Originally published at the Providence Gazette on December 21st, 28th in 1782, on January 4th, 11th, 18th and February 1st, 1783

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To the PRINTER of the PROVIDENCE GAZETTE,

Philadelphia

Nov. 27, 1782

SIR,

Inclosed I send you a Philadelphia paper of this day’s date, and desire you to insert the piece signed “A Friend to Rhode-Island and the Union. — I am concerned that Rhode Island should make it necessary to address a piece to her, on a subject which the rest of the States are agreed in.

Youre, &c. T.P.

LETTER I.

In ANSWER to the CITIZEN OF RHODE-ISLAND, on the Five per Cent. Duty.

A WRITER, under the stile of “A Citizen of Rhode-Island,” has undertaken to vindicate the said State in her yet neglecting to pass the law recommended by Congress for laying a duty of five per cent. on foreign imported goods: The monies arising therefrom to be applied towards discharging the interest and principal of the debts which are or may be contracted by the United States (of which Rhode-Island is one) for the defence of the country, and for supporting and establishing the Independence thereof.

The resolution of Congress is as follows.

“In CONGRESS, February 3, 1781.

“Resolved, That it be recommended to the several States, as indispensably necessary, that they vest a power in Congress to levy, for the use of the United States, a duty of five per cent. ad valorem, at the time and place of importation, upon all goods, wares and merchandize, of foreign growth and manufactures, which may be imported into any of the said States, after the 1st day of May, 1781; except arms, ammunition, cloathing, and other articles imported on account of the United States, or any of them, and except wool cards, and cotton cards, and wire for making them, and also except salt during the war: Also a duty of five per cent. on all prizes and prize goods, condemned in the Court of Admiralty of any of these States, as lawful prizes.

“That the monies arising from these duties be appropriated to the discharge of the principal and interest of the debts already contracted, or which may be contracted, on the faith of the United States, for supporting the present war. — That the said duties be continued, until the said debts shall be fully and faithfully discharged.”

On this resolution I shall remark —

First, Here is the purpose for which the money shall be raised, namely, to pay off the interest and principal of the debts, foreign and domestic, which we ourselves, the public of America, have, through our Representatives in Congress, contracted, or may contract, for our defence, and pledged our faith to discharge.

Secondly, The manner, rate, or ratio, by which the money shall be raised, viz. five pounds out of every hundred pounds worth of foreign goods, which shall be imported.

Thirdly, The time for which the said duty shall continue; that is, until the interest and principal of the debts shall be paid.

In consequence of this plan and recommendation (the justice and propriety of which appeared so evident and striking, and so “indispensably necessary” to our honor and reputation) twelve of the States passed the said law. Rhode-Island only remains delinquent.(1)

Having thus stated the outlines of the subject, I shall proceed to my remarks on the publications which have appeared, and add thereto such other observations as the case may require.

The Citizen of Rhode-Island, in objection to the five per cent. duty, begins his argument at a very remote point from the subject. He sets out with obliquely traducing the character of all government whatever. His positions are loose and general, and by endeavuoring to make them apply to every thing, they apply directly to nothing. He speaks of executive power, as if it were something existing in its own right, perpetual in itself, and neither constituted by, nor controulable by the people. He confounds all kinds of government together; and that without perceiving, that the same kind of reasoning, which is applicable in one case, is foreign to the purpose in another.

It is somewhat strange that the theory of government, which is exceedingly simple in itself, and in general well known by almost every farmer in America, should be so perplexed, misconceived and tortured, by those whose very business and duty it is to understand it fully, and exercise it justly.

His pieces are entitled,

“On the five per cent. Duty, by a Citizen of Rhode-Island.“

And his first paragraph is in these words:

“Is it expedient, says he, in any government, that the Supreme Executive Power should hold the revenue independent of the people? To have this question soberly and sensibly discussed, is a matter of some consequence, at any time and place, it taking place of right among the most important principles of civil government; but at this time is, in this country, peculiarly interesting — It applying more closely upon every individual who is capable of forming a judgment upon the effects, which a question so radical in the constitution may have upon us and our posterity.”

When this gentleman asks, “Whether it is expedient in any government, that the Supreme Executive Power should hold the revenue independent of the people,” he asks a question which every man in America, without the least hesitation, can answer at once, because the whole of them will unanimously answer, no. They can answer no otherwise. It is the very being, principle, and constitution of the republic, that the people have nothing in their government independent of themselves. The question may belong to Turkey or Persia, where the government is all executive, and that executive self created, and totally independent of the people; but in a republic, like the United States, where the appointment of the Executive Power is wholly in our own hands, to make and unmake, change and alter, as we please, and where every thing which it has and does is in trust for us, who gave it, how is it possible that the same question can apply here, or with what shadow of propriety can it be put?

There are some truths so self evident and obvious, of which this is one, that they ought never to be stated in the form of a question for debate, because it is habituating the mind to think doubtfully, of what there ought to be no doubt upon. The people of America are much forwarder in their ideas of their own rights than this gentleman supposes, if he thinks that the question, on which he rests so much expectation, can be any subject for debate at all.

He must likewise be exceedingly backward in his notions of a free government, and the principles of a republic, to call that “a radical question in the constitution,” which the constitution knows nothing of, and which is altogether in opposition to it, and wholly repugnant to the principle on which republics are founded. A revenue held by the Supreme Executive Power, independent of the people! Was such a thing ever heard of in a republic? Was such a question ever asked in one before?

Who have we in America but the people? Members of Congress, of Assemblies, or Council, are still a part of the people. Their honors do not take them out of the aggregate body. They serve their appointed time; and are succeeded by others. They are subject to the laws they pass, and must contribute their proportion of taxes in common with the rest. There is no such thing in America as power of any kind, independent of the people. There is no other race of men in it but the people, and consequently there can be no revenue held independent of them; and therefore the question is a nullity, and to reason upon it is throwing away time and words for nothing; for we admit, nay, we contend for the fact, and reprobate the question as partaking of a slavish idea.

But whether it be admitted or rejected is a matter totally foreign to the five per cent. duty. It may be placed as a stalking horse, to keep something else out of sight: But I never can persuade myself, that the gentleman who puts it can mean any thing seriously by it. He must know, nay, he does know better; for he knows that the five per cent. duty is already appropriated in the plan for raising it. He knows it is not of the nature of a revenue, to be expended as circumstances may arise, but as a fund to be applied to the payment of monies which we owe, and of which monies, both foreign and domestic, Rhode-Island has had her share of the benefit. He knows that it is appropriated to the use of the creditors, and not of the Congress, and that to involve it under a question of revenue, held independent of the people, is ungenerous, inconsistent, impolitic, and unjust.

He may perhaps think, that by setting out with a question of popular deception, he has erected a work that cannot easily be demolished; and indeed he is right; for, like a breast-work of sponge, it has not substance enough in it to be knocked down. You may fire through it forever, and kill every man behind it, engineer and all, and still the work, like the question, useless in themselves, will retain their figure.

But to come closer to the point. — The case with the five per cent. is simply this:

The several States, of which Rhode-Island is one, formed themselves into an union, and sent delegates to Congress, as representatives of themselves. They empowered those delegates to pledge the public faith, for the just payment of any monies they might borrow, at home or abroad, or any debts they might contract in the name and for the defense of themselves, the United States of America. Monies have been borrowed, and debts have been contracted, by virtue of this delegation and authority, and now the same people who authorized them to borrow, and who have received the benefit of it, and who likewise by their representatives pledged their faith and honor for payment, are called upon to fulfill that obligation. — This is, in plain language, the long and short of the story, and therefore what is said about perpetual revenue, held independent of the people, is absurd, because it is foreign to the purpose; for this, as I have before observed, is not a revenue, but a fund for the payment of a debt, appropriated to the purpose, and limited in its duration.

When I speak of Congress, I do not mean a body of men; I mean an Assembly of States; and those States, thus assembled, have, as the most eligible and easy mode of payment, proposed a duty of five per cent. on imported goods. Twelve of the States have adopted the measure, and passed laws for that purpose. Rhode-Island alone is delinquent. Thus stands the case at present.

It is an exceeding easy thing, when men are so disposed, to exhibit any measure, however good, just or necessary it may be, in an odious and offensive light, by tacking to it a number of deformities which have no relation to it, and which are as foreign to its condition, as the filthy blanket of an Indian is to the person of a decent agreeable woman. A writer in Mr. Bradford’s paper of the 16th inst. (who is very likely the same gentleman that stiles himself a citizen of Rhode-Island in another paper) has heaped ten of those odious coverings, numerically arranged, on the five per cent. duty.

The case is, that he either wishes to obscure the subject and hunt it down without the chance of being understood, or he totally misunderstands it himself. He talks of a revenue at the discretion of Congress, when the matter in question is a fund for the payment of a debt; and he speaks of it as perpetual, when the very plan for raising it limits its duration. And thus by mistaking the case he runs into heedless inconsistencies, wide and foreign from the subject.

But let us examine the naked question, uncloathed either with invented deformities or needless embellishments.

Suppose that, in the present wants of the United States for money, any number of men, friendly disposed to our cause and interest, in foreign countries or at home, were to propose to lend us three or four millions of dollars at a reasonable interest, demanding at the same time to know what security the States would give for the payment of the interest and principal.

Should we not, in such a case, appear like fools in the world, unacquainted with the nature of government, of politics, of commerce, and of every thing relative to the common concerns of life, were we to say to them, we will take your money, and pass a law to pay the interest of it for one year only, and after that we will thinnk further about it? Would we, I ask, place ourselves in this foolish situation, to be laughed at by every one, as men who did not understand what they were about, or did not mean to act honestly by their friends? Or would we not rather cast about to see what funds and resources we had got, and make proposals of security adequate to the offer, and put the debt in a certain train of payment at once, justly and fairly, between debtor and creditor? Now this is exactly the case with the five per cent. duty.

The common cry has been, Why don’t Congress borrow? — Why don’t Congress borrow? — But who in the name of heaven will lend, if you do not take care to pay, and fix on permanent funds for that purpose, and nicely and faithfully fulfill the obligation?

I cannot help considering the publications of both these gentlemen (if they are distinct persons) as tending to stab and wound the honor and cause of their country in the nicest and tenderest part; and am concerned that their imprudence, to give it no other harsher name, should make it necessary to bring debates and arguments into view, which ought never to have been started, because there never ought to have been any occasion for them.

Having thus opened the case, and shewn how it at present stands, I shall in my next letter shew that the five per cent. duty is a more eligible and productive mode of raising money, since money must be had, than any other which can be devised, because it is the least felt, the most equal in its operation, and the easiest collected.

In my third letter, with which I mean to close the matter, I shall more particularly confine myself to the most important of all subjects, in this part of the world — the Union of the States. For under the pretence of vindicating a State, in the present instance deficient in her duty in the Union, there is a style of language encouraged in the publications of those gentlemen, which, applied to the Union, is highly reprehensible.

*A Friend to Rhode-Island and the Union.

Footnote:

1. It is generally said, that twelve of the States have passed the law, and the Citizen of Rhode-Island seems to admit the fact; but whether the State of Georgia, just emerging from the tyranny of the enemy, has yet had time to complete such a law, is a circumstance I am not clear in.

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LETTER II

In ANSWER to the CITIZEN of RHODE-ISLAND, on the Five per Cent. Duty.

In my former letter I mentioned the purpose for which the five per cent. duty is levied; namely, as a fund for the payment of the interest and principal of such debts as are or may be contracted, abroad or at home, for the defence of the United States. I am now to shew the convenience and equality of the mode; which I shall preface with a few occasional observations.

In this country, where every State is interested alike in the event of the war, and almost every man in it stands in the same predicament, there ought to be no occasion for persuasion; and I might as well expect that the Citizen of Rhode-Island should undertake to persuade me to my duty, as that I should endeavour to persuade him. In proportion to our different circumstances, whatever they may be, we must be proportionately affected by a five per cent. duty. I can assure him too, that I am no public creditor, and therefore can have no individual interest in what I am writing. But I have the honor, interest and happiness, of a new and infant world at heart. She has done great things, and it would be a thousand pities to diminish that greatness, by any thing that is little.

In speaking on this part of the subject, I put our foreign debt totally out of the question; because that is what we are all agreed in, and makes no part of the argument. It was contracted in hard money, and the value of it permanent. But we have a species of internal debt among us, the value of which is unfixed, and admits of injury either way, and therefore it is necessary to ascertain it as precisely as possible, and settle it, lest the fair and real creditor should involve his fate with the rapacious claimant, and thereby be exposed to suffer on the one hand, or that the public should pay more than they have a right to pay on the other.

I am sensible that I look with an equal impartiality towards both, and as I do not wish to pay too little, so neither would I pay too much. If the creditor has his interest to take care of, the debtor has his honor to preserve, and the loss to the one is fully as severe as to the other. The States might appoint a general committee of accounts, to meet, adjust and settle all kinds of claims, prior to the commencement of the present system of finance.

But in the mean time, let us make the necessary provision for discharging what is really due, and supporting our reputation, and not embarrass that which is right with that which is wrong. What I cannot but blame the Citizen of Rhode-Island for, is his stating the matter erroneously, and treating it both imprudently and unfairly. He has brought cases into the question which are totally foreign to it, and avoided the points which he might have spoken upon.

Two things only are necessary. — The settlement of the public accounts, and the means of paying them off; and the question before us affords no other points. We did not undertake the defence of our country against a vindictive and powerful enemy, without knowing that it would be attended with many and unavoidable expences; and we have prospered in that defence equal to our utmost expectations, and far better than we many times had reason to hope for. It was by the united efforts of all America, which, like a bundle of rods, could not only not be broken, but were capable of chastising, that this happiness has been effected, and by which it is still secured; and as the case before us is of the nature of an united effort, we cannot too seriously impress ourselves with that idea and principle of union by which we rose into greatness, and are known by to the rest of the universe. It is our Magna Charta — our anchor in the world of empires.

Since then our condition and preservation require money, can there be a more equal and easier way of raising the sum required for the discharge of these accounts than a duty of five per cent. on foreign imported goods? If the duty produces an overplus, so much the better, for the soldier wants it; he likewise is a creditor. If it should not raise enough, pay it as far as it will go, by the best method that can be devised, and let both the public and the creditors know the sums received and paid, and to whom and for what.

The duty then, I say, of five per cent. lights equally on all the States according to their several abilities. For it is not which States import the most or least, but which, from their degrees of opulence or populousness, consume the most or least, that ascertain the quantity they severally bring towards the fund. Rhode-Island will pay but a small share of the duty, because she will consume but little; and all that she imports more than she consumes, is eventually paid by some other neighbouring States, and not by her.

If in America we had but one port, still the inhabitants of the State where that port was would pay no more of the five per cent. duty than in the present case; that is, they would pay only for what they consumed; and the States which had no port might pay much more duty than that which had, because they might severally consume more. In this case, every man throughout the United States would be assessed his five per cent, duty at one place; because there could be but one place of collection; and, consequently, the monies so raised upon the whole cannot be carried to the credit of the State in which it is collected; and this single observation oversets one objection which I have heard Rhode-Island has made.

It is a great convenience to a State to be situated so near the water, as to be eased of the expence of land carriage for foreign goods. This alone is far more than the duty of five per cent. and persons so conveniently circumstanced should, of all people, be the last to object.

Rhode-Island, by her situation, enjoys some superior benefits in the union. Closely connected with the sea, she derives advantages under its flag, its commissions and pass ports, which the inhabitants of more remote places do not; and many reasons will, upon reflection, occur to shew, that her objections are not only wrongly founded, but wrongly judged of.

The Citizen of Rhode-Island has said that the duty of five per cent. will fall unequally. It is easy to say any thing. But he has not advanced a single case or argument to prove it, which he certainly would, if he could have discovered any. He has likewise said many other things; but he has only said them, and left them to shift for themselves. Now a man ought never to leave an assertion to shift for itself. It is like turning out a sickly infant to beg a home in other people’s houses.

But there is one thing which this gentleman has not said; for he has not attempted to shew an easier way of raising the money, and he knows, full as well as I do, that the situation of a country at war requires money. But I can tell him the reason why he has been silent on this head; it is because he cannot devise an easier way, nor any that so well suits the circumstances of Rhode-Island; because, being considerably in the line of commerce, she can easier raise it through that medium, than through any other. And this brings me to shew the convenience and lightness of the five per cent. duty, so far as respects the individuals in any or all the States.

