consequence of which has been, that she has paid a pound for a
penny. Why are there so many unpaid certificates in almost every man's
hands, but from the parsimony of not providing sufficient revenues?
Besides, the doctrine contradicts itself; because, if the whole
country cannot bear it, how is it possible that a part should? And yet
this has been the case: for those things have been had; and they
must be had; but the misfortune is, that they have been obtained in
a very unequal manner, and upon expensive credit, whereas, with
ready money, they might have been purchased for half the price, and
nobody distressed.
  But there is another thought which ought to strike us, which is, how
is the army to bear the want of food, clothing and other
necessaries? The man who is at home, can turn himself a thousand ways,
and find as many means of ease, convenience or relief: but a soldier's
life admits of none of those: their wants cannot be supplied from
themselves: for an army, though it is the defence of a state, is at
the same time the child of a country, or must be provided for in every
thing.
  And lastly, the doctrine is false. There are not three millions of
people in any part of the universe, who live so well, or have such a
fund of ability, as in America. The income of a common laborer, who is
industrious, is equal to that of the generality of tradesmen in
England. In the mercantile line, I have not heard of one who could
be said to be a bankrupt since the war began, and in England they have
been without number. In America almost every farmer lives on his own
lands, and in England not one in a hundred does. In short, it seems as
if the poverty of that country had made them furious, and they were
determined to risk all to recover all.
  Yet, notwithstanding those advantages on the part of America, true
it is, that had it not been for the operation of taxes for our
necessary defence, we had sunk into a state of sloth and poverty:
for there was more wealth lost by neglecting to till the earth in
the years 1776, '77, and '78, than the quota of taxes amounts to. That
which is lost by neglect of this kind, is lost for ever: whereas
that which is paid, and continues in the country, returns to us again;
and at the same time that it provides us with defence, it operates not
only as a spur, but as a premium to our industry.
  I shall now proceed to the second head, viz., on the several quotas,
and the nature of a union.
  There was a time when America had no other bond of union, than
that of common interest and affection. The whole country flew to the
relief of Boston, and, making her cause, their own, participated in
her cares and administered to her wants. The fate of war, since that
day, has carried the calamity in a ten-fold proportion to the
southward; but in the mean time the union has been strengthened by a
legal compact of the states, jointly and severally ratified, and
that which before was choice, or the duty of affection, is now
likewise the duty of legal obligation.
  The union of America is the foundation-stone of her independence;
the rock on which it is built; and is something so sacred in her
constitution, that we ought to watch every word we speak, and every
thought we think, that we injure it not, even by mistake. When a
multitude, extended, or rather scattered, over a continent in the
manner we were, mutually agree to form one common centre whereon the
whole shall move to accomplish a particular purpose, all parts must
act together and alike, or act not at all, and a stoppage in any one
is a stoppage of the whole, at least for a time.
  Thus the several states have sent representatives to assemble
together in Congress, and they have empowered that body, which thus
becomes their centre, and are no other than themselves in
representation, to conduct and manage the war, while their
constituents at home attend to the domestic cares of the country,
their internal legislation, their farms, professions or employments,
for it is only by reducing complicated things to method and orderly
connection that they can be understood with advantage, or pursued with
success. Congress, by virtue of this delegation, estimates the
expense, and apportions it out to the several parts of the empire
according to their several abilities; and here the debate must end,
because each state has already had its voice, and the matter has
undergone its whole portion of argument, and can no more be altered by
any particular state, than a law of any state, after it has passed,
can be altered by any individual. For with respect to those things
which immediately concern the union, and for which the union was
purposely established, and is intended to secure, each state is to the
United States what each individual is to the state he lives in. And it
is on this grand point, this movement upon one centre, that our
existence as a nation, our happiness as a people, and our safety as
individuals, depend.
  It may happen that some state or other may be somewhat over or under
rated, but this cannot be much. The experience which has been had upon
the matter, has nearly ascertained their several abilities. But even
in this case, it can only admit of an appeal to the United States, but
cannot authorise any state to make the alteration itself, any more
than our internal government can admit an individual to do so in the
case of an act of assembly; for if one state can do it, then may
another do the same, and the instant this is done the whole is undone.
  Neither is it supposable that any single state can be a judge of all
the comparative reasons which may influence the collective body in
arranging the quotas of the continent. The circumstances of the
several states are frequently varying, occasioned by the accidents
of war and commerce, and it will often fall upon some to help
others, rather beyond what their exact proportion at another time
might be; but even this assistance is as naturally and politically
included in the idea of a union as that of any particular assigned
proportion; because we know not whose turn it may be next to want
assistance, for which reason that state is the wisest which sets the
best example.
  Though in matters of bounden duty and reciprocal affection, it is
rather a degeneracy from the honesty and ardor of the heart to admit
any thing selfish to partake in the government of our conduct, yet
in cases where our duty, our affections, and our interest all
coincide, it may be of some use to observe their union. The United
States will become heir to an extensive quantity of vacant land, and
their several titles to shares and quotas thereof, will naturally be
adjusted according to their relative quotas, during the war, exclusive
of that inability which may unfortunately arise to any state by the
enemy's holding possession of a part; but as this is a cold matter
of interest, I pass it by, and proceed to my third head, viz., on
the manner of collection and expenditure.
  It has been our error, as well as our misfortune, to blend the
affairs of each state, especially in money matters, with those of
the United States; whereas it is our case, convenience and interest,
to keep them separate. The expenses of the United States for
carrying on the war, and the expenses of each state for its own
domestic government, are distinct things, and to involve them is a
source of perplexity and a cloak for fraud. I love method, because I
see and am convinced of its beauty and advantage. It is that which
makes all business easy and understood, and without which,
everything becomes embarrassed and difficult.
  There are certain powers which the people of each state have
delegated to their legislative and executive bodies, and there are
other powers which the people of every state have delegated to
Congress, among which is that of conducting the war, and,
consequently, of managing the expenses attending it; for how else
can that be managed, which concerns every state, but by a delegation
from each? When a state has furnished its quota, it has an undoubted
right to know how it has been applied, and it is as much the duty of
Congress to inform the state of the one, as it is the duty of the
state to provide the other.
  In the resolution of Congress already recited, it is recommended
to the several states to lay taxes for raising their quotas of money
for the United States, separate from those laid for their own
particular use.
  This is a most necessary point to be observed, and the distinction
should follow all the way through. They should be levied, paid and
collected, separately, and kept separate in every instance. Neither
have the civil officers of any state, nor the government of that
state, the least right to touch that money which the people pay for
the support of their army and the war, any more than Congress has to
touch that which each state raises for its own use.
  This distinction will naturally be followed by another. It will
occasion every state to examine nicely into the expenses of its
civil list, and to regulate, reduce, and bring it into better order
than it has hitherto been; because the money for that purpose must
be raised apart, and accounted for to the public separately. But while
the, monies of both were blended, the necessary nicety was not
observed, and the poor soldier, who ought to have been the first,
was the last who was thought of.
  Another convenience will be, that the people, by paying the taxes
separately, will know what they are for; and will likewise know that
those which are for the defence of the country will cease with the
war, or soon after. For although, as I have before observed, the war
is their own, and for the support of their own rights and the
protection of their own property, yet they have the same right to
know, that they have to pay, and it is the want of not knowing that is
often the cause of dissatisfaction.
  This regulation of keeping the taxes separate has given rise to a
regulation in the office of finance, by which it is directed:

  "That the receivers shall, at the end of every month, make out an
exact account of the monies received by them respectively, during such
month, specifying therein the names of the persons from whom the
same shall have been received, the dates and the sums; which account
they shall respectively cause to be published in one of the newspapers
of the state; to the end that every citizen may know how much of the
monies collected from him, in taxes, is transmitted to the treasury of
the United States for the support of the war; and also, that it may be
known what monies have been at the order of the superintendent of
finance. It being proper and necessary, that, in a free country, the
people should be as fully informed of the administration of their
affairs as the nature of things will admit."

