The New-Jersey gazette — Burlington [N.J.], 1778-11-04 00:00:00, page 2

was a few years ago ; yet of that affair no discovery
was ever made ; and the lot's you would sustain b y
such an event, executed at a proper season, is infinite -
ly greater than any you can inflift. The East-India
house and the Bank neither are nor can be secure from
this fort of deftruftion, and, as Doctor Price justly
observes, a fire at the latter would bankrupt the na
tion. It has never been the custom of France and
England, when at war, to make those havocs on each
other, because the case with which they could re
taliate, rendered it as impolitic as if each had destroy
ed his own.
But think not, gentlemen, that our distance secures
you, or our invention fails us. We can much cafier
accomplish such a point than any nation in Europe.
We talk the fame language, dress in the iame habit,
and appear with the fame manners as yourfclves.
We can pass from one part of England to another un
fufpefted, many of us are as well acquainted with the
country as you are ; and should you impoliticly pro
voke our will, you will mod assuredly lament the ef
feds of it. Mifchiefs of this kind require no army to
execute them. The means are obvious, and the op
portunities unguardable. I hold up a warning-piece
to your femfes, if you have any left, and " tv the un
" happy people likewise whose affairs are committed
" to you." * I call not with the rancour of an ene
my, but with the earnestness of a friend, on the de
luded people of England, left between your blunders
and theirs, they fink beneath the evils contrived for us.
“He who lives in a glass-house, fays the 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 fee on which fide the balance of accounts will
fall. There are many other modes of retaliaton,
which for several reasons I choose not to mention.
But be allured of this, that the instant you put a threat
in execution, a counter blow will follow it. If you
openly profefs yourselves savages, it is high time we
should treat you as such ; and if nothing but distress
can recover you to reason, to punilh 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 ex
pedition down the river to set fire to it ; and though
it was not then accepted, nor the thing personally at
tempted, it is more than probable that your own fol
ly will provoke a much heavier stroke in some more
vulnerable part. Say not when the mifchiefis 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 threaten.
In another part of your proclamation you fay, " But
*' if the honours of a military life are become the ob
'' jest of the A merlinnc, 1/at them iccis. LtlOlc nonoilis
*' under the banners of their rightful Sovereign, and
«' in fighting the battles of the united Britiih empire,
" against our late mutual and natural enemies."
Surely! the union of absurdity with madness was
never marked with more diftinguilhable lines than
those. 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, can
not fuffer our judgments to be so imposed upon ; and
unless it is your with to fee him exposed, it ought to
be your endeavour to keep him out of fight. The
less you have to fay 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, dill 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 shall bid nothing for him.
The impertinent folly of the paragraph 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 deferable. We are invited to submit to a
man who has attempted by every cruelty to defray us,
and tojoin him in making war against France, who is
already at war againfl bim for ourfupport. Can Bed
lam in concert with Lucifer form a more mad and
devilish request ? Were it possible that a people could
fink into such apoftacy, they would deserve to be
swept from the earth like the inhabitants of Sodom
and Gomorrah. The proposition is an universal af
front to the rank which man holds in the creation.
An indignity to him who placed him there. It sup
poses him made up without a spark of honour, and
under no obligation to God or man.
What fort of men or Christians must you suppose
the Americans to be, who, after feeing their most
humble petitions insultingly rejected ; the most griev
ous laws passed to distress them in every quarter ; an
undeclared war let loose upon them, and Indians and
Negroes invited to the daughter: Who, after feeing
their kindred murdered, their fellow-citizens starved
to death in prisons, and their houses and property de
stroyed and burned : Who, after the most serious ap
peals to heaven, the most solemn abjuration by oath
of all government connection with you, and the most
heart-felt pledged and protestation of faith to each
other: And who, after soliciting the friendship and
entering into alliances with other nations, should at
* General Clinton's letter to Congress.
last break through a these obligations civil and di
vine, by complying with your horrid and infernal
proposal? Ought weever after to be considered as a
part of the human rae ? Or ought we not rather to
be blotted from the heiety of mankind, and become
a fpe&acle of misery b the world ? But there is some
thing in corruption, which, like a jaundiced eye,
transfers the colour as itfelf to the object it looks
upon, and fees everything stained and impure; for
unless you were capable of such conduct yourselves,
you could never have supposed such a character in
us. The offer fixesycur infamy. It exhibits you as
a nation without faith, with whom oaths and treaties
are considered as trifle;, 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
defeend ; you have pat your foot on the ground
Boor, 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
fad or philosophy; and as Mr. Ferguson, your Se
cretary, is a man of letters, and has made civil iociety
his study, .and published atreatife on that fubjeCt, I
address this part to him.