As a tax, it will scarcely be felt. The utmost difference it can make will be a very little more than a half-penny in the shilling, and in the fluctuation of trade, it will be insensibly lost; for there is scarcely a day that passes over our heads, but in which the rise or fall of prices is much greater; and it will so naturally and easily divide and circulate itself through the community, that its productiveness will arise from the universality of its operation.

It will likewise be found not only the lightest of all other modes of raising money, but the most convenient; for it operates with the ease of a tax in kind, without any of its difficulties and incumbrances. The man who might be scarce of money, has still money’s worth; he comes to market, and, by such means as are most convenient to himself, disposes of it, and procures, in the lieu thereof, such imported articles as he has occasion for, and in that exchange he pays his portion of the duty, without any other trouble.

It is likewise that kind of a duty which a man may pay or not; because he may choose whether he will wear or consume foreign articles. It is a duty too which the consumer is never called upon to pay; because whenever it suits him he goes to buy, and not before, and there ends the matter.

It is a duty which is the most easy collected, because it is collected but in few places, and in the lump, without rambling over the world for it, and requires but few persons, and may be done at a small expence; and I am persuaded that when the States find the convenience of this mode in preference to others, they will be inclined to throw some of their present taxes into the same channel. I have observed that the last convinced is often the most effectually convinced; and notwithstanding what the gentleman, who styles himself a Citizen of Rhode-Island, has said, the State will have other opinions. Now as what this gentleman first advanced respecting a perpetual revenue in the hands of an executive power is, in our situation, as a true and pure republic, futile and perfectly unapplicable, for the reasons advanced in my former letter, and as the weight of the duty is scarcely to be mentioned, and as the method is easier than any other which can be devised, and falls equally on all the States, and on the individuals in each State, according to their several abilities, I should be glad to know what objections he has to it, or can advance, for at present he has supported none. He contented himself with stating a question at first setting out, which all America was agreed to before he put it, and consequently could be no question at all.

I observe his pieces are interspersed with confused notions on government. His meaning may be good, and I have no reason to believe it is not; but, for want of distinguishing one sort of government from another, he draws conclusions which suit neither.

He does not see the difference between a country like England, where scarcely one man in an hundred is an elector, and this country, where every man is an elector, and may likewise be elected. Nor yet between the parliament of England (one house of which, the Peers, is perpetual, and the vacancies filled up by the Crown, and the other removeable only in seven years) and our constitutional governments, the representatives under which, both legislative and executive, are annually chosen by ourselves in most instances. Nor yet between the executive power possessed by the Crown, not to be touched at all, be it in hands ever so vicious, extravagant or ignorant, and the Congress of America, which, as members, are removeable at pleasure, and must be chosen every year. In short, he does not see the difference between the one country wrapt up in the most absurd species of slavery, and the other possessing and enjoying all their natural and civil rights; and thus, by carrying the jealousies necessary in people under a monarchy into the constitutions of a republic, he degrades the virtue on which republics are founded.

But there is an observation which this gentleman throws out, and likewise a second observation under another signature, both of which have considerable weight, and on which I shall offer some remarks.

The one is a quotation from Montesquieu, which was introduced into a former declaration of Congress, and is in these words: “When the power of making laws, and the power of executing them, are united in the same person, or the same body of Magistrates, there can be no “liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or “senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical “manner.”

I shall pay all the regard to this quotation, which the Citizen of Rhode-Island wishes to be paid. Though, by the bye, it is very easy to see that Montesquieu means a power perpetually existing in the same person or persons, and not a power vested in those who are removeable at pleasure. I wish those who quote Montesquieu would strictly regard his applications. It was very properly said by Congress to Britain, whose government over us was absolute, but cannot be said by us to ourselves.

The other observation which I allude to is in Mr. Bradford’s paper, of November 16th, in these words: — “No two States,” says the writer, “have agreed on the measure (meaning the five per cent. duty) without particular provisoes and limitations of their own, differing from the others; it is therefore impossible that a regular systematical collection of the duties should take place, unless those limitations and provisos are first removed.”

Now these two observations, taken either separately or collectively, may be of use to us. They naturally apply to something wanting, and something defective. We want some laws which Congress cannot make, and when the States attempt them they are imperfect. Certainly then the whole of our system is not yet compleat.

The United States are, as Mr. Burke very justly styles them, “The greatest Commonwealth on the face of the earth.” (1) But all Commonwealths must have some laws in common, which regulate, preserve, and protect the whole.

What would the sovereignty of any one individual State be, if left to itself, to contend with a foreign power? It is on our united sovereignty, that our greatness and safety, and the security of our foreign commerce, rest. This united sovereignty then must be something more than a name, and requires to be as compleatly organized for the line it is to act in as that of any individual State, and, if any thing, more so, because more depends on it.

Every man in America stands in a two-fold order of citizenship. He is a citizen of the State he lives in, and of the United States; and without justly and truly supporting his citizenship in the latter, he will inevitably sacrifice the former. By his rank in the one, he is made secure with his neighbours; by the other, with the world. The one protects his domestic safety and property from internal robbers and injustice; the other his foreign and remote property from piracy and invasion, and puts him on a rank with other nations. Certainly then the one, like the other, must not and cannot be trusted to pleasure and caprice, lest, in the display of local authority, we forget the great line that made us great, and must keep us so.

In introducing these remarks I have followed a thought naturally arising from the observations made by the Citizen of Rhode-Island, and I find that experience begins to suggest the idea of an inadequacy in our confederated system to several cases which must necessarily happen; what I mean is, that the confederation is not adapted to fit all the cases which the empire of the United States, in the course of her sovereignty, may experience; and the case before us shows that it is not adequate to every purpose of internal benefit and commercial regulation.

Several new and important matters have arisen since the confederation was formed. The entering into foreign alliances and treaties of commerce; the borrowing foreign loans; the cessation of the emissions of the paper currency; the raising the supplies by taxes, and several others which might be enumerated. But as nothing can happen to which we are not equal, the thing necessary is to think wisely and deliberately of them, and provide accordingly.

A Friend to Rhode-Island and the Union.

Footnote: 1. See Mr. Burke’s speech on the case of Mr. Laurens, Dec. 17, 1781, in the parliamentary debates, page 185.

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LETTER III

In ANSWER to the CITIZEN of RHODE-ISLAND, on the Five per Cent. Duty.

When the cause of America, like a new creation, rose into existence, it had something in it which confounded and yet enraptured the world. The boldness of the attempt, and the extent of its consequences, overawed the conjectures of mankind. A five per cent duty. levied for our support, either on land or commerce, would not then have swallowed up our attention, or produced a debate dishonorable to our patriotism. The defence of our country against an unprincipled and powerful enemy, the establishment of our natural rights, the exalting the human race to their original freedom, and guaranteeing the blessings of civil government, were the great objects of our heart, and we were a united, though a suffering people.

Why is it that so many little cares, unworthy our greatness, and injurious to our peace, have stolen upon our better thoughts? Are we tired of being successful? Is our domestic liberty of less value than formerly? or are we disposed to surrender to contention that which the enemy could never take from us by force?

It would perhaps be quite as well were to talk less about our independence, and more about our union. For if the union be justly supported, our independence is made secure. The former is the mother, the latter the infant at her breast. The nourishment of the one is drawn through the other, and to impoverish the mother is famishing her offspring.

Is there a country in the world that has so many openings to happiness as this? Masters of the land, and proprietors of the government, unchained from the evils of foreign subjection, and respected by sovereign powers, we have only to deserve prosperity, and its attainment is sure.

But it ever was and probably ever will be the unfortunate disposition of some men to encumber business with difficulties. The natural cast of their mind is to contention; and whatever is not to their particular wish, or their immediate interest, is sure to be magnified with invented calamities, and exhibited in terror. Such men can see the fate of empires in the snuff of a candle, and an eternity of public ruin wrapt up in every trifling disappointment to themselves. They build their hopes of popularity on error and accident; and subsist by flattering the mistakes and bewildering the judgment of others, till unable to discover the truth, or unwilling to confess it, they run into new inconsistencies, or retreat in angry discontent.

Never was a subject, simple and easy in itself (and which needed nothing but plain and temperate argument, if it needed any) more hideously tortured, and willfully misrepresented, than by those who have wrote against the five per cent. duty. Yet none of them have proposed a better or more eligible and practicable method of supporting public credit, and supplying the exigencies of the States. To them, I ask, can we rescue ourselves from a merciless enemy without charge? Can we defend our country or our property in it without expence? Can we borrow money without repaying it? Can we expect an army to subsist without supplies, or fight without reward? Or, in short, can we, who are to reap the benefit of independence, look for it as a meer boon from heaven, or hope to receive it at the expence of others?

We have to deal with a treacherous enemy, catching at every circumstance, and continuing the war on the hope of our mistakes. Their perfidiously withdrawing from the assurances they had given, in Carleton and Digby’s letter, of acceding to our independence, serves to explain both their character and their politics. And another letter written by a Doctor Walters, a refugee tory in New-York, to Sir William Pepperil, a refugee tory in England, and published in the London Morning Post on the 12th of last September (though false in its account of our finances) sufficiently shews that their expectations are founded solely on their hope of our neglecting to support the necessary defence. And shall we with our eyes open, and with the information of the enemy before us, encourage them in their deception, and add to the expences of the war by prolonging it? They continue in our country not from a view of conquest, but to wait the issue of our internal difficulties. Every imprudent debate, every embarrassment that is started, is to them a matter of malignant joy, and a new ground for malicious hope. In this situation, watched by our enemies, and wounded by our mistakes, it becomes us to think and act with firm but deliberate patriotism, lest in the petulence of temper, or the hurry of imprudence, we sacrifice the prospects of a seven years contest. (1)

It was my original design to have confined the subject of this letter to the union of the States; but as that is a matter sufficiently forcible of itself, I shall waive it for the present, and continue my remarks on the five per cent. duty, not only as it respects the States generally, but as it more locally respects the State of Rhode-Island.

That our condition, as a country engaged in a just and necessary war, requires money, needs not to be mentioned; and that the easiest way of raising it is the first subject for consideration, is equally clear. That the nature of a union requires and implies a disposition to act and draw together, and that the revenues are always within our controul, are matters that require no proof. That Congress are as much the representatives of the people as the Assemblies are; that the members of it can in no instance exempt themselves from a share of the burthens necessary for the defence of the country, in common with their constituents, and that it is the duty of every legislature to support its faith, rank and reputation, in the union, are subjects which all are agreed in. That monies cannot be borrowed without funds to pay with, and that those who are directed to borrow must be enabled to pay, needs no argument to support it; and that those who have it to lend will expect some better security than a promise, requires no explanation.

The question therefore is not whether we shall raise money, but how we shall raise it. The five per cent. duty is part of the plan of finance adopted about a year ago, upon the failure of the paper currency. It was intendedly applied as a sinking fund for the discharge of the debt we had contracted, at home or abroad, or might hereafter contract, in case the present taxes should not be sufficiently productive, which is now very well known to be the case. — Therefore either the direct taxes on land and personal property must be increased, in the form they now are, or a duty of five per cent. must be drawn through the medium of foreign articles, and the question is, which of the two will be the easiest, and most convenient to the community ? The collected wisdom of the United States assembled in Congress has viewed a duty of five per cent. as the easiest mode, and the several individual States have thought the same.

Those who have hitherto written against the five per cent. duty have never either stated the case, or confined themselves to the subject, but have run out into extravagant language and wild imagination, and constantly endeavuored to keep the country and the community at large from properly understanding the measure, the propriety, or the necessity of it.

In this place I think it necessary to remark, that the United States are successors to a large landed property, and as Rhode-Island has a share, in common with her sister States, so I hope she will never relinquish her right, or by any disagreement with them afford the least pretence for forfeiting it. But this property is not, in the present state of things, a practicable fund. To attempt to sell those lands at this time would be to give them away, neither are there purchasers for them at any price. Nay, it is our interest, at present, to prevent their being settled, because the settlement of them now, instead of enriching us, would draw off our inhabitants, and reduce both our force and our abilities.

But to return to my subject — We, I presume, are the only people in the world who have not taken in the aid of commerce, as a national fund. The landed interest, the stock and internal riches of the country, and almost every species of direct property, are subject, more or less, to some kind of taxation; while foreign imported articles, many of which are luxuries and trifles, have been suffered to pass without any tax at all, except that kind of tax which the importer lays on the community whenever he pleases, by raising the prices.

Whether this is good or ill policy, in a new country, whose first business is to settle and improve its lands, encourage agriculture, and restrain as much as possible the importation of foreign unnecessary articles, is a matter which I leave to the impartiality and honest judgment of every class of men. I am no enemy to genteel or fashionable dress, or to the moderate enjoyment of those articles of indulgence we are furnished with from abroad; but they ought to bear their proportion of the public expence as well as the soil we live on, and not be solely consigned as a revenue to the persons who import them, or the foreigners who bring them.

It is a matter which ought to strike Britain with forcible conviction, when she learns that we have the whole fund of commerce yet untouched. We have all that to begin upon which she has already exhausted; and so far as the debate may serve to explain to her our hitherto reserved funds and resources, I am the less concerned that it began.

How we came to leave so practicable and valuable a fund so long dormant, contrary to the custom and experience of all other nations, will, I believe, be best understood by the following observation:

Our non-importation agreement had exhausted us of almost every kind of supplies, and it was then necessary to hasten and encourage importations from all countries, except England, by every possible means. The then state of our commerce, therefore, permitted those indulgences, which, in any other case, would have been nationally improper. We suffered the produce and manufactures of other countries to be sold in America without duty, whereas none of our exports from America can enjoy the same privilege there; and thus having got into the habit of doing a thing from necessity, we have continued it to an impropriety.

This part of my argument naturally brings me to offer a remark on the five per cent duty. as a regulation of commerce.

Commerce is not the local property of any State, any more than it is the local property of any person, unless it can be proved, that such a State neither buys nor sells out of its own dominions. But as the commerce of every State is made up out of the produce and consumption of other States, as well as its own, therefore its regulation and protection can only be under the confederated patronage of all the States.

Besides, the European world, or any place we may trade to, knows us only through our national sovereignty, as UNITED STATES. Any infringement on our rights of commerce must be lodged before the United States, and every redress for any such injury must come to us through that line of sovereignty; consequently the regulation of it must reside in the same power.

The United States are likewise accountable to foreign powers for all misconduct committed under their flag; and as it is their flag which privileges our commerce abroad, and on the seas, it cannot therefore be expected, that the United States should be thus accountable on the one hand, and afford protection on the other, to all the rights of commerce, without receiving an aid and assistance from it.

I come now to consider a very striking injury that would accrue to Rhode-Island, by not coming into the measure with the rest of the States.

The fidelity, patriotism, and well-affected disposition of Rhode-Island, has never been made the least question of; neither does her present dissent proceed from any source of that kind, but from a misrepresentation of it on some part, and a misconception of it on another.

In the course of the debate she has taken up an idea, warranted by the articles of confederation, that each State has a prerogative to furnish its quota by such means as best suits its conveniency, and in this she is right. But the mistake is, that the five per cent. duty is not of the nature of a quota, and that for the reason I have already mentioned, namely, that trade is not local property, but is diffused over and promiscuously drawn from all parts, beyond as well as within the State. Neither is she called upon, in the character of an individual State, for a particular thing limited like direct property, within her own jurisdiction only, but in her united character, to concur in a measure common to all the States, and yet the particular property of none.

But for the purpose of exemplifying this part of the argument, I will suppose her left out of the five per cent duty, and that she furnished a supply into the treasury, by laying on some new taxes in the room of it. The consequence to her in this case as a community would be, that, to avoid the five per cent duty, she would at least have to pay to the amount of ten per cent. For the prices of foreign articles would, by the imperceptible management of trade, get up to the same price in Rhode-Island as they would be at in Boston, or other places where the duty was paid, and consequently would come as dear to the consumer as if they had undergone the duty; and yet the same consumer would have his part to pay in the additional tax laid on in the lieu the five per cent. And thus an exemption from the duty would operate as a bounty, or an additional profit of the five per cent. to the merchant only, and a double tax to the community.