  It is an agreeable thing to see a spirit of order and economy taking
place, after such a series of errors and difficulties. A government or
an administration, who means and acts honestly, has nothing to fear,
and consequently has nothing to conceal; and it would be of use if a
monthly or quarterly account was to be published, as well of the
expenditures as of the receipts. Eight millions of dollars must be
husbanded with an exceeding deal of care to make it do, and,
therefore, as the management must be reputable, the publication
would be serviceable.
  I have heard of petitions which have been presented to the
assembly of this state (and probably the same may have happened in
other states) praying to have the taxes lowered. Now the only way to
keep taxes low is, for the United States to have ready money to go
to market with: and though the taxes to be raised for the present year
will fall heavy, and there will naturally be some difficulty in paying
them, yet the difficulty, in proportion as money spreads about the
country, will every day grow less, and in the end we shall save some
millions of dollars by it. We see what a bitter, revengeful enemy we
have to deal with, and any expense is cheap compared to their
merciless paw. We have seen the unfortunate Carolineans hunted like
partridges on the mountains, and it is only by providing means for our
defence, that we shall be kept from the same condition. When we
think or talk about taxes, we ought to recollect that we lie down in
peace and sleep in safety; that we can follow our farms or stores or
other occupations, in prosperous tranquillity; and that these
inestimable blessings are procured to us by the taxes that we pay.
In this view, our taxes are properly our insurance money; they are
what we pay to be made safe, and, in strict policy, are the best money
we can lay out.
  It was my intention to offer some remarks on the impost law of
five per cent. recommended by Congress, and to be established as a
fund for the payment of the loan-office certificates, and other
debts of the United States; but I have already extended my piece
beyond my intention. And as this fund will make our system of
finance complete, and is strictly just, and consequently requires
nothing but honesty to do it, there needs but little to be said upon
it.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, March 5, 1782.
                                 XI.

                    ON THE PRESENT STATE OF NEWS.

  SINCE the arrival of two, if not three packets in quick
succession, at New York, from England, a variety of unconnected news
has circulated through the country, and afforded as great a variety of
speculation.
  That something is the matter in the cabinet and councils of our
enemies, on the other side of the water, is certain- that they have
run their length of madness, and are under the necessity of changing
their measures may easily be seen into; but to what this change of
measures may amount, or how far it may correspond with our interest,
happiness and duty, is yet uncertain; and from what we have hitherto
experienced, we have too much reason to suspect them in every thing.
  I do not address this publication so much to the people of America
as to the British ministry, whoever they may be, for if it is their
intention to promote any kind of negotiation, it is proper they should
know beforehand, that the United States have as much honor as bravery;
and that they are no more to be seduced from their alliance than their
allegiance; that their line of politics is formed and not dependent,
like that of their enemy, on chance and accident.
  On our part, in order to know, at any time, what the British
government will do, we have only to find out what they ought not to
do, and this last will be their conduct. Forever changing and
forever wrong; too distant from America to improve in circumstances,
and too unwise to foresee them; scheming without principle, and
executing without probability, their whole line of management has
hitherto been blunder and baseness. Every campaign has added to
their loss, and every year to their disgrace; till unable to go on,
and ashamed to go back, their politics have come to a halt, and all
their fine prospects to a halter.
  Could our affections forgive, or humanity forget the wounds of an
injured country- we might, under the influence of a momentary
oblivion, stand still and laugh. But they are engraven where no
amusement can conceal them, and of a kind for which there is no
recompense. Can ye restore to us the beloved dead? Can ye say to the
grave, give up the murdered? Can ye obliterate from our memories those
who are no more? Think not then to tamper with our feelings by an
insidious contrivance, nor suffocate our humanity by seducing us to
dishonor.
  In March 1780, I published part of the Crisis, No. VIII., in the
newspapers, but did not conclude it in the following papers, and the
remainder has lain by me till the present day.
  There appeared about that time some disposition in the British
cabinet to cease the further prosecution of the war, and as I had
formed my opinion that whenever such a design should take place, it
would be accompanied by a dishonorable proposition to America,
respecting France, I had suppressed the remainder of that number,
not to expose the baseness of any such proposition. But the arrival of
the next news from England, declared her determination to go on with
the war, and consequently as the political object I had then in view
was not become a subject, it was unnecessary in me to bring it
forward, which is the reason it was never published.
  The matter which I allude to in the unpublished part, I shall now
make a quotation of, and apply it as the more enlarged state of
things, at this day, shall make convenient or necessary.
  It was as follows:
  "By the speeches which have appeared from the British Parliament, it
is easy to perceive to what impolitic and imprudent excesses their
passions and prejudices have, in every instance, carried them during
the present war. Provoked at the upright and honorable treaty
between America and France, they imagined that nothing more was
necessary to be done to prevent its final ratification, than to
promise, through the agency of their commissioners (Carlisle, Eden,
and Johnstone) a repeal of their once offensive acts of Parliament.
The vanity of the conceit, was as unpardonable as the experiment was
impolitic. And so convinced am I of their wrong ideas of America, that
I shall not wonder, if, in their last stage of political frenzy,
they propose to her to break her alliance with France, and enter
into one with them. Such a proposition, should it ever be made, and it
has been already more than once hinted at in Parliament, would
discover such a disposition to perfidiousness, and such disregard of
honor and morals, as would add the finishing vice to national
corruption.- I do not mention this to put America on the watch, but to
put England on her guard, that she do not, in the looseness of her
heart, envelop in disgrace every fragment of reputation."- Thus far
the quotation.
  By the complection of some part of the news which has transpired
through the New York papers, it seems probable that this insidious era
in the British politics is beginning to make its appearance. I wish it
may not; for that which is a disgrace to human nature, throws
something of a shade over all the human character, and each individual
feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.
  The policy of Britain has ever been to divide America in some way or
other. In the beginning of the dispute, she practised every art to
prevent or destroy the union of the states, well knowing that could
she once get them to stand singly, she could conquer them
unconditionally. Failing in this project in America, she renewed it in
Europe; and, after the alliance had taken place, she made secret
offers to France to induce her to give up America; and what is still
more extraordinary, she at the same time made propositions to Dr.
Franklin, then in Paris, the very court to which she was secretly
applying, to draw off America from France. But this is not all.
  On the 14th of September, 1778, the British court, through their
secretary, Lord Weymouth, made application to the Marquis d'Almadovar,
the Spanish ambassador at London, to "ask the mediation," for these
were the words, of the court of Spain, for the purpose of
negotiating a peace with France, leaving America (as I shall hereafter
show) out of the question. Spain readily offered her mediation, and
likewise the city of Madrid as the place of conference, but withal,
proposed, that the United States of America should be invited to the
treaty, and considered as independent during the time the business was
negotiating. But this was not the view of England. She wanted to
draw France from the war, that she might uninterruptedly pour out
all her force and fury upon America; and being disappointed in this
plan, as well through the open and generous conduct of Spain, as the
determination of France, she refused the mediation which she had
solicited.
  I shall now give some extracts from the justifying memorial of the
Spanish court, in which she has set the conduct and character of
Britain, with respect to America, in a clear and striking point of
light.
  The memorial, speaking of the refusal of the British court to meet
in conference with commissioners from the United States, who were to
be considered as independent during the time of the conference, says,

  "It is a thing very extraordinary and even ridiculous, that the
court of London, who treats the colonies as independent, not only in
acting, but of right, during the war, should have a repugnance to
treat them as such only in acting during a truce, or suspension of
hostilities. The convention of Saratoga; the reputing General Burgoyne
as a lawful prisoner, in order to suspend his trial; the exchange
and liberation of other prisoners made from the colonies; the having
named commissioners to go and supplicate the Americans, at their own
doors, request peace of them, and treat with them and the Congress:
and, finally, by a thousand other acts of this sort, authorized by the
court of London, which have been, and are true signs of the
acknowledgment of their independence.
  "In aggravation of all the foregoing, at the same time the British
cabinet answered the King of Spain in the terms already mentioned,
they were insinuating themselves at the court of France by means of
secret emissaries, and making very great offers to her, to abandon the
colonies and make peace with England. But there is yet more; for at
this same time the English ministry were treating, by means of another
certain emissary, with Dr. Franklin, minister plenipotentiary from the
colonies, residing at Paris, to whom they made various proposals to
disunite them from France, and accommodate matters with England.
  "From what has been observed, it evidently follows, that the whole
of the British politics was, to disunite the two courts of Paris and
Madrid, by means of the suggestions and offers which she separately
made to them; and also to separate the colonies from their treaties
and engagements entered into with France, and induce them to arm
against the house of Bourbon, or more probably to oppress them when
they found, from breaking their engagements, that they stood alone and
without protection.
  "This, therefore, is the net they laid for the American states; that
is to say, to tempt them with flattering and very magnificent promises
to come to an accommodation with them, exclusive of any intervention
of Spain or France, that the British ministry might always remain
the arbiters of the fate of the colonies.
  "But the Catholic king (the King of Spain) faithful on the one
part of the engagements which bind him to the Most Christian king (the
King of France) his nephew; just and upright on the other, to his
own subjects, whom he ought to protect and guard against so many
insults; and finally, full of humanity and compassion for the
Americans and other individuals who suffer in the present war; he is
determined to pursue and prosecute it, and to make all the efforts
in his power, until he can obtain a solid and permanent peace, with
full and satisfactory securities that it shall be observed."

