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.
THE CRISIS VI. (TO THE EARL OF CARLISLE AND GENERAL CLINTON)
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.
THE CRISIS 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.