Perhaps it is a circumstance worthy of remarking, that in all cases where a union of conduct and disposition is necessary, nothing can be gained and much may be lost by disagreement. The United States constitute one extended family, one imperial Commonwealth, the greatest and most equal in its rights and government of any ever known in the world: And while its principles permit the free exercise of debate, its manners ought to restrain every licentious abuse of it.

In offering the foregoing remarks, and those contained in my former letters, I have kept strictly to the point in question, without involving it with subjects foreign to the purpose, or treating it with wild and overheated language. All that is necessary, in a case like this, is calm discussion, and a disposition to agree and be understood. — That measures and subjects do not strike every mind alike — that the necessity of them is not always equally known — and that, in a situation so remote as the several parts of the United States are from each other, some misconception may arise, is a circumstance we may naturally expect; but as our interest, like our object, is a united one, there can be no measure which is to operate equally over all, in matters common to all, that can, on a just consideration, be supposed to affect one more than another.

But if such a supposition could any way take place, it would apply to the merchants of Philadelphia, because it is the greatest seat of commerce, and extends it into parts of several other States. But they, convinced of its justice, necessity and true policy, have been among the promoters of the measure; and so likewise, on a just reflection, will be those of Rhode-Island; and the country interest can adopt no other measure with equal ease. (2)

A Friend to RHODE-ISLAND and the Union.

January 1, 1783.

Footnote:

1. The letter which I refer to, to Sir William Pepperil, has been seen by the Delegates of Rhode-Island, now in Congress; for it fell into my hands, and I sent it there. And those gentlemen know full as well as I do, if they will confess it, that the hope of the enemy is fed up, by every imprudent dispute and inflammatory publication of ours, respecting revenue and supplies.
2. The pieces to which these letters are more particularly intended as an answer, were published in one of the Philadelphia news-papers, by a gentleman from Rhode-Island, under the style of “A Citizen of Rhode-Island,” and the last of his pieces was signed “A Countryman”; that is, they were began under one name, and ended under another. In the State of Rhode-Island they were contained in one publication, under the signature of “A Countryman.”

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LETTER IV

ON THE FIVE PER CENT. DUTY

On the decline of the paper currency, either the United States must have sunk with it, or more solid revenues must have been established in its room. The wisdom and patriotism of America chose the latter.

There was at this time a debt due in Europe for money, arms, ammunition, and other military stores, and likewise considerable sums due to individuals in America; and Congress had at once two very difficult and distressing pieces of business on their hands. The one was to provide means for the current service of the year, and the support of the army — and the other was for maintaining public credit, by at least a just discharge of the interest due abroad and at home.

To have put both those burthens on the landed interest, the rental of houses, and other direct property of the country, and to have left commerce totally out of the question, would have been the height of ill policy, and the most consummate injustice.

Congress, therefore, considering the several interests of their constituents, as well as the united interest of the States, divided the burthens, and apportioned out the sum of eight million of dollars on the several States, for the current service of each year, and proposed a duty of five per cent. on imported goods for the other service, that is, for discharging the public debt, and supporting national honor and credit.

It requires nothing but plain honesty, and calm and candid thinking, to judge of the propriety and equity of those measures. But the opposition to the five per cent. duty, from whatever quarter or with whatever design it began, has a tendency to overset the justice of Congress, and to throw both of the burthens upon the landed interest, and the direct property of the community, and to draw the neck of commerce compleatly out from every share and portion of the public difficulty.

I have no inclination to ascribe this conduct to selfishness in the persons who support it, or to a want of feeling in them for those on whom the burthen must directly fall, if put into any other channel; but it certainly has not a generous appearance, neither can it add any thing to a fair reputation. The landed interest and the rental of houses have already their share of direct taxes, but commerce has contributed nothing; and we are the only people in the world who have for so long acted with this flagrant partiality.

If we view this matter in a national light, it will appear with very striking marks of ill policy. For by laying no duty on foreign imports, we permit every foreign merchant or adventurer to enjoy the trade of America duty-free and at our expense — while every article of ours, sent from hence, must pay a duty to the country he comes from. And Congress, on whom the regulation of commerce devolves, and who are the guardians of its rights, would not have acted with national justice to have permitted any longer such an inequality.

But as national matters do not always strike with such immediate force as those in which men are more individually concerned, I shall proceed to examine further into the consequences which would accrue to Rhode-Island by not adopting the measure.

She must break off trade with the rest of the States, or, what is equal thereto, they must break off trade with her; for it never can be supposed that any one State is to enjoy an advantage, at the injury of the rest, or that the fair trader in other States, who has legally contributed towards discharging the public debt, is, contrary to the principle of the union, and the faith of the confederation, to have his interest undermined by those who had not. Whether it can answer the purpose of Rhode-Island, as a State, to place herself in so disagreeable a point of contention with her neighbours, she is to determine. To trade with them on such a footing of inequality, she can have neither right nor pretension to. To desire it would be ungenerous — to attempt it would be unjust. And as it could not fail to produce disagreeable consequences, it might in the end be fatal to her happiness. There may be those who wish it — it is my wish to prevent it.

The thing required of her is only to agree with the rest. They ask nothing of her, they request nothing from her, more than what they lay on themselves. She has a voice in the union equal to the most powerful State in it. She participates alike with them in every right and privilege which they enjoy; and though her service can be but small, yet that smallness ranks her equally with a greater.

But the principal error in her politics arises from her not having duly considered the case. Why do not Congress (say some of her citizens) call on us for our quota?

I have already remarked (in my third letter) that the five per cent. duty is not of the nature of a quota, because commerce is not local property, but belongs to all the citizens of America, without distinction of place or State. The extent of the territory of any State, which sets limits to taxes raised as a quota, does not set limits to its commerce, and consequently cannot be taken as a rule to determine what its quota of taxes raised upon commerce shall be. The dominion of commerce, if I may so express it, and the dominion of jurisdiction, are distinct things; neither can the quantity of the one be made a rule to know that of the other by. The persons whom we trade with, or the places that we trade to, though they are out of the State, are nevertheless within the circle of its commerce, and of the same advantage to it as if the limits of the State extended over them.

When money is to be raised by direct taxes levied on direct property, the quota of the States may be ascertained, because the number of inhabitants and the value of that property can be known. But in cases where commerce is made the basis of a tax, the rule to quota out such a tax must be (if it be at all) according to the quantity of trade which each State carries on; and yet no more of the monies thus collected can be carried to her credit than what is supposed to be produced by her consumption; the remainder, be it little or much, belongs to the credit of some other States, being the produce of their consumption.

If any other rule than this were to be followed (except that of carrying the whole to the credit of all the States collectively) it would put it in the power of one State to tax another, and to pay its own quota out of a tax raised upon the rest. Surely Rhode-Island cannot have a thought so selfish as this, or can suppose that others will not perceive it.

There is not an idea that can occur to Rhode-Island on this business, which has not occurred to Congress and to the States severally; yet both the one and the other have seen the propriety of rejecting them, and of adopting the general principle.

There is always some respect due to experience. Could Congress have devised an easier mode, they naturally would have done it; as well for their own sakes, who must individually pay their part of the tax, as for the sake of their constituents. Their collected situation must enable them to know more than any individual State can know. They see over the whole, and in behalf of the whole. They are best acquainted with the difficulties the United States are under. They hear the cries of the army, the claims of creditors, and the demands of foreign countries for the supplies they have trusted us with, and the money they have lent us. He who sits at home, and enjoys his commerce or his possessions, or those who have only the local concerns of any one State to rectify their minds, know but little, and feel still less, of the weight that presses those who must undergo it all. The States individually always find money enough for their civil departments, even at the injury of their public quota. But the great one thing needful, and that which should be their highest honor, and is the corner-stone of their happiness, seems to them like something afar off, too much neglected, and in part forgotten.

Can nothing but misfortune awaken us? Must adversity alone be the minister of exertion? Or must we forever be tossed from uncertainty to uncertainty, by trusting every thing to the moment of distress? The fairest prospects may fail, and the best calculated system of finance become unproductive of its end, if left to the caprice of temper and self interest.

I would not wish to throw out a thought that might offend. But knowing, as I well know, what the difficult circumstances of the States are, I am justified in saying, that more injury has arisen to the United States, by the conduct of Rhode-Island in this instance, than lies in her power to repair.

It was my design in this letter to have shown that the five per cent duty. when compared with any other mode, is not only the easiest and most convenient, but, when compared with the general good and interest of all the States, is the only one that can be adopted; but as this would extend my present letter to an inconvenient length, I shall refer this part of the subject to my next.

A Friend to RHODE-ISLAND and the Union.

January 9, 1783.

P. S. In the third letter, instead of “the five per cent. duty is part of the plan of finances adopted about a year ago,” read two years ago. — The reflection which naturally occurs from this length of time, must point out to Rhode-Island the incumbrance which has arisen to the general cause and interest, by so long a dissent from the measure.

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LETTER V

On the FIVE per CENT. DUTY.

Addressed to such of the Citizens of the State of Rhode-Island as have opposed the Measure.

Whatever mischiefs may arise to the cause, or whatever blemishes may fall on the character of America, by not carrying the five per cent. duty into practice, can never be ascribed to those who are advocates for the measure. Should the war not be prosecuted with the vigour necessary for our defence; should our credit fail in Europe to procure further supplies of money; or, should the terms of a peace fall short of the expectations of the States, let those who are opposers of the duty, and are thereby disabling Congress from performing the service expected from them, be accountable. It is my pleasure to reflect, and it will be to my reputation to have it known, that convinced as I am of the rectitude, I am likewise an advocate for the five per cent. duty. — My reasons for this conviction and for this conduct are as follow:

The States, either unitedly or severally, have a moral as well as a sovereign character to support. Their reputation for punctuality and integrity ought to stand as high as their reputation for liberty. To be free is a happiness — but to be JUST is an honor, if that can be called an honor which is only a duty.

He who means to be punctual, will avoid even the appearance of being suspected to be otherwise: But those trifling cavils, and unfair representations, concerning the mode of paying our debts, will be interpreted into dishonor, and become productive of consequences injurious to our prosperity.

Though the cause of America is the most honorable that man ever engaged in, I am not so dazzled by it as not to perceive the faults that are twisting themselves round it, and unnaturally claiming kindred with it. The pretences which are set up for not complying with the five per cent. duty are as remote from the purpose for which the five per cent. duty is to be raised, and to which it is to be applied, as darkness is from light.

I do not, neither shall I, rest the case upon elegance of language, or forcible expression. I mean to state it with all the plainness of conversation, and put the merits of it without a gloss.

“If we pass the act (say the objectors) Congress will have it in their power to keep a standing army, and support a number of pensioners.” — To which I reply,

That when an objection cannot be made formidable, there is some policy in trying to make it frightful; and to substitute the yell and the war-whoop, in the place of reason, argument and good order.

This objection may and naturally will have an effect to throw the whole burden of taxes upon the farmer, and upon every class of men except the merchant, and to draw the neck of commerce completely out from every share and portion of the public difficulty; but there is not a man in America, who will exercise his natural reason, that cannot see through its fallacy, or into its effects.

The five per cent. duty was proposed as a matter of aid and ease to the present mode of taxation. The monies arising from it are to be applied towards discharging the debts which America has contracted, or may contract, for her necessary defence, and which must be paid in one mode or another.

Is it right, then, or is it wrong, that commerce, which is one of the national funds in every other country in the world, should contribute nothing towards the public expences in this; and that every supply should be drawn through, and every burden thrown upon, the direct property of the community? Or, in other words, that commerce, which is more profitable to those who are employed in it than the best farm in the State of Rhode-Island is to him who works it, should go free of every duty?

Whether the opposers to the five per cent. will say yes or no to these questions, I am not anxious to know. They may be privately desirous that their commerce should escape free of all taxation, but they will not be so hardy, neither will they risk their popularity, in saying so.

Let the question be asked in any mixt multitude of the people, or in any assembly of representatives — whether commerce ought to be taken in as one of the national funds towards discharging or defraying the expences of the war? and every man must, from self-conviction, answer yes.

But the objectors to the measure, not choosing to begin the question where it ought to be begun, have formed themselves into an ambuscade to attack it in disguise. And this ambuscade consists originally of about ten or a dozen merchants, who have a self-interest in the matter, and who, with a very profitable trade (occasioned by raising cent. per cent. and in some instances a thousand per cent. and more, upon their goods) pay very little taxes in proportion thereto, when compared with other inhabitants of the State — and who likewise, by their present opposition, are drawing themselves away from the common burthens of the country, and throwing them upon the shoulders of others. And this, forsooth, they call patriotism.

I speak now with the more freedom, because there is a probability that the deception will succeed. But the instant that any other mode of paying the public debt is proposed, in the lieu of the five per cent. the people of the State of Rhode-Island will then see who have been their friends, and who have not.

To favour the opposition of those gentlemen, and to keep the public from seeing into the design, the cry, I say, has been, that if the act is passed Congress will have it in their power to keep a standing army, and support a number of pensioners.

Be ashamed, gentlemen, to put off the payment of your just debts, the payment of your suffering army, and the support of your national honor, upon such illiberal and unbelieved pretences; and be generous enough to reflect, that the consequences of your opposition tend to throw the burthen on the shoulders of your neighbours, both in town and country, already more taxed in proportion than you are. Compare your situation, as merchants, with the circumstances of thousands round you; and then ask your conscience whether your conduct is right.

But I will answer all your invented fears about pensioners, &c. by an appeal to your own sagacity.

I have too high an opinion of your attachment to your own interest, and of your ideas of liberty and rights, to suppose that you ever could be so duped as to suffer it; and the instant you had any just reason to believe it, which now you have not, it would be your duty to prevent it. But at present you are only called upon to pay your just debts, and support your national faith; and until you do that you ought to be silent. Perform your own duty first, and then you will have right to make other people perform theirs.

There is one more remark respecting commerce which is well worth attending to, because it shews the superior advantages which that branch enjoys over every other interest in the country.

Commerce has not only not been taken in as one of the national funds of taxation for the support of the war, but it has got rid of the taxes which it used to pay before the war. The burthens have increased upon land, and decreased upon trade, which is a policy not justifiable on any comparative principle. And Congress have been the poor man’s friend in dividing the burthen.

There used to be a duty on wines, but now the merchant drinks it duty-free; yet a man cannot drink cider without a tax, because the orchard that produces it is taxable. Neither can he eat or wear any thing, produced from the soil of America, that does not contribute something to the public expences, because the soil that produces it is taxable property. But a merchant eats or wears any thing imported from abroad, free of taxes. I wish all those who are at the head of this opposition in the State of Rhode-Island, and who are building up a false popularity, by censuring Congress, would act as honestly a Congress have done, and learn to feel for others as well as for themselves. — Certainly he, who, not relishing the native liquor of his country, can indulge himself in foreign wines, or can afford to wear the fineries of foreign manufacture, is as proper an object of taxation as he who works a cider-press, or keeps a cow, or tills a few acres of land. — And on these, and many other similar principles, both for the sake of the justice due to suffering creditors, and a suffering army, and for the purpose of equalizing the public expences, I am an advocate for the five per cent. duty.

I have never yet made, and I hope I never shall make, it the least point of consideration, whether a thing is popular or unpopular, but whether it is right or wrong.

That which is right will become popular, and that which is wrong will soon lose its temporary popularity, and sink into disgrace. — There is one gentleman who has raised all his present fame upon his opposition to the measure, and he has trudged laboriously in the service of those who encouraged him; but I will apply to him a simile I once applied to another person, and whose fate verified my prediction — that as he rose like a rocket, he would fall like the stick.

Had the enemy succeeded in conquering America, the taxes upon commerce would have been an amazing deal more than five per cent. The conquered could not have expected to have been better off than the conquerors; and the most favorable terms that could have been looked for, would have been to pay no more taxes than what the people of England pay. As a specimen of what those are, I shall produce two or three instances. I have quoted them from Burn’s Justice of the Peace, a book which is in several gentlemen’s hands in this country, and likewise in Providence.

The duty on West-India coffee is one shilling and nine-pence sterling a pound weight; and on Turkey coffee, two shillings and nine-pence sterling a pound, which is upwards of forty per cent.