  Thus far the memorial; a translation of which into English, may be
seen in full, under the head of State Papers, in the Annual
Register, for 1779.
  The extracts I have here given, serve to show the various
endeavors and contrivances of the enemy, to draw France from her
connection with America, and to prevail on her to make a separate
peace with England, leaving America totally out of the question, and
at the mercy of a merciless, unprincipled enemy. The opinion,
likewise, which Spain has formed of the British cabinet's character
for meanness and perfidiousness, is so exactly the opinion of
America respecting it, that the memorial, in this instance, contains
our own statements and language; for people, however remote, who think
alike, will unavoidably speak alike.
  Thus we see the insidious use which Britain endeavored to make of
the propositions of peace under the mediation of Spain. I shall now
proceed to the second proposition under the mediation of the Emperor
of Germany and the Empress of Russia; the general outline of which
was, that a congress of the several powers at war should meet at
Vienna, in 1781, to settle preliminaries of peace.
  I could wish myself at liberty to make use of all the information
which I am possessed of on this subject, but as there is a delicacy in
the matter, I do not conceive it prudent, at least at present, to make
references and quotations in the same manner as I have done with
respect to the mediation of Spain, who published the whole proceedings
herself; and therefore, what comes from me, on this part of the
business, must rest on my own credit with the public, assuring them,
that when the whole proceedings, relative to the proposed Congress
of Vienna shall appear, they will find my account not only true, but
studiously moderate.
  We know at the time this mediation was on the carpet, the
expectation of the British king and ministry ran high with respect
to the conquest of America. The English packet which was taken with
the mail on board, and carried into l'Orient, in France, contained
letters from Lord G. Germaine to Sir Henry Clinton, which expressed in
the fullest terms the ministerial idea of a total conquest. Copies
of those letters were sent to congress and published in the newspapers
of last year. Colonel [John] Laurens brought over the originals,
some of which, signed in the handwriting of the then secretary,
Germaine, are now in my possession.
  Filled with these high ideas, nothing could be more insolent towards
America than the language of the British court on the proposed
mediation. A peace with France and Spain she anxiously solicited;
but America, as before, was to be left to her mercy, neither would she
hear any proposition for admitting an agent from the United States
into the congress of Vienna.
  On the other hand, France, with an open, noble and manly
determination, and a fidelity of a good ally, would hear no
proposition for a separate peace, nor even meet in congress at Vienna,
without an agent from America: and likewise that the independent
character of the United States, represented by the agent, should be
fully and unequivocally defined and settled before any conference
should be entered on. The reasoning of the court of France on the
several propositions of the two imperial courts, which relate to us,
is rather in the style of an American than an ally, and she
advocated the cause of America as if she had been America herself.-
Thus the second mediation, like the first, proved ineffectual.
  But since that time, a reverse of fortune has overtaken the
British arms, and all their high expectations are dashed to the
ground. The noble exertions to the southward under General [Nathaniel]
Greene; the successful operations of the allied arms in the
Chesapeake; the loss of most of their islands in the West Indies,
and Minorca in the Mediterranean; the persevering spirit of Spain
against Gibraltar; the expected capture of Jamaica; the failure of
making a separate peace with Holland, and the expense of an hundred
millions sterling, by which all these fine losses were obtained,
have read them a loud lesson of disgraceful misfortune and necessity
has called on them to change their ground.
  In this situation of confusion and despair, their present councils
have no fixed character. It is now the hurricane months of British
politics. Every day seems to have a storm of its own, and they are
scudding under the bare poles of hope. Beaten, but not humble;
condemned, but not penitent; they act like men trembling at fate and
catching at a straw. From this convulsion, in the entrails of their
politics, it is more than probable, that the mountain groaning in
labor, will bring forth a mouse, as to its size, and a monster in
its make. They will try on America the same insidious arts they
tried on France and Spain.
  We sometimes experience sensations to which language is not equal.
The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of
thinking, we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their
magnitude, find no way out- and, in the struggle of expression,
every finger tries to be a tongue. The machinery of the body seems too
little for the mind, and we look about for helps to show our
thoughts by. Such must be the sensation of America, whenever
Britain, teeming with corruption, shall propose to her to sacrifice
her faith.
  But, exclusive of the wickedness, there is a personal offence
contained in every such attempt. It is calling us villains: for no man
asks the other to act the villain unless he believes him inclined to
be one. No man attempts to seduce the truly honest woman. It is the
supposed looseness of her mind that starts the thoughts of
seduction, and he who offers it calls her a prostitute. Our pride is
always hurt by the same propositions which offend our principles;
for when we are shocked at the crime, we are wounded by the
suspicion of our compliance.
  Could I convey a thought that might serve to regulate the public
mind, I would not make the interest of the alliance the basis of
defending it. All the world are moved by interest, and it affords them
nothing to boast of. But I would go a step higher, and defend it on
the ground of honor and principle. That our public affairs have
flourished under the alliance- that it was wisely made, and has been
nobly executed- that by its assistance we are enabled to preserve
our country from conquest, and expel those who sought our destruction-
that it is our true interest to maintain it unimpaired, and that while
we do so no enemy can conquer us, are matters which experience has
taught us, and the common good of ourselves, abstracted from
principles of faith and honor, would lead us to maintain the
connection.
  But over and above the mere letter of the alliance, we have been
nobly and generously treated, and have had the same respect and
attention paid to us, as if we had been an old established country. To
oblige and be obliged is fair work among mankind, and we want an
opportunity of showing to the world that we are a people sensible of
kindness and worthy of confidence. Character is to us, in our
present circumstances, of more importance than interest. We are a
young nation, just stepping upon the stage of public life, and the eye
of the world is upon us to see how we act. We have an enemy who is
watching to destroy our reputation, and who will go any length to gain
some evidence against us, that may serve to render our conduct
suspected, and our character odious; because, could she accomplish
this, wicked as it is, the world would withdraw from us, as from a
people not to be trusted, and our task would then become difficult.
  There is nothing which sets the character of a nation in a higher or
lower light with others, than the faithfully fulfilling, or
perfidiously breaking, of treaties. They are things not to be tampered
with: and should Britain, which seems very probable, propose to seduce
America into such an act of baseness, it would merit from her some
mark of unusual detestation. It is one of those extraordinary
instances in which we ought not to be contented with the bare negative
of Congress, because it is an affront on the multitude as well as on
the government. It goes on the supposition that the public are not
honest men, and that they may be managed by contrivance, though they
cannot be conquered by arms. But, let the world and Britain know, that
we are neither to be bought nor sold; that our mind is great and
fixed; our prospect clear; and that we will support our character as
firmly as our independence.
  But I will go still further; General Conway, who made the motion, in
the British Parliament, for discontinuing offensive war in America, is
a gentleman of an amiable character. We have no personal quarrel
with him. But he feels not as we feel; he is not in our situation, and
that alone, without any other explanation, is enough.
  The British Parliament suppose they have many friends in America,
and that, when all chance of conquest is over, they will be able to
draw her from her alliance with France. Now, if I have any
conception of the human heart, they will fail in this more than in any
thing that they have yet tried.
  This part of the business is not a question of policy only, but of
honor and honesty; and the proposition will have in it something so
visibly low and base, that their partisans, if they have any, will
be ashamed of it. Men are often hurt by a mean action who are not
startled at a wicked one, and this will be such a confession of
inability, such a declaration of servile thinking, that the scandal of
it will ruin all their hopes.
  In short, we have nothing to do but to go on with vigor and
determination. The enemy is yet in our country. They hold New York,
Charleston, and Savannah, and the very being in those places is an
offence, and a part of offensive war, and until they can be driven
from them, or captured in them, it would be folly in us to listen to
an idle tale. I take it for granted that the British ministry are
sinking under the impossibility of carrying on the war. Let them
then come to a fair and open peace with France, Spain, Holland and
America, in the manner they ought to do; but until then, we can have
nothing to say to them.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, May 22, 1782.
                        A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS

                         TO SIR GUY CARLETON.