In the close of the paragraph which I last quoted,
France is stiled the " natural enemy" of England, and
by way of lugging us into the fame strange idea, the is
likewise stiled the late mutual and natural enemy of
both countries. I deny that the ever was the natural
enemy of either, and that there does not exist in na
ture such a principle. The expression is an unmean
ing barbarism, and wholly unphilofophical when ap
plied to beings of the fame species, let their rank in
the creation be what it may. We have a perfect idea
of a natural enemy when we think of the Devil, be
cause the enmity is perpetual, unalterable and un
abateable. It admits of neither peace, truce or trea
ty ; consequently the warfare is eternal, and therefore
it is natural. But man with man cannot arrange in
the fame opposition. Their quarrels are accidental
and equivocally created. They become friends or
enemies as the change of temper or the call of inte
rest inclines them. The Creator of man did not con
stitute him the natural enemy of each other. He has
not made any one order of beings so. Even wolves
may quarrel, dill they herd together. If any two na
tions are so, then,muft 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 fire has contrasted an unsociable habit of ma
nors, and imagines in others the jealousy the creates in
herfelf.LNjewer MrLccfafci^fied with peace, fire iuppofes
the difeontent universal, and buoyed up with her own
importance, conceives herfelf the only object pointed
at. The expression has been often used, and always
with a fraudulent design; for when the idea of a na
tural enemy is conceived, it prevents all other enqui
ries, 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 questions. 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 be
yond the limits and prejudices of an island. We hold
out the right hand of fellowfhip to all the universe,
and we conceive there to be a sociality in the manners
of France, which is much better disposed to peace
and negociation than that of England; and until the
latter become more civilized, (he cannot expert to live
long at peace with any power. Her common lan
guage is vulgar and offenfive, and children with their
milk fuck in the rudiments of insult. " The arm of
Britain! The mighty arm of Britain ! Britain that
flakes the earth to its centre 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 fame end, and almost
every publick exhibition is tinctured with insult. Yet
England is always in dread of France. Terrified at
the apprehension of an invalion. Suspicious of being
outwitted in a treaty, and privately cringing, though
Are is publickly 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 fee a
proclamation which could promise you no one ufeful
purpose whatever, and tend only to expose you. One
would think 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 re
newing the long forgotten fubjeds of charters and
taxation ? Is it worth your while, after every force
has failed you, to retreat under the shelter of argu
ment 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 fubiniffi
on by a piece of paper? But as Commissioners, at a
hundred pounds sterling a week each, you conceived
yourselves bound to do something, and the genius of
ill fortune told you 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 can
fee, would become visible to you, and therefore felt
unwilling to rufflie your temper by fretting you with
repetitions or difeoveries. 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 ftopt, 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,
and even to hear a petition from America. Tbuttime
is pah, and she in her turn is petitioning our accept
ance. We now hand 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 pro
bable as the former ever was. She cannot refufe to
acknowledge our independence with greater obstinacy
than she before refufed 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 pe
riods of fatigue and rest, their fufl'ering and their
cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the firft
wound is mortal. You have already began to give it
up, and you will, from the natural conftrudion of the
vice, find yourselves both obliged and inclined to
do so.
If you look back you fee nothing but loss and dis
grace. If you look forward the fame feene conti
nues, and the close is an impenetrable gloom. You
may plan and execute little mifchiefs, but are they
worth the expence they cost you, or will fucli partial
evils have any effect on the general cause ? Your ex
pedition to Egg-Harbour will be felt at a distance like
an attack upon a hen-roost, and expose you in Europe
with a fort of childish phrenfy. Is it worth while to
keep an army to protest 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 es
cape, 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 have staid
so long. You are prosecuting a war in which you con
fefs you have neither object nor hope, and that con
quest, could it be effected, would not repay the
charge : 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 or
difficulty ; the firft rudiments of reason will deter
minelhe choice ; for if peace can be procured with
more advantages than even a conquest can be obtain
ed, he must be an ideot indeed that hesitates.
The Congress, considering themselves bound to love
their enemies, as children of that Being who is equally
the Father of all ; and desirous, since they could not
In this confidence they have continued, through the
various fortune of three bloody campaigns, unawed
by the power, unsubdued by the barbarity of their
foes. Their virtuous citizens have borne without re
pining, the loss of many things which make life de
sirable. Their brave troops have patiently endured
the hardships and dangers of a situation, fruitful in
both beyond former example.
But you are probably buoyed up by a set of wretch
ed 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 forthat very purpose ; and in pro
portion as you disregard their advice, and grow cal
lous to their complaints, they will stretch into impro
bability, and pepper off their flattery the higher.
Characters like these are to be found in every country,
and every country will despise them.
Whereas great publick injury arises from the pre
sent purchases of wheat in the forage department:
Refolded, That for the future no wheat be purchas
ed for forage by any person for the use of the United
States, unless Congress shall order otherways.
Extract from the minutes,
CHARLES THOMSON, Secretary.
All Printers are desired to insert the above, and con
tinue it in their news-papers.
THESE United States, having been driven to
hostilities by the oppressive and tyrannous mea
sures of Great-Britain; having been compelled to
commit the essential rights of man to the decision of
arms; and having been at length forced to shake off a
yoke which had grown too burthenfome to bear, they
declared themselves free and independent.
Confiding in thejuftice oftheir cause ; confiding in
Him who disposes of human events, although weak
and unprovided, they set the power of their enemies
at defiance.
By the CONGRESS of the UNITED STATES of
COMMON SENSE.
Philadelphia, October 2,oth, 1778.
In CONGRESS, Odtober 26, 1778.
MANIFEST O.
AMERIC A.