The duty on tea, over and above the custom-house duty, is one shilling sterling a pound, and five and twenty per cent, besides, which makes the duty on common bohea tea more than sixty per cent. and on fine teas upwards of forty per cent.

The duty on cocoa-nuts is ten shillings sterling a hundred weight; and when made into chocolate, is two shillings and three-pence a pound weight more, which makes the duty upwards of fifty per cent.

The duty on single-brandy and rum, or spirits, is four shillings and four-pence sterling a gallon; and on double-brandy, or rum, eight shillings and eight-pence sterling a gallon.

The duty on salt, either made at home or imported, is more than six times its first price.

When we seriously consider those things, and compare the present state of commerce, free of all taxes, with what must have been its fate if the enemy had succeeded, and likewise compare the situation of the merchant with the general state of the country, there is something in their opposition which is ungenerous and ungrateful. And instead of using and propagating such various arts and deceptions, to throw the five per cent. duty off, they would have appeared with more honor, and the event will prove it so, had they voluntarily proposed to have had it laid on, as an ease and aid to the present mode of taxation. And I shall conclude this piece by drawing up an address for them, which will shew what they ought to have done, instead of what they have done, viz.

WE, the merchants of the State of Rhode-Island, taking into our serious consideration the enormous burthens which our commerce was threatened with by the enemy, and the happy deliverance it has been blest with through the noble exertions of the United States — and considering, at the same time, that no part of it is taxed, towards defraying the public expence, and that the burthens of the war fall not in sufficient proportion on us,

Do, therefore, unanimously propose and recommend to the United States assembled in Congress, that a duty, not less than five per cent. be laid on all imported articles; and that the monies arising therefrom be applied towards discharging the debts which this country has or may contract, at home or abroad, for her necessary defence.

And we do most solemnly pledge our faith and honor, and the word and character of gentlemen, that we, disdaining and abhorring every illicit practice in trade, and detesting, as we ought to do, the mean and ruinous practice of smuggling, by which the fair trader is basely injured, and the country defrauded, will break off all dealings and connexion with any person or persons, who we shall discover to be guilty of them, or any of them, as aforesaid.

Signed by unanimous consent,

A. B. Chairman.

A proceeding of this kind, gentlemen, would have done you honor, and you may yet lament that you did not furnish the opportunity.

A Friend to RHODE-ISLAND and the Union.

January 16, 1783

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LETTER VI

On the FIVE per CENT. DUTY

He that has a turn for public business and integrity to go through it, untempted by interest, and unawed by party, must likewise sit down with the calm determination of putting up with the mistakes, petulance and prejudices of mankind.

As I am not cramped by self-interest in viewing a public measure, it naturally presents itself to me without fetters; and my judgment, such as it is, being left free, makes its determination without partiality. The merchant and the farmer are persons alike to me, and all places in America nearly the same. It is the general good, the happiness of the whole, that has ever been my object. Neither is there any Delegate that now is, or ever was in Congress, from the State of Rhode-Island, or elsewhere, who can say that the author of these letters ever sought from any man, or body of men, any place, office, recompence or reward, on any occasion, for himself. — I have had the happiness of serving mankind, and the honor of doing it freely.

If, then, any of the intimations in the paper of last week, respecting “mercenary writers,” had the least allusion to me, the author of them is most unfortunate in his application; neither is it necessary for me to disown them, because the voice of the country will do it for me: And as it is impossible to be wounded by a wasp that never had the power of stinging, it would be folly indeed to be discomposed at the buzzing of a harmless insect.

When I mentioned the metaphor of the rocket and the stick, I left the application to be made by others; and if any gentleman has applied it to himself, it is a confession that the metaphor fits him.

But to return to the subject of the five per cent. duty:

I cannot help viewing the clamour that has been raised against this measure, as arising, in some instances, from selfishness, and, in others, from a false idea of patriotism.

The gentlemen who are at the head of the opposition in this State, are those who are in the mercantile line. — To give their opposition an air of patriotism, they say, “Why do not Congress call on us for a quota? — We are willing to raise it, but we will not consent to a five per cent duty.”

All this sounds mighty fine. But do not those gentlemen know, that of the annual quota, called for last year, there has not been a quarter part of it paid in, perhaps not above a sixth or an eighth, even in this State? And yet those gentlemen are exceedingly generous in proposing to raise more money by the same mode of taxation, or any other mode, provided that their commerce goes duty-free.

We are certainly the most wise or the most foolish people in the world, not to take in commerce as one of the funds of taxation. We are now doing what no other country in the world does, and what no other country on earth can long afford to do; for we are, in the first place, giving encouragement to the commerce of foreign countries at the risk of our own; and, in the second place, we are raising all our taxes on the necessaries of life, and suffering the luxuries of it to go free.

I am strongly persuaded, that the gentlemen who are in opposition to the measure are themselves convinced that the measure is right, because in their arguments they are continually flying off from the point, like sparks from a rocket, and drawing the eye of the beholder from the ground he stands upon.

The proper point or question before the public is, whether commerce ought to be taken in as one of the national funds?

When this point or question is settled in the affirmative, the next will be, which is the most just and equitable way of doing it? And,

Thirdly, which will be the most effectual method of securing the application of the monies so raised to the purpose for which they are intended?

These are the proper, natural and political questions upon the measure, and the only ones into which it can be divided. But the opposers, instead of keeping to these points, and beginning, as they ought to have done, with the first of them, have filled the papers of this State with wild declamation, idle and frothy rhapsody, foreign to the subject, and calculated only to bewilder and perplex, and prevent the measure being understood.

A long piece in the Providence Gazette of last week, signed A. C. has not a single line in it to the purpose; but, like all the rest on the same side, is contrived to shun the debate, by fomenting an uproar.

I have now, by stating the several parts of the question, put, as I conceive, the whole matter into a clear and intelligible train of being understood; and until those points are adjusted, every other method of treating the subject is useless. To which I may justly add, that the manner in which the gentlemen of the opposition have hitherto conducted their publications, serves only to unhinge the public mind, even in their own State, from every obligation of civil and moral society, and from all the necessary duties of good government; and to promote, a profligacy, that may in time think all property common, and fall, when too late to prevent it, on their own heads. — The transition from disobedience to disorder is easy and rapid; and as the richest men now in the State of Rhode-Island are making tools of the poorest, I cannot help thinking but that the avarice of the former is trying a dangerous experiment: For the man who will say that he will enrich himself by smuggling, cuts asunder the laws that are to protect him, and exposes himself to a second plunder.

As I intend this to be my last publication in the State of Rhode-Island, I shall conclude it with such circumstances as may be an answer to any present or future remarks on the part I have taken.

I am not only convinced that the conduct of Rhode-Island is wrong, in her opposition to the five per cent. duty, but I am likewise persuaded that it will precipitate her into difficulties she does not at present foresee.

My design in taking the matter up was as much out of kindness to her, as to promote the general good of America. There may be those, in other States, who are privately urging her on, and putting her, in this instance, on the forlorn hope of disgrace, to avoid the reproach themselves: — But the part I have acted towards her has been open, friendly, and sincere.

In my personal acquaintance, in this State, I have scarcely met with a man, who was in the opposition to the measure, that did not confess to me, in the course of conversation, that commerce ought to be taken in as one of the funds for defraying the expenses of the war; and I have met with numbers who are strong advocates for it.

I have likewise heard a great deal of the angry dislike of few men, whose niggardly souls, governed only by the hope of the high price which their next or present cargoes may bring, have been throwing out intimations that my publications on this subject ought to be stopped in Rhode Island; but I have never met with any of them, or with any other person in the State, who did not pay me respect when he met me. Why any man should say one thing, and act another, or why he should endeavour to throw a blot on my reputation in the Providence news-paper, and yet show every possible civility to my face, I leave to those who can act a double part to explain.

But to show those persons that I am not, like themselves, governed by self-interest and narrow thinking, I shall, for once in my lifetime, make free with the correspondence of my friends — men whose characters the persons in opposition will never imitate, and who personally and intimately knew me in various and trying situations. Neither could I take this liberty with the dead, or with the living, or reconcile it to my feelings, were it not on a public question, wherein the interest of the country and not of myself is concerned.

The writers in the Providence paper of last week, with a view of keeping up the bubble, fraud and avarice, of the opposition, held out that I was a mercenary writer. They may call me so a thousand times over, if they please, and when they have done, they may sit down in shame and disgrace. Even Mr. Howell, who is now in Providence, must be a witness to my integrity. But I will produce much higher authorities than Mr. Howell.

For this purpose I have put into the Printer’s hands two letters, the one from a dear and intimate friend of mine, and of mankind, whose greatness of soul has laid his person in the dust, Col. LAURENS, whom I accompanied to France, to procure money for America. The other from Major-General GREENE, to whom I was a volunteer aid-de-camp in the gloomy times of 1776, since which an uninterrupted friendship has subsisted between us.

The letter of Col. Laurens is in these words:

“Carolina, April 18, 1782.

“I received the letter wherein you mention my horse and trunk (the latter of which was left at Providence). The misery which the former has suffered at different times, by mismanagement, has greatly distressed me — he was wounded in service, and I am much attached to him — if he can be of any service to you, I entreat your acceptance of him, more especially if you will make use of him in bringing you to a country (Carolina) where you will be received with open arms, and all that affection and respect which our citizens are anxious to testify to the author of ____ _____ .

“Adieu. — I wish you to regard this part of America (Carolina) as your particular home — and every thing that I can command in it, to be in common between us.”

The letter from General Greene, among many other declarations of esteem and friendship, contains the following:

“Ashley-River (Carolina) Nov. 18, 1782.

“Many people wish to get you into this country. —

“I see you are determined to follow your genius, and not your fortune. I have always been in hopes that Congress would have made some handsome acknowledgment to you for your past services. — I must confess that I think you have been shamefully neglected; and that America is indebted to few characters more than to you. But as your passion leads to fame, and not to wealth, your mortification will be the less. — Your name, from your writings, will live immortal.

“At present my expenses are great; nevertheless, if you are not conveniently situated, I shall take a pride and pleasure in contributing all in my power to render your situation happy.”

It is needless for me to make any other remarks on these letters, than to say, that while I enjoy the high esteem and opinion of good and great men, I am perfectly unconcerned at the mean and snarling ingratitude of little incendiaries.

I now refer the reader to my five letters already published in the Providence Gazette, on the five per cent. duty, and more particularly to the last number.

A Friend to RHODE-ISLAND and the Union.

Providence, Jan. 31, 1783.

December 7, 1782

Second Street, PHILADELPHIA,

DEAR SIR:

Understanding that Congress has appointed a deputation to Rhode Island, I transmit a thought on that subject.

Considering how unwilling men are to recede from fixed opinions, and that they feel something like disgrace to being convinced, the way to obtain something is to give something. And as it is necessary in the present case, to cast about for every proposition, suppose R[hode] I[sland] was to pass the law for two years, providing that at the expiration of one year, a deputation from the legislatures of all the States were to meet, to confer on any inconveniences that the present state of the several acts might be encumbered with, and adjust a plan suitable to the circumstances of the whole.

The term of two years will carry our system beyond any present hope of the enemy, and the meeting or conference at the end of one year, may be a means of bringing about a more compact Union, and the States severally be eased in the meantime of every apprehension right or wrong.

THOMAS PAINE.

A LETTER TO THE ABBE RAYNAL on the Affairs of North-America. In which The Mistakes in the Abbe’s Account of the REVOLUTION IN AMERICA are Corrected and Cleared Up.

By Thomas Paine, M.A. of the University of Pennsylvania, and Author of a Tract “COMMON SENSE.”

M.DCC.LXXXII.

INTRODUCTION

A London translation of an original work in France, by the Abbe Raynal, which treats of the Revolution of North America, having been reprinted in Philadelphia and other parts of the continent, and as the distance at which the Abbe is placed from the American theater of war and politics, has occasioned him to mistake several facts, or, misconceive the causes or principles by which they were produced, the following tract, therefore, is published with a view to rectify them, and prevent even accidental errors from intermixing with history, under the sanction of time and silence.

The editor of the London edition has entitled it, “The Revolution of America, by the ABBE RAYNAL,” and the American printers have followed the example. But I have understood, and I believe my information just, that the piece, which is more properly reflections on the revolution, was unfairly purloined from the printer whom the Abbe employed, or from the manuscript copy, and is only part of a larger work then in the press, or preparing for it. The person who procured it, appears to have been an Englishman, and though, in an advertisement prefixed to the London edition, he has endeavoured to gloss over the embezzlement with professions of patriotism, and to soften it with high encomiums on the author, yet the action in any view in which it can be placed, is illiberal and unpardonable.

“In the course of his travels (says he), the translator happily succeeded in obtaining a copy of this exquisite little piece, which has not made its appearance from any press. He publishes a French edition, in favour of those who feel its eloquent reasoning more forcibly in its native language, at the same time with the following translation of it: in which he has been desirous, perhaps in vain, that all the warmth, the grace, the strength, the dignity of the original, should not be lost. And he flatters himself, that the indulgence of the illustrious historian will not be wanting to a man, who, of his own motion, has taken the liberty to give this composition to the public, only from a strong persuasion, that its momentous argument will be useful in a critical conjuncture, to that country which he loves with an ardor that can be exceeded only by the nobler flame, which burns in the bosom of the philanthropic author, for the freedom and happiness of all the countries upon earth.”

This plausibility of setting off a dishonourable action, may pass for patriotism and sound principles with those who do not enter into its demerits, and whose interest is not injured nor their happiness affected thereby. But it is more than probable, notwithstanding the declarations it contains, that the copy was obtained for the sake of profiting by the sale of a new and popular work, and that the professions are but a garb to the fraud.

It may with propriety be marked, that in all countries where literature is protected, and it never can flourish where it is not, the works of an author are his legal property; and to treat letters in any other light than this, is to banish them from the country, or strangle them in the birth. — The embezzlement from the Abbe Raynal, was, it is true, committed by one country upon another, and therefore shews no defect in the laws of either. But it is nevertheless a breach of civil manners and literary justice; neither can it be any apology, that because the countries are at war, literature shall be entitled to depradation.(1)

But the forestalling the Abbe’s publication by London editions, both in French and English, and thereby not only defrauding him and throwing an expensive publication on his hands by anticipating the sale, are only the smaller injuries which such conduct may occasion. A man’s opinions, whether written or in thought, are his own, until he pleases to publish them himself; and it is adding cruelty to injustice, to make him the author of what future reflection, or better information, might occasion him to suppress or amend. There are declarations and sentiments in the Abbe’s piece, which, for my own part, I did not expect to find, and such as himself, on a revisal, might have seen occasion to change; but the anticipated piracy effectually prevented his having the opportunity, and precipitated him into difficulties, which, had it not been for such ungenerous fraud, might not have happened.

This mode of making an author appear before his time, will appear still more ungenerous, when we consider how very few men there are in any country, who can at once, and without the aid of reflection and revisal, combine warm passions with a cool temper, and the full expansion of the imagination with the natural and necessary gravity of judgment, so as to be rightly balanced within themselves, and to make a reader feel, fancy, and understand justly at the same time. To call three powers of the mind into action at once, in a manner that neither shall interrupt, and that each shall aid and invigorate the other, is a talent very rarely possessed.

It often happens that the weight of an argument is lost by the wit of setting it off; or the judgment disordered by an intemperate irritation of the passions: yet a certain degree of animation must be felt by the writer, and raised in the reader, in order to interest the attention; and a sufficient scope given to the imagination, to enable it to create in the mind a sight of the persons, characters and circumstances of the subject; for without these, the judgment will feel little or no excitement to office, and its determinations will be cold, sluggish, and imperfect. But if either or both of the two former are raised too high, or heated too much, the judgment will be jostled from its seat, and the whole matter, however important in itself, will diminish into a pantomime of the mind, in which we create images that promote no other purpose than amusement.

The Abbe’s writings bear evident marks of that extension and rapidness of thinking and quickness of sensation, which of all others require revisal, and the more particularly so, when applied to the living characters of nations or individuals in a state of war. The least misinformation or misconception leads to some wrong conclusion, and an error believed, becomes the progenitor of others. — And, as the Abbe has suffered some inconveniences in France, by mistaking certain circumstances of the war, and the characters of the parties therein, it becomes some apology for him that those errors were precipitated into the world by the avarice of an ungenerous enemy.