  IT is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune; and I
address this to you in behalf even of an enemy, a captain in the
British service, now on his way to the headquarters of the American
army, and unfortunately doomed to death for a crime not his own. A
sentence so extraordinary, an execution so repugnant to every human
sensation, ought never to be told without the circumstances which
produced it: and as the destined victim is yet in existence, and in
your hands rests his life or death, I shall briefly state the case,
and the melancholy consequence.
  Captain Huddy, of the Jersey militia, was attacked in a small fort
on Tom's River, by a party of refugees in the British pay and service,
was made prisoner, together with his company, carried to New York
and lodged in the provost of that city: about three weeks after which,
he was taken out of the provost down to the water-side, put into a
boat, and brought again upon the Jersey shore, and there, contrary
to the practice of all nations but savages, was hung up on a tree, and
left hanging till found by our people who took him down and buried
him.
  The inhabitants of that part of the country where the murder was
committed, sent a deputation to General Washington with a full and
certified statement of the fact. Struck, as every human breast must
be, with such brutish outrage, and determined both to punish and
prevent it for the future, the General represented the case to General
Clinton, who then commanded, and demanded that the refugee officer who
ordered and attended the execution, and whose name is Lippencott,
should be delivered up as a murderer; and in case of refusal, that the
person of some British officer should suffer in his stead. The demand,
though not refused, has not been complied with; and the melancholy lot
(not by selection, but by casting lots) has fallen upon Captain
Asgill, of the Guards, who, as I have already mentioned, is on his way
from Lancaster to camp, a martyr to the general wickedness of the
cause he engaged in, and the ingratitude of those whom he served.
  The first reflection which arises on this black business is, what
sort of men must Englishmen be, and what sort of order and
discipline do they preserve in their army, when in the immediate place
of their headquarters, and under the eye and nose of their
commander-in-chief, a prisoner can be taken at pleasure from his
confinement, and his death made a matter of sport.
  The history of the most savage Indians does not produce instances
exactly of this kind. They, at least, have a formality in their
punishments. With them it is the horridness of revenge, but with
your army it is a still greater crime, the horridness of diversion.
  The British generals who have succeeded each other, from the time of
General Gage to yourself, have all affected to speak in language
that they have no right to. In their proclamations, their addresses,
their letters to General Washington, and their supplications to
Congress (for they deserve no other name) they talk of British
honor, British generosity, and British clemency, as if those things
were matters of fact; whereas, we whose eyes are open, who speak the
same language with yourselves, many of whom were born on the same spot
with you, and who can no more be mistaken in your words than in your
actions, can declare to all the world, that so far as our knowledge
goes, there is not a more detestable character, nor a meaner or more
barbarous enemy, than the present British one. With us, you have
forfeited all pretensions to reputation, and it is only by holding you
like a wild beast, afraid of your keepers, that you can be made
manageable. But to return to the point in question.
  Though I can think no man innocent who has lent his hand to
destroy the country which he did not plant, and to ruin those that
he could not enslave, yet, abstracted from all ideas of right and
wrong on the original question, Captain Asgill, in the present case,
is not the guilty man. The villain and the victim are here separated
characters. You hold the one and we the other. You disown, or affect
to disown and reprobate the conduct of Lippincut, yet you give him a
sanctuary; and by so doing you as effectually become the executioner
of Asgill, as if you had put the rope on his neck, and dismissed him
from the world. Whatever your feelings on this interesting occasion
may be are best known to yourself. Within the grave of your own mind
lies buried the fate of Asgill. He becomes the corpse of your will, or
the survivor of your justice. Deliver up the one, and you save the
other; withhold the one, and the other dies by your choice.
  On our part the case is exceeding plain; an officer has been taken
from his confinement and murdered, and the murderer is within your
lines. Your army has been guilty of a thousand instances of equal
cruelty, but they have been rendered equivocal, and sheltered from
personal detection. Here the crime is fixed; and is one of those
extraordinary cases which can neither be denied nor palliated, and
to which the custom of war does not apply; for it never could be
supposed that such a brutal outrage would ever be committed. It is
an original in the history of civilized barbarians, and is truly
British.
  On your part you are accountable to us for the personal safety of
the prisoners within your walls. Here can be no mistake; they can
neither be spies nor suspected as such; your security is not
endangered, nor your operations subjected to miscarriage, by men
immured within a dungeon. They differ in every circumstance from men
in the field, and leave no pretence for severity of punishment. But if
to the dismal condition of captivity with you must be added the
constant apprehensions of death; if to be imprisoned is so nearly to
be entombed; and if, after all, the murderers are to be protected, and
thereby the crime encouraged, wherein do you differ from [American]
Indians either in conduct or character?
  We can have no idea of your honor, or your justice, in any future
transaction, of what nature it may be, while you shelter within your
lines an outrageous murderer, and sacrifice in his stead an officer of
your own. If you have no regard to us, at least spare the blood
which it is your duty to save. Whether the punishment will be
greater on him, who, in this case, innocently dies, or on him whom sad
necessity forces to retaliate, is, in the nicety of sensation, an
undecided question? It rests with you to prevent the sufferings of
both. You have nothing to do but to give up the murderer, and the
matter ends.
  But to protect him, be he who he may, is to patronize his crime, and
to trifle it off by frivolous and unmeaning inquiries, is to promote
it. There is no declaration you can make, nor promise you can give
that will obtain credit. It is the man and not the apology that is
demanded.
  You see yourself pressed on all sides to spare the life of your
own officer, for die he will if you withhold justice. The murder of
Captain Huddy is an offence not to be borne with, and there is no
security which we can have, that such actions or similar ones shall
not be repeated, but by making the punishment fall upon yourselves. To
destroy the last security of captivity, and to take the unarmed, the
unresisting prisoner to private and sportive execution, is carrying
barbarity too high for silence. The evil must be put an end to; and
the choice of persons rests with you. But if your attachment to the
guilty is stronger than to the innocent, you invent a crime that
must destroy your character, and if the cause of your king needs to be
so supported, for ever cease, sir, to torture our remembrance with the
wretched phrases of British honor, British generosity and British
clemency.
  From this melancholy circumstance, learn, sir, a lesson of morality.
The refugees are men whom your predecessors have instructed in
wickedness, the better to fit them to their master's purpose. To
make them useful, they have made them vile, and the consequence of
their tutored villany is now descending on the heads of their
encouragers. They have been trained like hounds to the scent of blood,
and cherished in every species of dissolute barbarity. Their ideas
of right and wrong are worn away in the constant habitude of
repeated infamy, till, like men practised in execution, they feel
not the value of another's life.
  The task before you, though painful, is not difficult; give up the
murderer, and save your officer, as the first outset of a necessary
reformation.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA May 31, 1782.
                                 XII.

                      TO THE EARL OF SHELBURNE.