LETTER TO THE ABBE RAYNAL on the Affairs of North-America.

To an author of such distinguished reputation as the Abbe Raynal, it might very well become me to apologize for the present undertaking; but, as to be right is the first wish of philosophy, and the first principle of history, he will, I presume, accept from me a declaration of my motives, which are those of doing justice, in preference to any complimental apology I might otherwise make. — The Abbe, in the course of his work, has, in some instances, extolled without a reason, and wounded without a cause. He has given fame where it was not deserved, and withheld it where it was justly due; and appears to be so frequently in and out of temper with his subjects and parties, that few or none of them are decisively and uniformly marked.

It is yet too soon to write the history of the revolution, and whoever attempts it precipitately, will unavoidably mistake characters and circumstances, and involve himself in error and difficulty. Things, like men, are seldom understood rightly at first sight. But the Abbe is wrong even in the foundation of his work; that is, he has misconceived and misstated the causes which produced the rupture between England and her then colonies, and which led on, step by step, unstudied and uncontrived on the part of America, to a revolution, which has engaged the attention, and affected the interest, of Europe.

To prove this, I shall bring forward a passage, which, though placed towards the latter part of the Abbe’s work, is more intimately connected with the beginning; and in which, speaking of the original cause of the dispute, he declares himself in the following manner:

“None (says he), of those energetic causes, which have produced so many revolutions upon the globe, existed in North America. Neither religion nor laws had there been outraged. The blood of martyrs or patriots had not there streamed from scaffolds. Morals had not there been insulted. Manners, customs, habits, no object dear to nations, had there been the sport of ridicule. Arbitrary power had not there torn any inhabitant from the arms of his family and friends, to drag him to a dreary dungeon. Public order had not been there inverted. The principles of administration had not been changed there; and the maxims of government had there always remained the same. The whole question was reduced to the knowing whether the mother country had, or had not, a right to lay, directly or indirectly, a slight tax upon the colonies.”

On this extraordinary passage, it may not be improper, in general terms, to remark, that none can feel like those who suffer; and that for a man to be a competent judge of the provocative, or as the Abbe stiles them, the energetic causes of the Revolution, he must have resided at the time in America.

The Abbe, in saying that the several particulars he has enumerated, did not exist in America, and neglecting to point out the particular period, in which he means they did not exist, reduces thereby his declaration to a nullity, by taking away all meaning from the passage.

They did not exist in 1763, and they all existed before 1776; consequently as there was a time when they did not, and another, when they did exist, the time when constitutes the essence of the fact, and not to give it, is to withhold the only evidence, which proves the declaration right or wrong, and on which it must stand or fall. But the declaration, as it now appears, unaccompanied by time, has an effect in holding out to the world, that there was no real cause for the revolution, because it denies the existence of all those causes, which are supposed to be justifiable, and which the Abbe stiles energetic.

I confess myself exceedingly at a loss to find out the time to which the Abbe alludes; because, in another part of the work, in speaking of the stamp act, which was passed in 1764, he stiles it “An usurpation of the Americans’ most precious and sacred rights.” Consequently he here admits the most energetic of all causes, that is, an usurpation of their most precious and sacred rights, to have existed in America twelve years before the declaration of independence, and ten years before the breaking out of hostilities. — The time, therefore, in which the paragraph is true, must be antecedent to the stamp act, but as at that time there was no revolution nor any idea of one, it consequently applies without a meaning; and as it cannot, on the Abbe’s own principle, be applied to any time after the stamp act, it is therefore a wandering, solitary paragraph connected with nothing and at variance with every thing.

The stamp act, it is true, was repealed in two years after it was passed, but it was immediately followed by one of infinitely more mischievous magnitude, I mean the declaratory act, which asserted the right, as it was stiled, of the British Parliament, “to bind America in all cases whatsoever.”

If then the stamp act was an usurpation of the Americans most precious and sacred rights, the declaratory act left them no rights at all; and contained the full grown seeds of the most despotic government ever exercised in the world. It placed America not only in the lowest, but in the basest state of vassalage; because it demanded an unconditional submission in every thing, or as the act expressed it, in all cases whatsoever: And what renders this act the more offensive, is, that it appears to have been passed as an act of mercy; truly then may it be said, that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.

All the original charters from the Crown of England, under the faith of which the adventurers from the Old World settled in the new, were by this act displaced from their foundations; because, contrary to the nature of them, which was that of a compact, they were now made subject to repeal or alteration at the mere will of one party only. The whole condition of America was thus put into the hands of the Parliament or Ministry, without leaving to her the least right in any case whatsoever.

There is no despotism to which this iniquitous law did not extend; and though it might have been convenient in the execution of it, to have consulted manners and habits, the principle of the act made all tyranny legal. It stopt nowhere. It went to every thing. It took in with it the whole life of a man, or if I may so express it, an eternity of circumstances. It is the nature of law to require obedience, but this demanded servitude; and the condition of an American, under the operation of it, was not that of a subject, but a vassal. Tyranny has often been established without law and sometimes against it, but the history of mankind does not produce another instance, in which it has been established by law. It is an audacious outrage upon civil government, and cannot be too much exposed, in order to be sufficiently detested.

Neither could it be said after this, that the legislature of that country any longer made laws for this, but that it gave out commands; for wherein differed an act of Parliament constructed on this principle, and operating in this manner, over an unrepresented people, from the orders of a military establishment?

The Parliament of England, with respect to America, was not septennial but perpetual. It appeared to the latter a body always in being. Its election or expiration were to her the same as if its members succeeded by inheritance, or went out by death, or lived for ever, or were appointed to it as a matter of office. Therefore, for the people of England to have any just conception of the mind of America, respecting this extraordinary act, they must suppose all election and expiration in that country to cease for ever, and the present Parliament, its heirs, &c. to be perpetual; in this case, I ask, what would the most clamorous of them think, were an act to be passed, declaring the right of such a Parliament to bind them in all cases whatsoever? For this word whatsoever would go as effectually to their Magna Charta, Bill of Rights, trial by juries, &c. as it went to the charters and forms of government in America.

I am persuaded, that the Gentleman to whom I address these remarks, will not, after the passing of this act, say, “that the principles of administration had not been changed in America, and that the maxims of government had there been always the same.” For here is, in principle, a total overthrow of the whole; and not a subversion only, but an annihilation of the foundation of liberty, and absolute domination established in its stead.

The Abbe likewise states the case exceedingly wrong and injuriously, when he says, “that the whole question was reduced to the knowing whether the mother country had, or had not, a right to lay, directly or indirectly, a slight tax upon the colonies.” — This was not the whole of the question; neither was the quantity of the tax the object, either to the Ministry or to the Americans. It was the principle, of which the tax made but a part, and the quantity still less, that formed the ground on which America opposed.

The tax on tea, which is the tax here alluded to, was neither more nor less than an experiment to establish the practice of a declaratory law upon; modeled into the more fashionable phrase of the universal supremacy of Parliament. For until this time the declaratory law had lain dormant, and the framers of it had contented themselves with barely declaring an opinion.

Therefore the whole question with America, in the opening of the dispute, was, Shall we be bound in all cases whatsoever by the British parliament, or shall we not? For submission to the tea or tax act implied an acknowledgment of the declaratory act, or, in other words, of the universal supremacy of Parliament, which, as they never intended to do, it was necessary they should oppose it, in its first stage of execution.

It is probable, the Abbe has been led into this mistake by perusing detached pieces in some of the American news-papers; for, in a case where all were interested, every one had a right to give his opinion; and there were many, who, with the best intentions, did not chuse the best, nor indeed the true ground, to defend their cause upon. They felt themselves right by a general impulse, without being able to separate, analyze, and arrange the parts.

I am somewhat unwilling to examine too minutely into the whole of this extraordinary passage of the Abbe, lest I should appear to treat it with severity; otherwise I could show that not a single declaration is justly founded: For instance, the reviving an obsolete act of the reign of Henry the eighth and fitting it to the Americans, by authority of which they were to be seized and brought from America to England, and there imprisoned and tried for any supposed offenses, was, in the worst sense of the words, to tear them, by the arbitrary power of Parliament, from the arms of their families and friends, and drag them not only to dreary but distant dungeons. Yet this act was contrived some years before the breaking out of hostilities. And again, though the blood of martyrs and patriots had not streamed on the scaffolds, it streamed in the streets, in the massacre of the inhabitants of Boston, by the British soldiery in the year 1770.

Had the Abbe said that the causes which produced the Revolution in America were originally different from those which produced revolutions in other parts of the globe, he had been right. Here the value and quality of liberty, the nature of government, and the dignity of man, were known and understood, and the attachment of the Americans to these principles produced the Revolution, as a natural and almost unavoidable consequence. They had no particular family to set up or pull down. Nothing of personality was incorporated with their cause. They started even-handed with each other, and went no faster into the several stages of it, than they were driven by the unrelenting and imperious conduct of Britain. Nay, in the last act, the declaration of independence, they had nearly been too late; for had it not been declared at the exact time it was, I see no period in their affairs since, in which it could have been declared with the same effect, and probably not at all.

But the object being formed before the reverse of fortune took place, that is, before the operations of the gloomy campaign of 1776, their honor, their interest, their every thing, called loudly on them to maintain it; and that glow of thought and energy of heart, which even a distant prospect of independence inspires, gave confidence to their hopes, and resolution to their conduct, which a state of dependence could never have reached. They looked forward to happier days and scenes of rest, and qualified the hardships of the campaign by contemplating the establishment of their new born system.

If, on the other hand, we take a review of what part Britain has acted, we shall find everything which ought to make a nation blush, The most vulgar abuse, accompanied by that species of haughtiness, which distinguishes the hero of a mob from the character of a gentleman; it was equally as much from her manners as from her injustice that she lost the colonies. By the latter she provoked their principles, by the former she wore out their temper; and it ought to be held out as an example to the world, to show, how necessary it is to conduct the business of government with civility. In short, other revolutions may have originated in caprice, or generated in ambition; but here, the most unoffending humility was tortured into rage, and the infancy of existence made to weep.

A union so extensive, continued and determined, suffering with patience and never in despair, could not have been produced by common causes. It must be something capable of reaching the whole soul of man and arming it with perpetual energy. It is in vain to look for precedents among the revolutions of former ages, to find out, by comparison, the causes of this. The spring, the progress, the object, the consequences, nay, the men, their habits of thinking, and all the circumstances of the country, are different. Those of other nations are, in general, little more than the history of their quarrels. They are marked by no important character in the annals of events; mixed in the mass of general matters, they occupy but a common page; and while the chief of the successful partizans stepped into power, the plundered multitude sat down and sorrowed. Few, very few of them are accompanied with reformation, either in government or manners; many of them with the most consummate profligacy. Triumph on the one side and misery on the other were the only events. Pains, punishments, torture, and death were made the business of mankind, until compassion, the fairest associate of the heart, was driven from its place, and the eye, accustomed to continual cruelty, could behold it without offense.

But as the principles of the present Revolution differed from those which preceded it, so likewise did the conduct of America both in government and war. Neither the foul finger of disgrace nor the bloody hand of vengeance has hitherto put a blot upon her fame. Her victories have received lustre from a greatness of lenity; and her laws have been permitted to slumber, where they might justly be awakened to punish. War, so much the trade of the world, has here been only the business of necessity; and when the necessity shall cease, her very enemies must confess, that as she drew the sword in her just defense, she used it without cruelty, and sheathed it without revenge.

As it is not my design to extend these remarks to a history, I shall now take my leave of this passage of the Abbe, with an observation, which, until something unfolds itself to convince me otherwise, I cannot avoid believing to be true; — which is, that it was the fixed determination of the British Cabinet to quarrel with America at all events.

They (the members who composed the Cabinet) had no doubt of success, if they could once bring it to the issue of a battle; and they expected from a conquest, what they could neither propose with decency, nor hope for by negociation. The charters and constitutions of the colonies were become to them matters of offence, and their rapid progress in property and population were disgustingly beheld as the growing and natural means of independence. They saw no way to retain them long but by reducing them in time. A conquest would at once have made them both lords and landlords; and put them in the possession both of the revenue and the rental. The whole trouble of government would have ceased in a victory, and a final end put to remonstrance and debate. The experience of the stamp act had taught them how to quarrel with the advantages of cover and convenience, and they had nothing to do but to renew the scene, and put contention into motion. They hoped for a rebellion, and they made one. They expected a declaration of independence, and they were not disappointed. But after this, they looked for victory, and they obtained a defeat.

If this be taken as the generating cause of the contest, then is every part of the conduct of the British Ministry consistent from the commencement of the dispute, until the signing the Treaty of Paris, after which, conquest becoming doubtful, they retreated to negociation, and were again defeated.

Tho’ the Abbe possesses and displays great powers of genius, and is a master of stile and language, he seems not to pay equal attention to the office of an historian. His facts are coldly and carelessly stated. They neither inform the reader nor interest him. Many of them are erroneous, and most of them are defective and obscure. It is undoubtedly both an ornament and a useful addition to history, to accompany it with maxims and reflections. They afford likewise an agreeable change to the stile and a more diversified manner of expression; but it is absolutely necessary that the root from whence they spring, or the foundation on which they are raised, should be well attended to, which in this work is not. The Abbe hastens through his narrations as if he was glad to get from them, that he may enter the more copious field of eloquence and imagination.

The actions of Trenton and Princeton, in New-Jersey, in December 1776, and January following, on which the fate of America stood for a while trembling on the point of suspense, and from which the most important consequences followed, are comprised within a single paragraph, faintly conceived, and barren of character, circumstance and description.

“On the 25th of December,” (says the Abbe), “they (the Americans) crossed the Delaware, and fell accidentally upon Trenton, which was occupied by fifteen hundred of the twelve thousand Hessians, sold in so base a manner by their avaricious master, to the King of Great Britain. This corps was massacred, taken, or dispersed. Eight days after, three English regiments were in like manner driven from Princeton, but after having better supported their reputation than the foreign troops in their pay.”

This is all the account which is given of these interesting events. The Abbe has preceded them by two or three pages on the military operations of both armies, from the time of General Howe arriving before New-York from Halifax, and the vast reinforcements of British and foreign troops with Lord Howe from England. But in these, there is so much mistake, and so many omissions, that, to set them right, must be the business of a history and not of a letter.

The action of Long-Island is but barely hinted at, and the operations at the White Plains wholly omitted; as are likewise the attack and loss of fort Washington, with a garrison of about two thousand five hundred men, and the precipitate evacuation of Fort Lee, in consequence thereof; which losses were in a great measure the cause of the retreat through the Jersies to the Delaware, a distance of about ninety miles. Neither is the manner of the retreat described, which, from the season of the year, the nature of the country, the nearness of the two armies (sometimes within sight and shot of each other, for such a length of way) the rear of the one employed in pulling down bridges, and the van of the other in building them up, must necessarily be accompanied with many interesting circumstances.

It was a period of distresses. A crisis rather of danger than of hope. There is no description can do it justice; and even the actors in it, looking back upon the scene, are surprised how they got through; and at a loss to account for those powers of the mind and springs of animation, by which they withstood the force of accumulated misfortune.

It was expected, that the time for which the army was enlisted, would carry the campaign so far into the winter, that the severity of the season, and the consequent condition of the roads, would prevent any material operation of the enemy, until the new army could be raised for the next year. And I mention it, as a matter worthy of attention, by all future historians, that the movements of the American Army, until the attack of the Hessian post at Trenton, the 26th of December, are to be considered as operating to effect no other principal purpose than delay, and to wear away the campaign under all the disadvantages of an unequal force, with as little misfortune as possible.

But the loss of the garrison at fort Washington on the 16th of November, and the expiration of the time of a considerable part of the army, so early as the 30th of the same month, and which was to be followed by almost daily expirations afterwards, made retreat the only final expedient. To these circumstances may be added the forlorn and destitute condition of the few that remained; for the garrison of Fort Lee, which composed almost the whole of the retreat, had been obliged to abandon it so instantaneously, that every article of stores and baggage was left behind, and in this destitute condition, without tent or blanket, and without any other utensils to dress their provision, than what they procured by the way, they performed a march of about ninety miles, and had the address and management to prolong it to the space of nineteen days.

By this unexpected or rather unthought of turn of affairs, the country was in an instant surprised into confusion, and found an enemy within its bowels, without an army to oppose him. There were no succours to be had, but from the free-will offering of the inhabitants. All was choice, and every man reasoned for himself.

It was in this situation of affairs, equally calculated to confound or to inspire, that the gentleman, the merchant, the farmer, the tradesman and the laborer mutually turned from all the conveniences of home, to perform the duties of private soldiers, and undergo the severities of a winter campaign. The delay so judiciously contrived on the retreat, afforded time for the volunteer reinforcements to join General Washington on the Delaware.

The Abbe is likewise wrong in saying, that the American Army fell accidentally on Trenton. It was the very object for which General Washington crossed the Delaware in the dead of the night and in the midst of snow, storms, and ice; and which he immediately recrossed with his prisoners, as soon as he had accomplished his purpose. Neither was the intended enterprise a secret to the enemy, information having been sent of it by letter, from a British officer at Princeton, to Colonel Rolle, who commanded the Hessians at Trenton, which letter was afterwards found by the Americans. Nevertheless the post was completely surprised. A small circumstance, which had the appearance of mistake on the part of the Americans, led to a more capital and real mistake on the part of Rolle.

The case was this. A detachment of twenty or thirty Americans had been sent across the river, from a post a few miles above, by an officer unacquainted with the intended attack; these were met by a body of Hessians on the night to which the information pointed, which was Christmas night, and repulsed. Nothing further appearing, and the Hessians mistaking this for the advanced party, supposed the enterprise disconcerted, which at that time was not begun, and under this idea returned to their quarters; so that, what might have raised an alarm, and brought the Americans into an ambuscade, served to take off the force of an information, and promote the success of the enterprise. Soon after day-light, General Washington entered the town, and after a little opposition, made himself master of it, with upwards of nine hundred prisoners.

This combination of equivocal circumstances, falling within what the Abbe stiles, “the wide empire of chance,” would have afforded a fine field for thought, and I wish, for the sake of that elegance of reflection he is so capable of using, that he had known it.

But the action of Princeton was accompanied by a still greater embarrassment of matters, and followed by more extraordinary consequences. The Americans, by a happy stroke of generalship, in this instance, not only deranged and defeated all the plans of the British, in the intended moment of execution, but drew from their posts the enemy they were not able to drive, and obliged them to close the campaign. As the circumstance is a curiosity in war, and not well understood in Europe, I shall, as concisely as I can, relate the principal parts; they may serve to prevent future historians from error, and recover from forgetfulness a scene of magnificent fortitude.

Immediately after the surprize of the Hessians at Trenton, General Washington re-crossed the Delaware, which at this place is about three quarters of a mile over, and reassumed his former post on the Pennsylvania side. Trenton remained unoccupied, and the enemy were posted at Princeton, twelve miles distant, on the road toward New-York. The weather was now growing very severe, and as there were very few houses near the shore where General Washington had taken his station, the greatest part of his army remained out in the woods and fields. These, with some other circumstances, induced the recrossing the Delaware and taking possession of Trenton. It was undoubtedly a bold adventure, and carried with it the appearance of defiance, especially when we consider the panic-struck condition of the enemy on the loss of the Hessian post. But in order to give a just idea of the affair, it is necessary that I should describe the place.

Trenton is situated on a rising ground, about three quarters of a mile distant from the Delaware, on the eastern or Jersey side; and is cut into two divisions by a small creek or rivulet, sufficient to turn a mill which is on it, after which it empties itself at nearly right angles into the Delaware. The upper division which is that to the north east, contains about seventy or eighty houses, and the lower about forty or fifty. The ground on each side this creek, and on which the houses are, is likewise rising, and the two divisions present an agreeable prospect to each other, with the creek between, on which there is a small stone bridge of one arch.

Scarcely had General Washington taken post here, and before the several parties of militia, out on detachments, or on their way, could be collected, than the British, leaving behind them a strong garrison at Princeton, marched suddenly and entered Trenton at the upper or north east quarter. A party of the Americans skirmished with the advanced party of the British, to afford time for removing the store and baggage, and withdrawing over the bridge.

In a little time the British had possession of one half of the town, General Washington of the other; and the creek only separated the two armies. Nothing could be a more critical situation than this, and if ever the fate of America depended upon the event of a day, it was now. The Delaware was filling fast with large sheets of driving ice, and was impassable; of course no retreat into Pennsylvania could be effected, neither is it possible, in the face of an enemy, to pass a river of such extent. The roads were broken and rugged with the frost, and the main road was occupied by the enemy.

About four o’clock a party of the British approached the bridge, with a design to gain it, but were repulsed. They made no more attempts, though the creek itself is passable anywhere between the bridge and the Delaware. It runs in a rugged, natural made ditch, over which a person may pass with little difficulty, the stream being rapid and shallow. Evening was now coming on, and the British, believing they had all the advantages they could wish for, and that they could use them when they pleased, discontinued all further operations, and held themselves prepared to make the attack next morning.

But the next morning produced a scene as elegant as it was unexpected. The British were under arms and ready to march to action, when one of their light-horse from Princeton came furiously down the street, with an account that General Washington had that morning attacked and carried the British post at that place, and was proceeding on to seize the magazine at Brunswick; on which the British, who were then on the point of making an assault on the evacuated camp of the Americans, wheeled about, and in a fit of consternation marched for Princeton.

This retreat is one of those extraordinary circumstances, that in future ages may probably pass for fable. For it will with difficulty be believed, that two armies, on which such important consequences depended, should be crowded into so small a space as Trenton; and that the one, on the eve of an engagement, when every ear is supposed to be open, and every degree of watchfulness employed, should move completely from the ground, with all its stores, baggage and artillery, unknown and even unsuspected by the other. And so entirely were the British deceived, that when they heard the report of the cannon and small arms at Princeton, they supposed it to be thunder, though in the depth of winter.

General Washington, the better to cover and disguise his retreat from Trenton, had ordered a line of fires to be lighted up in front of his camp. These not only served to give an appearance of going to rest, and continuing that deception, but they effectually concealed from the British whatever was acting behind them, for flame can no more be seen through than a wall, and in this situation, it may with propriety be said, they became a pillar of fire to one army, and a pillar of cloud to the other. After this, by a circuitous march of about eighteen miles, the Americans reached Princeton early in the morning.

The number of prisoners taken was between two and three hundred, with which General Washington immediately set off. The van of the British Army from Trenton entered Princeton about an hour after the Americans had left it, who continuing their march for the remainder of the day, arrived in the evening at a convenient situation, wide of the main road to Brunswick, and about sixteen miles distant from Princeton. — But so wearied and exhausted were they, with the continual and unabated service and fatigue of two days and a night, from action to action, without shelter, and almost without refreshment, that the bare and frozen ground, with no other covering than the sky, became to them a place of comfortable rest. By these two events, and with but a little comparative force to accomplish them, the Americans closed with advantages a campaign, which, but a few days before, threatened the country with destruction. The British army, apprehensive for the safety of their magazines at Brunswick, eighteen miles distant, marched immediately for that place, where they arrived late in the evening, and from which they made no attempts to move, for nearly five months.

Having thus stated the principal outlines of these two most interesting actions, I shall now quit them, to put the Abbe right in his mistated account of the debt and paper money of America, wherein, speaking of these matters, he says:

“These ideal riches were rejected. The more the multiplication of them was urged by want, the greater did their depreciation grow. The Congress was indignant at the affront given to its money, and declared all those to be traitors to their country, who should not receive it as they would have received gold itself.

“Did not this body know, that prepossessions are no more to be controlled than feelings are? Did it not perceive that, in the present crisis, every rational man would be afraid of exposing his fortune? Did it not see, that at the beginning of a republic, it permitted to itself the exercise of such acts of despotism as are unknown even in the countries which are moulded to, and become familiar with, servitude and oppression? Could it pretend that it did not punish a want of confidence with the pains which would have been scarcely merited by revolt and treason? Of all this was the Congress well aware. But it had no choice of means. Its despised and despicable scraps of paper were actually thirty times below their original value, when more of them were ordered to be made. On the 13th of September, 1779, there was of this paper, amongst the public, to the amount of £35,544,155. The State owed moreover £8,385,356, without reckoning the particular debts of single provinces.”

In the above recited passages, the Abbe speaks as if the United States had contracted a debt of upwards of forty million pounds sterling, besides the debts of the individual States. After which, speaking of foreign trade with America, he says, that “those countries in Europe, which are truly commercial ones, knowing that North-America had been reduced to contract debts at the epoch even of her greatest prosperity, wisely thought that, in her present distress, she would be able to pay but very little, for what might be carried to her.”

I know it must be extremely difficult to make foreigners understand the nature and circumstances of our paper money, because there are natives, who do not understand it themselves. But with us its fate is now determined. Common consent has consigned it to rest with that kind of regard, which the long service of inanimate things insensibly obtains from mankind. Every stone in the bridge, that has carried us over, seems to have a claim upon our esteem. But this was a corner-stone, and its usefulness cannot be forgotten. There is something in a grateful mind, which extends itself even to things that can neither be benefited by regard, nor suffer by neglect; — But so it is; and almost every man is sensible of the effect.

But to return. The paper money, though issued from Congress under the name of dollars, did not come from that body always at that value. Those which were issued the first year, were equal to gold and silver. The second year less, the third still less, and so on, for nearly the space of five years; at the end of which, I imagine, that the whole value, at which Congress might pay away the several emissions, taking them together, was about ten or twelve million pounds sterling.

Now as it would have taken ten or twelve millions sterling of taxes to carry on the war for five years, and, as while this money was issuing and likewise depreciating down to nothing, there were none, or few valuable taxes paid; consequently the event to the public was the same, whether they sunk ten or twelve millions of expended money, by depreciation, or paid ten or twelve millions by taxation; for as they did not do both, and chose to do one, the matter which, in a general view, was indifferent. And therefore, what the Abbe supposes to be a debt, has now no existence; it having been paid, by everybody consenting to reduce, at his own expense, from the value of the bills continually passing among themselves, a sum, equal, nearly, to what the expense of the war was for five years.

Again. The paper money having now ceased, and the depreciation with it, and gold and silver supplied its place, the war will now be carried on by taxation, which will draw from the public a considerable less sum than what the depreciation drew; but as while they pay the former, they do not suffer the latter, and as when they suffered the latter, they did not pay the former, the thing will be nearly equal, with this moral advantage, that taxation occasions frugality and thought, and depreciation produces dissipation and carelessness.

And again. If a man’s portion of taxes comes to less than what he lost by the depreciation, it proves that the alteration is in his favor. If it comes to more, and he is justly assessed, it shows that he did not sustain his proper share of depreciation, because the one was as operatively his tax as the other.

It is true, that it never was intended, neither was it foreseen, that the debt contained in the paper currency should sink itself in this manner; but as, by the voluntary conduct of all and of everyone, it has arrived at this fate, the debt is paid by those who owed it. Perhaps nothing was ever so universally the act of a country as this. Government had no hand in it. Every man depreciated his own money by his own consent, for such was the effect, which the raising the nominal value of goods produced. But as by such reduction he sustained a loss equal to what he must have paid to sink it by taxation, therefore the line of justice is to consider his loss by the depreciation as his tax for that time, and not to tax him when the war is over, to make that money good in any other person’s hands, which became nothing in his own.

Again. The paper currency was issued for the express purpose of carrying on the war. It has performed that service, without any other material charge to the public, while it lasted. But to suppose, as some did, that, at the end of the war, it was to grow into gold or silver, or become equal thereto, was to suppose that we were to get two hundred millions of dollars by going to war, instead of paying the cost of carrying it on.

But if anything in the situation of America, as to her currency or her circumstances, yet remains not understood, then let it be remembered, that this war is the public’s war; the country’s war. It is their independence that is to be supported; their property that is to be secured; their country that is to be saved. Here, government, the army, and the people, are mutually and reciprocally one. In other wars, kings may lose their thrones, and their dominions; but here, the loss must fall on the majesty of the multitude, and the property they are contending to save. Every man being sensible of this, he goes to the field, or pays his portion of the charge, as the sovereign of his own possessions; and when he is conquered a monarch falls.

The remark, which the Abbe in the conclusion of the passage has made, respecting America’s contracting debts in the time of her prosperity (by which he means, before the breaking out of hostilities) serves to show, though he has not made the application, the very great commercial difference between a dependent and an independent country. In a state of dependence, and with a fettered commerce, though with all the advantages of peace, her trade could not balance itself, and she annually run into debt. But now, in a state of independence, though involved in war, she requires no credit: her stores are full of merchandise, and gold and silver are become the currency of the country. How these things have established themselves is difficult to account for: But they are facts, and facts are more powerful than arguments.

As it is probable this letter will undergo a republication in Europe, the remarks here thrown together will serve to show the extreme folly of Britain in resting her hopes of success on the extinction of our paper currency. The expectation is at once so childish and forlorn, that it places her in the laughable condition of a famished lion watching for prey at a spider’s web.

From this account of the currency, the Abbe proceeds to state the condition of America in the winter of 1777, and the spring following; and closes his observations with mentioning the treaty of alliance, which was signed in France, and the propositions of the British Ministry, which were rejected in America. But in the manner in which the Abbe has arranged his facts, there is a very material error, that not only he, but other European historians have fallen into; none of them having assigned the true cause why the British proposals were rejected, and all of them have assigned a wrong one.

In the winter of 1777, and spring following, Congress were assembled at York-town in Pennsylvania, the British were in possession of Philadelphia, and General Washington with the army was encamped in huts at Valley-Forge twenty-five miles distant therefrom. To all who can remember, it was a season of hardship, but not of despair; and the Abbe, speaking of this period and its inconveniences, says:

“A multitude of privations, added to so many other misfortunes, might make the Americans regret their former tranquility, and incline them to an accommodation with England. In vain had the people been bound to the new government by the sacredness of oaths and the influence of religion. In vain had endeavours been used to convince them that it was impossible to treat safely with a country, in which one parliament might overturn what should have been established by another. In vain had they been threatened with the eternal resentment of an exasperated and vindictive enemy. It was possible that these distant troubles might not be balanced by the weight of present evils.

“So thought the British Ministry, when they sent to the new world public agents, authorized to offer every thing except independence to these very Americans, from whom they had two years before exacted an unconditional submission. It is not improbable, but that by this plan of conciliation, a few months sooner, some effect might have been produced. But at the period, at which it was proposed by the Court of London, it was rejected with disdain, because this measure appeared but as an argument of fear and weakness. The people were already re-assured. The Congress, the Generals, the troops, the bold and skilful men, in each colony had possessed themselves of the authority; every thing had recovered its first spirit. This was the effect of a treaty of friendship and commerce between the United States and the Court of Versailles, signed the sixth of February, 1778.“

On this passage of the Abbe’s I cannot help remarking, that, to unite time with circumstance, is a material nicety in history; the want of which frequently throws it into endless confusion and mistake, occasions total separation between causes and consequences, and connects them with others they are not immediately, and sometimes not at all, related to.

The Abbe, in saying that the offers of the British Ministry “were rejected with disdain,” is right, as to the fact, but wrong as to the time; and this error in the time, has occasioned him to be mistaken in the cause.

The signing the Treaty of Paris the 6th of February, 1778, could have no effect on the mind or politics of America, until it was known in America; and therefore, when the Abbe says, that the rejection of the British offers was in consequence of the alliance, he must mean, that it was in consequence of the alliance being known in America; which was not the case: And by this mistake, he not only takes from her the reputation, which her unshaken fortitude in that trying situation deserves, but is likewise led very injuriously to suppose, that had she not known of the treaty, the offers would probably have been accepted; whereas she knew nothing of the treaty at the time of the rejection, and consequently did not reject them on that ground.

The propositions or offers above mentioned, were contained in two bills brought into the British Parliament by Lord North, on the 17th of February, 1778. Those bills were hurried through both houses with unusual haste, and before they had gone through all the customary forms of Parliament, copies of them were sent over to Lord Howe and General Howe, then in Philadelphia, who were likewise commissioners. General Howe ordered them to be printed in Philadelphia, and sent copies of them by a flag to General Washington, to be forwarded to Congress at York-town, where they arrived the 21st of April 1778. Thus much for the arrival of the bills in America.