  MY LORD,- A speech, which has been printed in several of the British
and New York newspapers, as coming from your lordship, in answer to
one from the Duke of Richmond, of the 10th of July last, contains
expressions and opinions so new and singular, and so enveloped in
mysterious reasoning, that I address this publication to you, for
the purpose of giving them a free and candid examination. The speech I
allude to is in these words:

  "His lordship said, it had been mentioned in another place, that
he had been guilty of inconsistency. To clear himself of this, he
asserted that he still held the same principles in respect to American
independence which he at first imbibed. He had been, and yet was of
opinion, whenever the Parliament of Great Britain acknowledges that
point, the sun of England's glory is set forever. Such were the
sentiments he possessed on a former day, and such the sentiments he
continued to hold at this hour. It was the opinion of Lord Chatham, as
well as many other able statesmen. Other noble lords, however, think
differently, and as the majority of the cabinet support them, he
acquiesced in the measure, dissenting from the idea; and the point
is settled for bringing the matter into the full discussion of
Parliament, where it will be candidly, fairly, and impartially
debated. The independence of America would end in the ruin of England;
and that a peace patched up with France, would give that proud enemy
the means of yet trampling on this country. The sun of England's glory
he wished not to see set forever; he looked for a spark at least to be
left, which might in time light us up to a new day. But if
independence was to be granted, if Parliament deemed that measure
prudent, he foresaw, in his own mind, that England was undone. He
wished to God that he had been deputed to Congress, that be might
plead the cause of that country as well as of this, and that he
might exercise whatever powers he possessed as an orator, to save both
from ruin, in a conviction to Congress, that, if their independence
was signed, their liberties were gone forever.
  "Peace, his lordship added, was a desirable object, but it must be
an honorable peace, and not an humiliating one, dictated by France, or
insisted on by America. It was very true, that this kingdom was not in
a flourishing state, it was impoverished by war. But if we were not
rich, it was evident that France was poor. If we were straitened in
our finances, the enemy were exhausted in their resources. This was
a great empire; it abounded with brave men, who were able and
willing to fight in a common cause; the language of humiliation should
not, therefore, be the language of Great Britain. His lordship said,
that he was not afraid nor ashamed of those expressions going to
America. There were numbers, great numbers there, who were of the same
way of thinking, in respect to that country being dependent on this,
and who, with his lordship, perceived ruin and independence linked
together."

  Thus far the speech; on which I remark- That his lordship is a total
stranger to the mind and sentiments of America; that he has wrapped
himself up in fond delusion, that something less than independence,
may, under his administration, be accepted; and he wishes himself sent
to Congress, to prove the most extraordinary of all doctrines, which
is, that independence, the sublimest of all human conditions, is
loss of liberty.
  In answer to which we may say, that in order to know what the
contrary word dependence means, we have only to look back to those
years of severe humiliation, when the mildest of all petitions could
obtain no other notice than the haughtiest of all insults; and when
the base terms of unconditional submission were demanded, or
undistinguishable destruction threatened. It is nothing to us that the
ministry have been changed, for they may be changed again. The guilt
of a government is the crime of a whole country; and the nation that
can, though but for a moment, think and act as England has done, can
never afterwards be believed or trusted. There are cases in which it
is as impossible to restore character to life, as it is to recover the
dead. It is a phoenix that can expire but once, and from whose ashes
there is no resurrection. Some offences are of such a slight
composition, that they reach no further than the temper, and are
created or cured by a thought. But the sin of England has struck the
heart of America, and nature has not left in our power to say we can
forgive.
  Your lordship wishes for an opportunity to plead before Congress the
cause of England and America, and to save, as you say, both from ruin.
  That the country, which, for more than seven years has sought our
destruction, should now cringe to solicit our protection, is adding
the wretchedness of disgrace to the misery of disappointment; and if
England has the least spark of supposed honor left, that spark must be
darkened by asking, and extinguished by receiving, the smallest
favor from America; for the criminal who owes his life to the grace
and mercy of the injured, is more executed by living, than he who
dies.
  But a thousand pleadings, even from your lordship, can have no
effect. Honor, interest, and every sensation of the heart, would plead
against you. We are a people who think not as you think; and what is
equally true, you cannot feel as we feel. The situations of the two
countries are exceedingly different. Ours has been the seat of war;
yours has seen nothing of it. The most wanton destruction has been
committed in our sight; the most insolent barbarity has been acted
on our feelings. We can look round and see the remains of burnt and
destroyed houses, once the fair fruit of hard industry, and now the
striking monuments of British brutality. We walk over the dead whom we
loved, in every part of America, and remember by whom they fell. There
is scarcely a village but brings to life some melancholy thought,
and reminds us of what we have suffered, and of those we have lost
by the inhumanity of Britain. A thousand images arise to us, which,
from situation, you cannot see, and are accompanied by as many ideas
which you cannot know; and therefore your supposed system of reasoning
would apply to nothing, and all your expectations die of themselves.
  The question whether England shall accede to the independence of
America, and which your lordship says is to undergo a parliamentary
discussion, is so very simple, and composed of so few cases, that it
scarcely needs a debate.
  It is the only way out of an expensive and ruinous war, which has no
object, and without which acknowledgment there can be no peace.
  But your lordship says, the sun of Great Britain will set whenever
she acknowledges the independence of America.- Whereas the metaphor
would have been strictly just, to have left the sun wholly out of
the figure, and have ascribed her not acknowledging it to the
influence of the moon.
  But the expression, if true, is the greatest confession of
disgrace that could be made, and furnishes America with the highest
notions of sovereign independent importance. Mr. Wedderburne, about
the year 1776, made use of an idea of much the same kind,-
Relinquish America! says he- What is it but to desire a giant to
shrink spontaneously into a dwarf.
  Alas! are those people who call themselves Englishmen, of so
little internal consequence, that when America is gone, or shuts her
eyes upon them, their sun is set, they can shine no more, but grope
about in obscurity, and contract into insignificant animals? Was
America, then, the giant of the empire, and England only her dwarf
in waiting! Is the case so strangely altered, that those who once
thought we could not live without them, are now brought to declare
that they cannot exist without us? Will they tell to the world, and
that from their first minister of state, that America is their all
in all; that it is by her importance only that they can live, and
breathe, and have a being? Will they, who long since threatened to
bring us to their feet, bow themselves to ours, and own that without
us they are not a nation? Are they become so unqualified to debate
on independence, that they have lost all idea of it themselves, and
are calling to the rocks and mountains of America to cover their
insignificance? Or, if America is lost, is it manly to sob over it
like a child for its rattle, and invite the laughter of the world by
declarations of disgrace? Surely, a more consistent line of conduct
would be to bear it without complaint; and to show that England,
without America, can preserve her independence, and a suitable rank
with other European powers. You were not contented while you had
her, and to weep for her now is childish.
  But Lord Shelburne thinks something may yet be done. What that
something is, or how it is to be accomplished, is a matter in
obscurity. By arms there is no hope. The experience of nearly eight
years, with the expense of an hundred million pounds sterling, and the
loss of two armies, must positively decide that point. Besides, the
British have lost their interest in America with the disaffected.
Every part of it has been tried. There is no new scene left for
delusion: and the thousands who have been ruined by adhering to
them, and have now to quit the settlements which they had acquired,
and be conveyed like transports to cultivate the deserts of
Augustine and Nova Scotia, has put an end to all further
expectations of aid.
  If you cast your eyes on the people of England, what have they to
console themselves with for the millions expended? Or, what
encouragement is there left to continue throwing good money after bad?
America can carry on the war for ten years longer, and all the charges
of government included, for less than you can defray the charges of
war and government for one year. And I, who know both countries,
know well, that the people of America can afford to pay their share of
the expense much better than the people of England can. Besides, it is
their own estates and property, their own rights, liberties and
government, that they are defending; and were they not to do it,
they would deserve to lose all, and none would pity them. The fault
would be their own, and their punishment just.
  The British army in America care not how long the war lasts. They
enjoy an easy and indolent life. They fatten on the folly of one
country and the spoils of another; and, between their plunder and
their prey, may go home rich. But the case is very different with
the laboring farmer, the working tradesman, and the necessitous poor
in England, the sweat of whose brow goes day after day to feed, in
prodigality and sloth, the army that is robbing both them and us.
Removed from the eye of that country that supports them, and distant
from the government that employs them, they cut and carve for
themselves, and there is none to call them to account.
  But England will be ruined, says Lord Shelburne, if America is
independent.
  Then I say, is England already ruined, for America is already
independent: and if Lord Shelburne will not allow this, he immediately
denies the fact which he infers. Besides, to make England the mere
creature of America, is paying too great a compliment to us, and too
little to himself.
  But the declaration is a rhapsody of inconsistency. For to say, as
Lord Shelburne has numberless times said, that the war against America
is ruinous, and yet to continue the prosecution of that ruinous war
for the purpose of avoiding ruin, is a language which cannot be
understood. Neither is it possible to see how the independence of
America is to accomplish the ruin of England after the war is over,
and yet not affect it before. America cannot be more independent of
her, nor a greater enemy to her, hereafter than she now is; nor can
England derive less advantages from her than at present: why then is
ruin to follow in the best state of the case, and not in the worst?
And if not in the worst, why is it to follow at all?
  That a nation is to be ruined by peace and commerce, and fourteen or
fifteen millions a-year less expenses than before, is a new doctrine
in politics. We have heard much clamor of national savings and
economy; but surely the true economy would be, to save the whole
charge of a silly, foolish, and headstrong war; because, compared with
this, all other retrenchments are baubles and trifles.
  But is it possible that Lord Shelburne can be serious in supposing
that the least advantage can be obtained by arms, or that any
advantage can be equal to the expense or the danger of attempting
it? Will not the capture of one army after another satisfy him, must
all become prisoners? Must England ever be the sport of hope, and
the victim of delusion? Sometimes our currency was to fail; another
time our army was to disband; then whole provinces were to revolt.
Such a general said this and that; another wrote so and so; Lord
Chatham was of this opinion; and lord somebody else of another. To-day
20,000 Russians and 20 Russian ships of the line were to come;
to-morrow the empress was abused without mercy or decency. Then the
Emperor of Germany was to be bribed with a million of money, and the
King of Prussia was to do wonderful things. At one time it was, Lo
here! and then it was, Lo there! Sometimes this power, and sometimes
that power, was to engage in the war, just as if the whole world was
mad and foolish like Britain. And thus, from year to year, has every
straw been catched at, and every Will-with-a-wisp led them a new
dance.
  This year a still newer folly is to take place. Lord Shelburne
wishes to be sent to Congress, and he thinks that something may be
done.
  Are not the repeated declarations of Congress, and which all America
supports, that they will not even hear any proposals whatever, until
the unconditional and unequivocal independence of America is
recognised; are not, I say, these declarations answer enough?
  But for England to receive any thing from America now, after so many
insults, injuries and outrages, acted towards us, would show such a
spirit of meanness in her, that we could not but despise her for
accepting it. And so far from Lord Shelburne's coming here to
solicit it, it would be the greatest disgrace we could do them to
offer it. England would appear a wretch indeed, at this time of day,
to ask or owe any thing to the bounty of America. Has not the name
of Englishman blots enough upon it, without inventing more? Even
Lucifer would scorn to reign in heaven by permission, and yet an
Englishman can creep for only an entrance into America. Or, has a land
of liberty so many charms, that to be a doorkeeper in it is better
than to be an English minister of state?
  But what can this expected something be? Or, if obtained, what can
it amount to, but new disgraces, contentions and quarrels? The
people of America have for years accustomed themselves to think and
speak so freely and contemptuously of English authority, and the
inveteracy is so deeply rooted, that a person invested with any
authority from that country, and attempting to exercise it here, would
have the life of a toad under a harrow. They would look on him as an
interloper, to whom their compassion permitted a residence. He would
be no more than the Mungo of a farce; and if he disliked that, he must
set off. It would be a station of degradation, debased by our pity,
and despised by our pride, and would place England in a more
contemptible situation than any she has yet been in during the war. We
have too high an opinion of ourselves, even to think of yielding again
the least obedience to outlandish authority; and for a thousand
reasons, England would be the last country in the world to yield it
to. She has been treacherous, and we know it. Her character is gone,
and we have seen the funeral.
  Surely she loves to fish in troubled waters, and drink the cup of
contention, or she would not now think of mingling her affairs with
those of America. It would be like a foolish dotard taking to his arms
the bride that despises him, or who has placed on his head the ensigns
of her disgust. It is kissing the hand that boxes his ears, and
proposing to renew the exchange. The thought is as servile as the
war is wicked, and shows the last scene of the drama to be as
inconsistent as the first.
  As America is gone, the only act of manhood is to let her go. Your
lordship had no hand in the separation, and you will gain no honor
by temporising politics. Besides, there is something so exceedingly
whimsical, unsteady, and even insincere in the present conduct of
England, that she exhibits herself in the most dishonorable colors.
  On the second of August last, General Carleton and Admiral Digby
wrote to General Washington in these words:

  "The resolution of the House of Commons, of the 27th of February
last, has been placed in Your Excellency's hands, and intimations
given at the same time that further pacific measures were likely to
follow. Since which, until the present time, we have had no direct
communications with England; but a mail is now arrived, which brings
us very important information. We are acquainted, sir, by authority,
that negotiations for a general peace have already commenced at Paris,
and that Mr. Grenville is invested with full powers to treat with
all the parties at war, and is now at Paris in execution of his
commission. And we are further, sir, made acquainted, that His
Majesty, in order to remove any obstacles to this peace which he so
ardently wishes to restore, has commanded his ministers to direct
Mr. Grenville, that the independence of the Thirteen United Provinces,
should be proposed by him in the first instance, instead of making
it a condition of a general treaty."

  Now, taking your present measures into view, and comparing them with
the declaration in this letter, pray what is the word of your king, or
his ministers, or the Parliament, good for? Must we not look upon
you as a confederated body of faithless, treacherous men, whose
assurances are fraud, and their language deceit? What opinion can we
possibly form of you, but that you are a lost, abandoned, profligate
nation, who sport even with your own character, and are to be held
by nothing but the bayonet or the halter?
  To say, after this, that the sun of Great Britain will be set
whenever she acknowledges the independence of America, when the not
doing it is the unqualified lie of government, can be no other than
the language of ridicule, the jargon of inconsistency. There were
thousands in America who predicted the delusion, and looked upon it as
a trick of treachery, to take us from our guard, and draw off our
attention from the only system of finance, by which we can be
called, or deserve to be called, a sovereign, independent people.
The fraud, on your part, might be worth attempting, but the
sacrifice to obtain it is too high.
  There are others who credited the assurance, because they thought it
impossible that men who had their characters to establish, would begin
with a lie. The prosecution of the war by the former ministry was
savage and horrid; since which it has been mean, trickish, and
delusive. The one went greedily into the passion of revenge, the other
into the subtleties of low contrivance; till, between the crimes of
both, there is scarcely left a man in America, be he Whig or Tory, who
does not despise or detest the conduct of Britain.
  The management of Lord Shelburne, whatever may be his views, is a
caution to us, and must be to the world, never to regard British
assurances. A perfidy so notorious cannot be hid. It stands even in
the public papers of New York, with the names of Carleton and Digby
affixed to it. It is a proclamation that the king of England is not to
be believed; that the spirit of lying is the governing principle of
the ministry. It is holding up the character of the House of Commons
to public infamy, and warning all men not to credit them. Such are the
consequences which Lord Shelburne's management has brought upon his
country.
  After the authorized declarations contained in Carleton and
Digby's letter, you ought, from every motive of honor, policy and
prudence, to have fulfilled them, whatever might have been the
event. It was the least atonement that you could possibly make to
America, and the greatest kindness you could do to yourselves; for you
will save millions by a general peace, and you will lose as many by
continuing the war.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 29, 1782.

  P. S. The manuscript copy of this letter is sent your lordship, by
the way of our head-quarters, to New York, inclosing a late pamphlet
of mine, addressed to the Abbe Raynal, which will serve to give your
lordship some idea of the principles and sentiments of America.
                                                   C. S.
                                XIII.

               THOUGHTS ON THE PEACE, AND THE PROBABLE
                         ADVANTAGES THEREOF.

  "THE times that tried men's souls,"* are over- and the greatest
and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and
happily accomplished.

  * "These are the times that try men's souls," The Crisis No. I.
published December, 1776.