Congress, as is their usual mode, appointed a committee from their own body, to examine them and report thereon. The report was brought in the next day (the twenty-second) was read, and unanimously agreed to, entered on their journals, and published for the information of the country. Now this report must be the rejection to which the Abbe alludes, because Congress gave no other formal opinion on those bills and propositions: and on a subsequent application from the British Commissioners, dated the 27th of May, and received at York-town the 6th of June, Congress immediately referred them for an answer to their printed resolves of the 22nd of April. Thus much for the rejection of the offers.

On the 2nd of May, that is, eleven days after the above rejection was made, the treaty between the United States and France arrived at York Town; and until this moment Congress had not the least notice or idea, that such a measure was in any train of execution. But lest this declaration of mine should pass only for assertion, I shall support it by proof, for it is material to the character and principle of the revolution to show, that no condition of America, since the declaration of independence, however trying and severe, ever operated to produce the most distant idea of yielding it up either by force, distress, artifice or persuasion. And this proof is the more necessary, because it was the system of the British ministry at this time, as well as before and since, to hold out to the European powers that America was unfixed in her resolutions and policy; hoping by this artifice to lessen her reputation in Europe, and weaken the confidence which those powers or any of them might be inclined to place in her.

At the time these matters were transacting, I was secretary in the foreign department of Congress. All the political letters from the American Commissioners rested in my hands, and all that were officially written went from my office; and so far from Congress knowing anything of the signing the treaty, at the time they rejected the British offers, they had not received a line of information from their Commissioners at Paris, on any subject whatever, for upwards of a twelvemonth. Probably the loss of the port of Philadelphia and the navigation of the Delaware, together with the danger of the seas, covered at this time with British cruizers, contributed to the disappointment.

One packet, it is true, arrived at York-Town in January preceding, which was about three months before the arrival of the treaty; but, strange as it may appear, every letter had been taken out, before it was put on board the vessel which brought it from France, and blank white paper put in their stead.

Having thus stated the time when the proposals from the British commissioners were first received, and likewise the time when the treaty of alliance arrived, and shewn that the rejection of the former was eleven days prior to the arrival of the latter, and without the least knowledge of such circumstance having taken place or being about to take place; the rejection, therefore, must, and ought to be attributed to the fixt unvaried sentiments of America respecting the enemy she is at war with, and her determination to support her independence to the last possible effort, and not to any new circumstance which had taken place in her favour, which at that time she did not and could not know of.

Besides, there is a vigour of determination and spirit of defiance in the language of the rejection, (which I here subjoin) which derive their greatest glory by appearing before the treaty was known; for that, which is bravery in distress, becomes insult in prosperity: And the treaty placed America on such a strong foundation, that had she then known it, the answer which she gave, would have appeared rather as an air of triumph, than as the glowing serenity of fortitude.

Upon the whole, the Abbe appears to have entirely mistaken the matter; for instead of attributing the rejection of the propositions to our knowledge of the treaty of alliance; he should have attributed the origin of them in the British cabinet, to their knowledge of that event. And then the reason why they were hurried over to America in the state of bills, that is, before they were passed into acts, is easily accounted for, which is, that they might have the chance of reaching America before any knowledge of the treaty should arrive, which they were lucky enough to do, and there met the fate they so richly merited. That these bills were brought into the British Parliament after the treaty with France was signed, is proved from the dates: The treaty being on the 6th, and the bills on the 17th of February. And that the signing the treaty was known in Parliament, when the bills were brought in, is likewise proved by a speech of Mr. Charles Fox, on the said 17th of February, who, in reply to Lord North, informed the House of the treaty being signed, and challenged the Minister’s knowledge of the same fact.(2)

Though I am not surprised to see the Abbe mistaken in matters of history, acted at such a distance from his sphere of immediate observation, yet I am more than surprised to find him wrong (or at least what appears so to me) in the well enlightened field of philosophical reflection. Here the materials are his own; created by himself, and the error, therefore, is an act of the mind.

Hitherto my remarks have been confined to circumstance; the order in which they arose, and the events they produced. In these, my information being better than the Abbe’s, my task was easy. How I may succeed in controverting matters of sentiment and opinion, with one whom years, experience, and long established reputation have placed in a superior line, I am less confident in; but as they fall within the scope of my observations it would be improper to pass them over.

From this part of the Abbe’s work to the latter end, I find several expressions, which appear to me to start, with cynical complexion, from the path of liberal thinking, or at least they are so involved as to lose many of the beauties which distinguish other parts of the performance.

The Abbe having brought his work to the period when the Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States commenced, proceeds to make some remarks thereon.

“In short,” (says he), “philosophy, whose first sentiment is the desire to see all governments just and all people happy, in casting her eyes upon this alliance of a monarchy, with a people who are defending their liberty, is curious to know its motive. She sees at once too clearly, that the happiness of mankind has no part in it.“

Whatever train of thinking or of temper the Abbe might be in, when he penned this expression, matters not. They will neither qualify the sentiment, nor add to its defect. If right, it needs no apology; if wrong, it merits no excuse. It is sent into the world as an opinion of philosophy, and may be examined without regard to the author.

It seems to be a defect, connected with ingenuity, that it often employs itself more in matters of curiosity, than usefulness. Man must be the privy councellor of fate, or something is not right. He must know the springs, the whys and wherefores of every thing, or he sits down unsatisfied. Whether this be a crime, or only a caprice of humanity, I am not enquiring into. I shall take the passage as I find it, and place my objections against it.

It is not so properly the motives which produced the alliance, as the consequences which are to be produced from it, that mark out the field of philosophical reflection. In the one we only penetrate into the barren cave of secrecy, where little can be known, and every thing may be misconceived; in the other, the mind is presented with a wide extended prospect of vegetative good, and sees a thousand blessings budding into existence.

But the expression, even within the compass of the Abbe’s meaning, sets out with an error, because it is made to declare that which no man has authority to declare. Who can say that the happiness of mankind made no part of the motives which produced the alliance? To be able to declare this, a man must be possessed of the mind of all the parties concerned, and know that their motives were something else.

In proportion as the independence of America became contemplated and understood, the local advantages of it to the immediate actors, and the numerous benefits it promised mankind, appeared to be every day encreasing; and we saw not a temporary good for the present race only, but a continued good to all posterity; these motives, therefore, added to those which preceded them, became the motives on the part of America, which led her to propose and agree to the treaty of alliance, as the best effectual method of extending and securing happiness; and therefore, with respect to us, the Abbe is wrong.

France, on the other hand, was situated very differently to America. She was not acted upon by necessity to seek a friend, and therefore her motive in becoming one, has the strongest evidence of being good, and that which is so, must have some happiness for its object. With regard to herself, she saw a train of conveniences worthy her attention. By lessening the power of an enemy, whom, at the same time, she sought neither to destroy nor distress, she gained an advantage without doing an evil, and created to herself a new friend by associating with a country in misfortune. The springs of thought that lead to actions of this kind, however political they may be, are nevertheless naturally beneficent; for in all causes, good or bad, it is necessary there should be a fitness in the mind, to enable it to act in character with the object: Therefore, as a bad cause cannot be prosecuted with a good motive, so neither can a good cause be long supported by a bad one: and as no man acts without a motive, therefore in the present instance, as they cannot be bad, they must be admitted to be good. But the Abbe sets out upon such an extended scale, that he overlooks the degrees by which it is measured, and rejects the beginning of good, because the end comes not out at once.

It is true that bad motives may in some degree be brought to support a good cause or prosecute a good object; but it never continues long, which is not the case with France; for either the object will reform the mind, or the mind corrupt the object, or else not being able, either way, to get into unison, they will separate in disgust: and this natural, though unperceived progress of association or contention between the mind and the object, is the secret cause of fidelity or defection. Every object a man pursues, is, for the time, a kind of mistress to his mind: if both are good or bad, the union is natural; but if they are in reverse, and neither can seduce nor yet reform the other, the opposition grows into dislike and a separation follows.

When the cause of America first made its appearance on the stage of the universe, there were many, who, in the stile of adventurers and fortune-hunters, were dangling in its train, and making their court to it with every profession of honour and attachment. They were loud in its praise and ostentatious in its service. Every place echoed with their ardor or their anger, and they seemed like men in love. But, alas, They were fortune-hunters. Their expectations were excited, but their minds were unimpressed; and finding it not to their purpose, nor themselves reformed by its influence, they ceased their suit, and in some instances deserted and betrayed her.

There were others, who at first beheld America with indifference, and unacquainted with her character were cautious of her company. They treated her as one who, under the fair name of liberty, might conceal the hideous figure of anarchy, or the gloomy monster of tyranny. They knew not what she was. If fair, she was fair indeed. But still she was suspected and though born among us appeared to be a stranger.

Accident with some, and curiosity with others, brought on a distant acquaintance. They ventured to look at her. They felt an inclination to speak to her. One intimacy led to another, till the suspicion wore away, and a change of sentiment gradually stole upon the mind; and having no self-interest to serve, no passion of dishonour to gratify, they became enamored of her innocence, and, unaltered by misfortune or uninflamed by success, shared with fidelity in the varieties of her fate.

This declaration of the Abbe’s respecting motives, has led me unintentionally into a train of metaphysical reasoning; but there was no other avenue by which it could properly be approached. To place presumption against presumption, assertion against assertion, is a mode of opposition that has no effect; and therefore the more eligible method was, to shew that the declaration does not correspond with the natural progress of the mind, and the influence it has upon our conduct. — I shall now quit this part and proceed to what I have before stated, namely, that it is not so properly the motives which produced the alliance, as the consequences to be procured from it, that mark out the field of philosophical reflection.

It is an observation I have already made in some former publications, that the circle of civilization is yet incomplete. A mutuality of wants have formed the individuals of each country into a kind of national society; and here the progress of civilization has stopt. For it is easy to see, that nations with regard to each other (notwithstanding the ideal civil law, which every one explains, as it suits him) are like individuals in a state of natures. They are regulated by no fixt principle, governed by no compulsive law, and each does independently what it pleases or what it can.

Were it possible we could have known the world when in a state of barbarism, we might have concluded that it never could be brought into the order we now see it. The untamed mind was then as hard, if not harder, to work upon in its individual state, than the national mind is in its present one. Yet we have seen the accomplishment of one, why then should we doubt that of the other ?

There is a greater fitness in mankind to extend and complete the civilization of nations with each other at this day, than there was to begin it with the unconnected individuals at first; in the same manner that it is somewhat easier to put together the materials of a machine after they are formed, than it was to form them from original matter. The present condition of the world, differing so exceedingly from what it formerly was, has given a new cast to the mind of man, more than what he appears to be sensible of. The wants of the individual, which first produced the idea of society, are now augmented into the wants of the nation, and he is obliged to seek from another country what before he sought from the next person.

Letters, the tongue of the world, have in some measure brought all mankind acquainted, and, by an extension of their uses, are every day promoting some new friendship. Through them distant nations became capable of conversation, and losing by degrees the awkwardness of strangers, and the moroseness of suspicion, they learn to know and understand each other. Science, the partisan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. Her influence on the mind, like the sun on the chilled earth, has long been preparing it for higher cultivation and further improvement. The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosopher of another: He takes his seat in the temple of science, and asks not who sits beside him.

This was not the condition of the barbarian world. Then the wants of men were few and the objects within his reach. While he could acquire these, he lived in a state of individual independence, the consequence of which was, there were as many nations as persons, each contending with the other, to secure something which he had, or to obtain something which he had not. The world had then no business to follow, no studies to exercise the mind. Their time was divided between sloth and fatigue. Hunting and war were their chief occupations; sleep and food their principal enjoyments.

Now it is otherwise. A change in the mode of life has made it necessary to be busy; and man finds a thousand things to do now which before he did not. Instead of placing his ideas of greatness in the rude achievements of the savage, he studies arts, sciences, agriculture and commerce, the refinements of the gentleman, the principles of society, and the knowledge of the philosopher.

There are many things which in themselves are neither morally good nor bad, but they are productive of consequences, which are strongly marked with one or other of these characters. Thus commerce, though in itself a moral nullity, has had a considerable influence in tempering the human mind. It was the want of objects in the ancient world, which occasioned in them such a rude and perpetual turn for war. Their time hung on their hands without the means of employment. The indolence they lived in afforded leisure for mischief, and being all idle at once, and equal in their circumstances, they were easily provoked or induced to action.

But the introduction of commerce furnished the world with objects, which, in their extent, reach every man, and give him something to think about and something to do; by these his attention is mechanically drawn from the pursuits which a state of indolence and an unemployed mind occasioned, and he trades with the same countries, which in former ages, tempted by their productions, and too indolent to purchase them, he would have gone to war with.

Thus, as I have already observed, the condition of the world being materially changed by the influence of science and commerce, it is put into a fitness not only to admit of, but to desire, an extension of civilization. The principal and almost only remaining enemy, it now has to encounter, is prejudice; for it is evidently the interest of mankind to agree and make the best of life. The world has undergone its divisions of empire, the several boundaries of which are known and settled. The idea of conquering countries, like the Greeks and Romans, does not now exist; and experience has exploded the notion of going to war for the sake of profit. In short, the objects for war are exceedingly diminished, and there is now left scarcely anything to quarrel about, but what arises from that demon of society, prejudice, and the consequent sullenness and untractableness of the temper.

There is something exceedingly curious in the constitution and operation of prejudice. It has the singular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible varieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here and there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like the spider, makes every place its home. It has neither taste nor choice of situation, and all that it requires is room. Everywhere, except in fire or water, a spider will live. So, let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented with the richest abilities of thinking, let it be hot, cold, dark or light, lonely or inhabited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and live, like the spider, where there seems nothing to live on. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the same; and as several of our passions are strongly characterized by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated the spider of the mind.

Perhaps no two events ever united so intimately and forcibly to combat and expel prejudice, as the revolution of America and the alliance with France. Their effects are felt, and their influence already extends as well to the Old World as the new. Our stile and manner of thinking have undergone a revolution more extraordinary than the political revolution of the country. We see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used. We can look back on our own prejudices, as if they had been the prejudices of other people. We now see and know they were prejudices and nothing else, and, relieved from their shackles, enjoy a freedom of mind, we felt not before. It was not all the argument, however powerful, nor the reasoning, however eloquent, that could have produced this change, so necessary to the extension of the mind, and the cordiality of the world, without the two circumstances of the Revolution and the Alliance.

Had America dropped quietly from Britain, no material change in sentiment had taken place. The same notions, prejudices, and conceits would have governed in both countries, as governed them before, and, still the slaves of error and education, they would have traveled on in the beaten track of vulgar and habitual thinking. But brought about by the means it has been, both with regard to ourselves, to France, and to England, every corner of the mind is swept of its cobwebs, poison, and dust, and made fit for the reception of generous happiness.

Perhaps there never was an Alliance on a broader basis, than that between America and France, and the progress of it is worth attending to. The countries had been enemies, not properly of themselves, but through the medium of England. They, originally, had no quarrel with each other, nor any cause for one, but what arose from the interest of England, and her arming America against France. At the same time, the Americans at a distance from, and unacquainted with, the world, and tutored in all the prejudices which governed those who governed them, conceived it their duty to act as they were taught. In doing this, they expended their substance to make conquests, not for themselves, but for their masters, who in return treated them as slaves.

A long succession of insolent severity, and the separation finally occasioned by the commencement of hostilities at Lexington, on the 19th of April, 1775, naturally produced a new disposition of thinking. As the mind closed itself toward England, it opened itself towards the world, and our prejudices like our oppressions underwent, though less observed, a mental examination; until we found the former as inconsistent with reason and benevolence, as the latter were repugnant to our civil and political rights.

While we were thus advancing by degrees into the wide field of extended humanity, the alliance with France was concluded. An alliance not formed for the mere purpose of a day, but on just and generous grounds, and with equal and mutual advantages; and the easy affectionate manner in which the parties have since communicated, has made it an alliance not of courts only, but of countries. There is now an union of mind as well as of interest; and our hearts as well as our prosperity call on us to support it.