  But to pass from the extremes of danger to safety- from the tumult
of war to the tranquillity of peace, though sweet in contemplation,
requires a gradual composure of the senses to receive it. Even
calmness has the power of stunning, when it opens too instantly upon
us. The long and raging hurricane that should cease in a moment, would
leave us in a state rather of wonder than enjoyment; and some
moments of recollection must pass, before we could be capable of
tasting the felicity of repose. There are but few instances, in
which the mind is fitted for sudden transitions: it takes in its
pleasures by reflection and comparison and those must have time to
act, before the relish for new scenes is complete.
  In the present case- the mighty magnitude of the object- the various
uncertainties of fate it has undergone- the numerous and complicated
dangers we have suffered or escaped- the eminence we now stand on, and
the vast prospect before us, must all conspire to impress us with
contemplation.
  To see it in our power to make a world happy- to teach mankind the
art of being so- to exhibit, on the theatre of the universe a
character hitherto unknown- and to have, as it were, a new creation
intrusted to our hands, are honors that command reflection, and can
neither be too highly estimated, nor too gratefully received.
  In this pause then of recollection- while the storm is ceasing,
and the long agitated mind vibrating to a rest, let us look back on
the scenes we have passed, and learn from experience what is yet to be
done.
  Never, I say, had a country so many openings to happiness as this.
Her setting out in life, like the rising of a fair morning, was
unclouded and promising. Her cause was good. Her principles just and
liberal. Her temper serene and firm. Her conduct regulated by the
nicest steps, and everything about her wore the mark of honor. It is
not every country (perhaps there is not another in the world) that can
boast so fair an origin. Even the first settlement of America
corresponds with the character of the revolution. Rome, once the proud
mistress of the universe, was originally a band of ruffians. Plunder
and rapine made her rich, and her oppression of millions made her
great. But America need never be ashamed to tell her birth, nor relate
the stages by which she rose to empire.
  The remembrance, then, of what is past, if it operates rightly, must
inspire her with the most laudable of all ambition, that of adding
to the fair fame she began with. The world has seen her great in
adversity; struggling, without a thought of yielding, beneath
accumulated difficulties, bravely, nay proudly, encountering distress,
and rising in resolution as the storm increased. All this is justly
due to her, for her fortitude has merited the character. Let, then,
the world see that she can bear prosperity: and that her honest virtue
in time of peace, is equal to the bravest virtue in time of war.
  She is now descending to the scenes of quiet and domestic life.
Not beneath the cypress shade of disappointment, but to enjoy in her
own land, and under her own vine, the sweet of her labors, and the
reward of her toil.- In this situation, may she never forget that a
fair national reputation is of as much importance as independence.
That it possesses a charm that wins upon the world, and makes even
enemies civil. That it gives a dignity which is often superior to
power, and commands reverence where pomp and splendor fail.
  It would be a circumstance ever to be lamented and never to be
forgotten, were a single blot, from any cause whatever, suffered to
fall on a revolution, which to the end of time must be an honor to the
age that accomplished it: and which has contributed more to
enlighten the world, and diffuse a spirit of freedom and liberality
among mankind, than any human event (if this may be called one) that
ever preceded it.
  It is not among the least of the calamities of a long continued war,
that it unhinges the mind from those nice sensations which at other
times appear so amiable. The continual spectacle of woe blunts the
finer feelings, and the necessity of bearing with the sight, renders
it familiar. In like manner, are many of the moral obligations of
society weakened, till the custom of acting by necessity becomes an
apology, where it is truly a crime. Yet let but a nation conceive
rightly of its character, and it will be chastely just in protecting
it. None ever began with a fairer than America and none can be under a
greater obligation to preserve it.
  The debt which America has contracted, compared with the cause she
has gained, and the advantages to flow from it, ought scarcely to be
mentioned. She has it in her choice to do, and to live as happily as
she pleases. The world is in her hands. She has no foreign power to
monopolize her commerce, perplex her legislation, or control her
prosperity. The struggle is over, which must one day have happened,
and, perhaps, never could have happened at a better time.* And instead
of a domineering master, she has gained an ally whose exemplary
greatness, and universal liberality, have extorted a confession even
from her enemies.

  * That the revolution began at the exact period of time best
fitted to the purpose, is sufficiently proved by the event.- But the
great hinge on which the whole machine turned, is the Union of the
States: and this union was naturally produced by the inability of
any one state to support itself against any foreign enemy without
the assistance of the rest.
  Had the states severally been less able than they were when the
war began, their united strength would not have been equal to the
undertaking, and they must in all human probability have failed.- And,
on the other hand, had they severally been more able, they might not
have seen, or, what is more, might not have felt, the necessity of
uniting: and, either by attempting to stand alone or in small
confederacies, would have been separately conquered.
  Now, as we cannot see a time (and many years must pass away before
it can arrive) when the strength of any one state, or several
united, can be equal to the whole of the present United States, and as
we have seen the extreme difficulty of collectively prosecuting the
war to a successful issue, and preserving our national importance in
the world, therefore, from the experience we have had, and the
knowledge we have gained, we must, unless we make a waste of wisdom,
be strongly impressed with the advantage, as well as the necessity
of strengthening that happy union which had been our salvation, and
without which we should have been a ruined people.
  While I was writing this note, I cast my eye on the pamphlet, Common
Sense, from which I shall make an extract, as it exactly applies to
the case. It is as follows:
  "I have never met with a man, either in England or America, who
has not confessed it as his opinion that a separation between the
countries would take place one time or other; and there is no instance
in which we have shown less judgment, than in endeavoring to
describe what we call the ripeness or fitness of the continent for
independence.
  "As all men allow the measure, and differ only in their opinion of
the time, let us, in order to remove mistakes, take a general survey
of things, and endeavor, if possible, to find out the very time. But
we need not to go far, the inquiry ceases at once, for, the time has
found us. The general concurrence, the glorious union of all things
prove the fact.
  "It is not in numbers, but in a union, that our great strength lies.
The continent is just arrived at that pitch of strength, in which no
single colony is able to support itself, and the whole, when united,
can accomplish the matter; and either more or less than this, might be
fatal in its effects."

  With the blessings of peace, independence, and an universal
commerce, the states, individually and collectively, will have leisure
and opportunity to regulate and establish their domestic concerns, and
to put it beyond the power of calumny to throw the least reflection on
their honor. Character is much easier kept than recovered, and that
man, if any such there be, who, from sinister views, or littleness
of soul, lends unseen his hand to injure it, contrives a wound it will
never be in his power to heal.
  As we have established an inheritance for posterity, let that
inheritance descend, with every mark of an honorable conveyance. The
little it will cost, compared with the worth of the states, the
greatness of the object, and the value of the national character, will
be a profitable exchange.
  But that which must more forcibly strike a thoughtful, penetrating
mind, and which includes and renders easy all inferior concerns, is
the UNION OF THE STATES. On this our great national character depends.
It is this which must give us importance abroad and security at
home. It is through this only that we are, or can be, nationally known
in the world; it is the flag of the United States which renders our
ships and commerce safe on the seas, or in a foreign port. Our
Mediterranean passes must be obtained under the same style. All our
treaties, whether of alliance, peace, or commerce, are formed under
the sovereignty of the United States, and Europe knows us by no
other name or title.
  The division of the empire into states is for our own convenience,
but abroad this distinction ceases. The affairs of each state are
local. They can go no further than to itself. And were the whole worth
of even the richest of them expended in revenue, it would not be
sufficient to support sovereignty against a foreign attack. In
short, we have no other national sovereignty than as United States. It
would even be fatal for us if we had- too expensive to be
maintained, and impossible to be supported. Individuals, or individual
states, may call themselves what they please; but the world, and
especially the world of enemies, is not to be held in awe by the
whistling of a name. Sovereignty must have power to protect all the
parts that compose and constitute it: and as UNITED STATES we are
equal to the importance of the title, but otherwise we are not. Our
union, well and wisely regulated and cemented, is the cheapest way
of being great- the easiest way of being powerful, and the happiest
invention in government which the circumstances of America can admit
of.- Because it collects from each state, that which, by being
inadequate, can be of no use to it, and forms an aggregate that serves
for all.
  The states of Holland are an unfortunate instance of the effects
of individual sovereignty. Their disjointed condition exposes them
to numerous intrigues, losses, calamities, and enemies; and the almost
impossibility of bringing their measures to a decision, and that
decision into execution, is to them, and would be to us, a source of
endless misfortune.
  It is with confederated states as with individuals in society;
something must be yielded up to make the whole secure. In this view of
things we gain by what we give, and draw an annual interest greater
than the capital.- I ever feel myself hurt when I hear the union, that
great palladium of our liberty and safety, the least irreverently
spoken of. It is the most sacred thing in the constitution of America,
and that which every man should be most proud and tender of. Our
citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our
citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction.
By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our
great title is AMERICANS- our inferior one varies with the place.
  So far as my endeavors could go, they have all been directed to
conciliate the affections, unite the interests, and draw and keep
the mind of the country together; and the better to assist in this
foundation work of the revolution, I have avoided all places of profit
or office, either in the state I live in, or in the United States;
kept myself at a distance from all parties and party connections,
and even disregarded all private and inferior concerns: and when we
take into view the great work which we have gone through, and feel, as
we ought to feel, the just importance of it, we shall then see, that
the little wranglings and indecent contentions of personal parley, are
as dishonorable to our characters, as they are injurious to our
repose.
  It was the cause of America that made me an author. The force with
which it struck my mind and the dangerous condition the country
appeared to me in, by courting an impossible and an unnatural
reconciliation with those who were determined to reduce her, instead
of striking out into the only line that could cement and save her, A
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, made it impossible for me, feeling as I
did, to be silent: and if, in the course of more than seven years, I
have rendered her any service, I have likewise added something to
the reputation of literature, by freely and disinterestedly
employing it in the great cause of mankind, and showing that there may
be genius without prostitution.
  Independence always appeared to me practicable and probable,
provided the sentiment of the country could be formed and held to
the object: and there is no instance in the world, where a people so
extended, and wedded to former habits of thinking, and under such a
variety of circumstances, were so instantly and effectually
pervaded, by a turn in politics, as in the case of independence; and
who supported their opinion, undiminished, through such a succession
of good and ill fortune, till they crowned it with success.
  But as the scenes of war are closed, and every man preparing for
home and happier times, I therefore take my leave of the subject. I
have most sincerely followed it from beginning to end, and through all
its turns and windings: and whatever country I may hereafter be in,
I shall always feel an honest pride at the part I have taken and
acted, and a gratitude to nature and providence for putting it in my
power to be of some use to mankind.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1783.
                        A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS

                      TO THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA.

  IN "Rivington's New York Gazette," of December 6th, is a
publication, under the appearance of a letter from London, dated
September 30th; and is on a subject which demands the attention of the
United States.
  The public will remember that a treaty of commerce between the
United States and England was set on foot last spring, and that
until the said treaty could be completed, a bill was brought into
the British Parliament by the then chancellor of the exchequer, Mr.
Pitt, to admit and legalize (as the case then required) the commerce
of the United States into the British ports and dominions. But neither
the one nor the other has been completed. The commercial treaty is
either broken off, or remains as it began; and the bill in
Parliament has been thrown aside. And in lieu thereof, a selfish
system of English politics has started up, calculated to fetter the
commerce of America, by engrossing to England the carrying trade of
the American produce to the West India islands.
  Among the advocates for this last measure is Lord Sheffield, a
member of the British Parliament, who has published a pamphlet
entitled "Observations on the Commerce of the American States." The
pamphlet has two objects; the one is to allure the Americans to
purchase British manufactures; and the other to spirit up the
British Parliament to prohibit the citizens of the United States
from trading to the West India islands.
  Viewed in this light, the pamphlet, though in some parts dexterously
written, is an absurdity. It offends, in the very act of endeavoring
to ingratiate; and his lordship, as a politician, ought not to have
suffered the two objects to have appeared together. The latter alluded
to, contains extracts from the pamphlet, with high encomiums on Lord
Sheffield, for laboriously endeavoring (as the letter styles it) "to
show the mighty advantages of retaining the carrying trade."
  Since the publication of this pamphlet in England, the commerce of
the United States to the West Indies, in American vessels, has been
prohibited; and all intercourse, except in British bottoms, the
property of and navigated by British subjects, cut off.
  That a country has a right to be as foolish as it pleases, has
been proved by the practice of England for many years past: in her
island situation, sequestered from the world, she forgets that her
whispers are heard by other nations; and in her plans of politics
and commerce she seems not to know, that other votes are necessary
besides her own. America would be equally as foolish as Britain,
were she to suffer so great a degradation on her flag, and such a
stroke on the freedom of her commerce, to pass without a balance.
  We admit the right of any nation to prohibit the commerce of another
into its own dominions, where there are no treaties to the contrary;
but as this right belongs to one side as well as the other, there is
always a way left to bring avarice and insolence to reason.
  But the ground of security which Lord Sheffield has chosen to
erect his policy upon, is of a nature which ought, and I think must,
awaken in every American a just and strong sense of national
dignity. Lord Sheffield appears to be sensible, that in advising the
British nation and Parliament to engross to themselves so great a part
of the carrying trade of America, he is attempting a measure which
cannot succeed, if the politics of the United States be properly
directed to counteract the assumption.
  But, says he, in his pamphlet, "It will be a long time before the
American states can be brought to act as a nation, neither are they to
be feared as such by us."
  What is this more or less than to tell us, that while we have no
national system of commerce, the British will govern our trade by
their own laws and proclamations as they please. The quotation
discloses a truth too serious to be overlooked, and too mischievous
not to be remedied.
  Among other circumstances which led them to this discovery none
could operate so effectually as the injudicious, uncandid and indecent
opposition made by sundry persons in a certain state, to the
recommendations of Congress last winter, for an import duty of five
per cent. It could not but explain to the British a weakness in the
national power of America, and encourage them to attempt
restrictions on her trade, which otherwise they would not have dared
to hazard. Neither is there any state in the union, whose policy was
more misdirected to its interest than the state I allude to, because
her principal support is the carrying trade, which Britain, induced by
the want of a well-centred power in the United States to protect and
secure, is now attempting to take away. It fortunately happened (and
to no state in the union more than the state in question) that the
terms of peace were agreed on before the opposition appeared,
otherwise, there cannot be a doubt, that if the same idea of the
diminished authority of America had occurred to them at that time as
has occurred to them since, but they would have made the same grasp at
the fisheries, as they have done at the carrying trade.
  It is surprising that an authority which can be supported with so
much ease, and so little expense, and capable of such extensive
advantages to the country, should be cavilled at by those whose duty
it is to watch over it, and whose existence as a people depends upon
it. But this, perhaps, will ever be the case, till some misfortune
awakens us into reason, and the instance now before us is but a gentle
beginning of what America must expect, unless she guards her union
with nicer care and stricter honor. United, she is formidable, and
that with the least possible charge a nation can be so; separated, she
is a medley of individual nothings, subject to the sport of foreign
nations.
  It is very probable that the ingenuity of commerce may have found
out a method to evade and supersede the intentions of the British,
in interdicting the trade with the West India islands. The language of
both being the same, and their customs well understood, the vessels of
one country may, by deception, pass for those of another. But this
would be a practice too debasing for a sovereign people to stoop to,
and too profligate not to be discountenanced. An illicit trade,
under any shape it can be placed, cannot be carried on without a
violation of truth. America is now sovereign and independent, and
ought to conduct her affairs in a regular style of character. She
has the same right to say that no British vessel shall enter ports, or
that no British manufactures shall be imported, but in American
bottoms, the property of, and navigated by American subjects, as
Britain has to say the same thing respecting the West Indies. Or she
may lay a duty of ten, fifteen, or twenty shillings per ton (exclusive
of other duties) on every British vessel coming from any port of the
West Indies, where she is not admitted to trade, the said tonnage to
continue as long on her side as the prohibition continues on the
other.
  But it is only by acting in union, that the usurpations of foreign
nations on the freedom of trade can be counteracted, and security
extended to the commerce of America. And when we view a flag, which to
the eye is beautiful, and to contemplate its rise and origin
inspires a sensation of sublime delight, our national honor must unite
with our interest to prevent injury to the one, or insult to the
other.

                                                   COMMON SENSE.

  NEW YORK, December 9, 1783.


                               THE END