The people of England not having experienced this change, had likewise no idea of it. They were hugging to their bosoms the same prejudices we were trampling beneath our feet; and they expected to keep a hold upon America, by that narrowness of thinking, which America disdained. What they were proud of, we despised; and this is a principal cause why all their negociations, constructed on this ground, have failed. We are now really another people, and cannot again go back to ignorance and prejudice. The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark. There is no possibility, neither is there any term to express the supposition by, of the mind unknowing anything it already knows; and therefore all attempts on the part of England, fitted to the former habit of America, and on the expectation of their applying now, will be like persuading a seeing man to become blind, and a sensible one to turn an idiot. The first of which is unnatural and the other impossible.

As to the remark which the Abbe makes on the one country being a monarchy and the other a republic, it can have no essential meaning. Forms of government have nothing to do with treaties. The former are the internal police of the countries severally; the latter their external police jointly: and so long as each performs its part, we have no more right or business to know how the one or the other conducts its domestic affairs, than we have to inquire into the private concerns of a family.

But had the Abbe reflected for a moment, he would have seen, that courts, or the governing powers of all countries, be their forms what they may, are relatively republics with each other. It is the first and true principle of alliancing. Antiquity may have given precedence, and power will naturally create importance, but their equal right is never disputed. It may likewise be worthy of remarking, that a monarchical country can suffer nothing in its popular happiness by an alliance with a republican one; and republican governments have never been destroyed by their external connections, but by some internal convulsion or contrivance. France has been in alliance with the Republic of Switzerland for more than two hundred years, and still Switzerland retains her original form of government as entire as if she had been allied with a republic like herself; therefore this remark of the Abbe should go for nothing. — Besides it is best mankind should mix. There is ever something to learn, either of manners or principle; and it is by a free communication, without regard to domestic matters, that friendship is to be extended and prejudice destroyed all over the world.

But notwithstanding the Abbe’s high profession in favour of liberty, he appears sometimes to forget himself, or that his theory is rather the child of his fancy than of his judgment: For in almost the same instant that he censures the alliance, as not originally or sufficiently calculated for the happiness of mankind, he, by a figure of implication, accuses France for having acted so generously and unreservedly in concluding it. “Why did they (says he, meaning the Court of France) tie themselves down by an inconsiderate treaty to conditions with the Congress, which they might themselves have held in dependence by ample and regular supplies?”

When an author undertakes to treat of public happiness he ought to be certain that he does not mistake passion for right, nor imagination for principle. Principle, like truth, needs no contrivance. It will ever tell its own tale, and tell it the same way. But where this is not the case, every page must be watched, recollected, and compared like an invented story.

I am surprized at this passage of the Abbe’s. It means nothing or it means ill; and in any case it shows the great difference between speculative and practical knowledge. A treaty according to the Abbe’s language would have neither duration nor affection: it might have lasted to the end of the war, and then expired with it. — But France, by acting in a stile superior to the little politics of narrow thinking, has established a generous fame and won the love of a country she was before a stranger to. She had to treat with a people who thought as nature taught them; and, on her own part, she wisely saw there was no present advantage to be obtained by unequal terms, which could balance the more lasting ones that might flow from a kind and generous beginning.

From this part the Abbe advances into the secret transactions of the two cabinets of Versailles and Madrid respecting the independence of America; through which I mean not to follow him. It is a circumstance sufficiently striking without being commented on, that the former union of America with Britain produced a power which, in her hands, was becoming dangerous to the world: And there is no improbability in supposing, that had the latter known as much of the strength of the former, before she began the quarrel as she has known since, that instead of attempting to reduce her to unconditional submission, she would have proposed to her the conquest of Mexico. But from the countries separately, Spain has nothing to apprehend, though from their union she had more to fear than any other power in Europe.

The part which I shall more particularly confine myself to, is that wherein the Abbe takes an opportunity of complimenting the British Ministry with high encomiums of admiration, on their rejecting the offered mediation of the Court of Madrid, in 1779.

It must be remembered that before Spain joined France in the war, she undertook the office of a mediator, and made proposals to the British King and Ministry so exceedingly favorable to their interest, that had they been accepted, would have become inconvenient, if not inadmissible, to America. These proposals were nevertheless rejected by the British Cabinet; on which the Abbe says, —

“It is in such a circumstance as this; it is in the time when noble pride elevates the soul superior to all terror; when nothing is seen more dreadful than the shame of receiving the law, and when there is no doubt or hesitation which to chuse, between ruin and dishonour; it is then, that the greatness of a nation is displayed. I acknowledge, however, that men, accustomed to judge of things by the event, call great and perilous resolutions heroism or madness, according to the good or bad success with which they have been attended. If then, I should be asked, what is the name which shall in years to come be given to the firmness, which was in this moment exhibited by the English, I shall answer that I do not know. But that which it deserves I know. I know that the annals of the world hold out to us but rarely, the august and majestic spectacle of a nation, which chooses rather to renounce its duration than its glory.”

In this paragraph the conception is lofty and the expression elegant; but the colouring is too high for the original, and the likeness fails through an excess of graces. To fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question and nothing else, is the true criterion of writing. But the greater part of the Abbe’s writings (if he will pardon me the remark) appear to me uncentral and burthened with variety. They represent a beautiful wilderness without paths; in which the eye is diverted by everything without being particularly directed to any thing; and in which it is agreeable to be lost, and difficult to find the way out.

Before I offer any other remark on the spirit and composition of the above passage, I shall compare it with the circumstance it alludes to.

The circumstance then does not deserve the encomium. The rejection was not prompted by her fortitude but her vanity. She did not view it as a case of despair or even of extreme danger, and consequently the determination to renounce her duration rather than her glory, cannot apply to the condition of her mind. She had then high expectations of subjugating America, and had no other naval force against her than France; neither was she certain that rejecting the mediation of Spain would combine that power with France. New mediations might arise more favorable than those she had refused. But if they should not, and Spain should join, she still saw that it would only bring out her naval force against France and Spain, which was not wanted and could not be employed against America, and habits of thinking had taught her to believe herself superior to both.

But in any case to which the consequence might point, there was nothing to impress her with the idea of renouncing her duration. It is not the policy of Europe to suffer the extinction of any power, but only to lop off or prevent its dangerous encrease. She was likewise freed by situation from the internal and immediate horrors of invasion; was rolling in dissipation and looking for conquests; and tho’ she suffered nothing but the expense of war, she still had a greedy eye to magnificent reimbursement.

But if the Abbe is delighted with high and striking singularities of character, he might, in America, have found ample field for encomium. Here was a people, who could not know what part the world would take for, or against them; and who were venturing on an untried scheme, in opposition to a power, against which more formidable nations had failed. They had every thing to learn but the principles which supported them, and every thing to procure that was necessary for their defense. They have at times seen themselves as low as distress could make them, without shewing the least decrease of fortitude; and been raised again by the most unexpected events, without discovering an unmanly discomposure of joy. To hesitate or to despair are conditions equally unknown in America. Her mind was prepared for every thing; because her original and final resolution of succeeding or perishing included all possible circumstances.

The rejection of the British propositions in the year 1778, circumstanced as America was at that time, is a far greater instance of unshaken fortitude than the refusal of the Spanish mediation by the Court of London: and other historians, besides the Abbe, struck with the vastness of her conduct therein, have, like himself, attributed it to a circumstance which was then unknown, the alliance with France. Their error shows their idea of its greatness; because in order to account for it, they have sought a cause suited to its magnitude, without knowing that the cause existed in the principles of the country.(3)

But this passionate encomium of the Abbe is deservedly subject to moral and philosophical objections. It is the effusion of wild thinking, and has a tendency to prevent that humanity of reflection which the criminal conduct of Britain enjoins on her as a duty. — It is a laudanum to courtly iniquity. — It keeps in intoxicated sleep the conscience of a nation; and more mischief is effected by wrapping up guilt in splendid excuse, than by directly patronizing it.

Britain is now the only country which holds the world in disturbance and war; and instead of paying compliments to the excess of her crimes, the Abbe would have appeared much more in character, had he put to her, or to her monarch, this serious question —

Are there not miseries enough in the world, too difficult to be encountered and too pointed to be borne, without studying to enlarge the list and arming it with new destruction? Is life so very long that it is necessary, nay even a duty, to shake the sand and hasten out the period of duration? Is the path so elegantly smooth, so decked on every side and carpeted with joys, that wretchedness is wanting to enrich it as a soil? Go ask thine aching heart, when sorrow from a thousand causes wounds it, go ask thy sickened self, when every medicine fails, whether this be the case or not ?

Quitting my remarks on this head, I proceed to another, in which the Abbe has let loose a vein of ill-nature, and, what is still worse, of injustice.

After cavilling at the treaty, he goes on to characterize the several parties combined in the war —

“Is it possible,” (says the Abbe), “that a strict union should long subsist amongst confederates, of characters so opposite as the hasty, light, disdainful Frenchman, the jealous, haughty, sly, slow, circumspect Spaniard, and the American, who is secretly snatching a look at the mother country, and would rejoice, were they compatible with his independence, at the disasters of his allies.”

To draw foolish portraits of each other, is a mode of attack and reprisal, which the greater part of mankind are fond of indulging. The serious philosopher should be above it, more especially in cases from which no good can arise, and mischief may, and where no received provocation can palliate the offense. — The Abbe might have invented a difference of character for every country in the world, and they in return might find others for him, till in the war of wit all real character is lost. The pleasantry of one nation or the gravity of another may, by a little penciling, be distorted into whimsical features, and the painter becomes so much laughed at as the painting.

But why did not the Abbe look a little deeper, and bring forth the excellencies of the several parties? Why did he not dwell with pleasure on that greatness of character, that superiority of heart, which has marked the conduct of France in her conquests, and which has forced an acknowledgment even from Britain?

There is one line, at least (and many others might be discovered) in which the confederates unite; which is, that of a rival eminence in their treatment of their enemies. Spain, in her conquest of Minorca and the Bahama Islands, confirms this remark. America has been invariable in her lenity from the beginning of the war, notwithstanding the high provocations she has experienced. It is England only who has been insolent and cruel.

But why must America be charged with a crime undeserved by her conduct, more so by her principles, and which, if a fact, would be fatal to her honour? I mean the want of attachment to her allies, or rejoicing in their disasters. She, it is true, has been assiduous in showing to the world that she was not the aggressor toward England, and that the quarrel was not of her seeking, or, at that time, even of her wishing. But to draw inferences from her candor, and even from her justification, to stab her character by, and I see nothing else from which they can be supposed to be drawn, is unkind and unjust.

Does her rejection of the British propositions in 1778, before she knew of any alliance with France, correspond with the Abbe’s description of her mind? Does a single instance of her conduct since that time justify it? — But there is a still better evidence to apply to, which is, that of all the mails which, at different times, have been waylaid on the road, in divers parts of America, and taken and carried into New-York, and from which the most secret and confidential private letters, as well as those from authority, have been published, not one of them, I repeat it, not a single one of them, gave countenance to such a charge.

This is not a country where men are under government restraint in speaking; and if there is any kind of restraint, it arises from a fear of popular resentment. Now, if nothing in her private or public correspondence favours such a suggestion, and if the general disposition of the country is such as to make it unsafe for a man to show an appearance of joy at any disaster to her ally, on what grounds, I ask, can the accusation stand. What company the Abbe may have kept in France, we cannot know; but this we know, that the account he gives does not apply to America.

Had the Abbe been in America at the time the news arrived of the disaster of the fleet under Count de Grasse, in the West-Indies, he would have seen his vast mistake. Neither do I remember any instance, except the loss of Charleston, in which the public mind suffered more severe and pungent concern, or underwent more agitations of hope and apprehension as to the truth or falsehood of the report. Had the loss been all our own, it could not have had a deeper effect, yet it was not one of those cases which reached to the independence of America.

In the geographical account which the Abbe gives of the Thirteen States, he is so exceedingly erroneous, that to attempt a particular refutation, would exceed the limits I have prescribed to myself. And as it is a matter neither political, historical, nor sentimental, and which can always be contradicted by the extent and natural circumstances of the country, I shall pass it over; with this additional remark, that I never yet saw an European description of America that was true, neither can any person gain a just idea of it, but by coming to it.

Though I have already extended this letter beyond what I at first proposed, I am, nevertheless, obliged to omit many observations I originally designed to have made. I wish there had been no occasion for making any. But the wrong ideas which the Abbe’s work had a tendency to excite, and the prejudicial impressions they might make, must be an apology for my remarks, and the freedom with which they are done.

I observe the Abbe has made a sort of epitome of a considerable part of the pamphlet Common Sense, and introduced it in that form into his publication. But there are other places where the Abbe has borrowed freely from the said pamphlet without acknowledging it. The difference between society and government, with which the pamphlet opens, is taken from it, and in some expressions almost literally, into the Abbe’s work, as if originally his own; and through the whole of the Abbe’s remarks on this head, the idea in Common Sense is so closely copied and pursued, that the difference is only in words, and in the arrangement of the thoughts, and not in the thoughts themselves.(4)

But as it is time that I should come to the end of my letter, I shall forbear all future observations on the Abbe’s work, and take a concise view of the state of public affairs since the time in which that performance was published.

A mind habituated to actions of meanness and injustice, commits them without reflection, or with a very partial one; for on what other ground than this, can we account for the declaration of war against the Dutch. To gain an idea of the politics which actuated the British Ministry to this measure, we must enter into the opinion which they, and the English in general, had formed of the temper of the Dutch nation; and from thence infer what their expectation of the consequences would be.

Could they have imagined that Holland would have seriously made a common cause with France, Spain and America, the British Ministry would never have dared to provoke them. It would have been a madness in politics to have done so; unless their views were to hasten on a period of such emphatic distress, as should justify the concessions which they saw they must one day or other make to the world, and for which they wanted an apology to themselves. — There is a temper in some men which seeks a pretense for submission. Like a ship disabled in action, and unfitted to continue it, it waits the approach of a still larger one to strike to, and feels relief at the opportunity. Whether this is greatness or littleness of mind, I am not enquiring into. I should suppose it to be the latter, because it proceeds from the want of knowing how to bear misfortune in its original state.

But the subsequent conduct of the British cabinet has shewn that this was not their plan of politics, and consequently their motives must be sought for in another line.

The truth is, that the British had formed a very humble opinion of the Dutch nation. They looked on them as a people who would submit to any thing; that they might insult them as they liked, plunder them as they pleased, and still the Dutch dared not to be provoked.

If this be taken as the opinion of the British cabinet, the measure is easily accounted for; because it goes on the supposition, that when, by a declaration of hostilities, they had robbed the Dutch of some millions sterling (and to rob them was popular) they could make peace with them again whenever they pleased, and on almost any terms the British Ministry should propose. And no sooner was the plundering committed, than the accommodation was set on foot, and failed.

When once the mind loses the sense of its own dignity, it loses, likewise, the ability of judging of it in another. And the American war has thrown Britain into such a variety of absurd situations, that, arguing from herself, she sees not in what conduct national dignity consists in other countries. From Holland she expected duplicity and submission, and this mistake arose from her having acted, in a number of instances during the present war, the same character herself.

To be allied to, or connected with, Britain seems to be an unsafe and impolitic situation. Holland and America are instances of the reality of this remark. Make those countries the allies of France or Spain, and Britain will court them with civility and treat them with respect; make them her own allies, and she will insult and plunder them. In the first case, she feels some apprehensions at offending them because they have support at hand; in the latter, those apprehensions do not exist. Such, however, has hitherto been her conduct.

Another measure which has taken place since the publication of the Abbe’s work, and likewise since the time of my beginning this letter, is the change in the British ministry. What line the new Cabinet will pursue respecting America is, at this time, unknown; neither is it very material, unless they are seriously disposed to a general and honourable peace.

Repeated experience has shewn, not only the impracticability of conquering America, but the still higher impossibility of conquering her mind, or recalling her back to her former condition of thinking. Since the commencement of the war, which is now approaching to eight years, thousands and tens of thousands have advanced, and are daily advancing into the first state of manhood, who know nothing of Britain but as a barbarous enemy, and to whom the independence of America appears as much the natural and established government of the country, as that of England does to an Englishman. And, on the other hand, thousands of the aged, who had British ideas, have dropped, and are daily dropping, from the stage of business and life. The natural progress of generation and decay operates every hour to the disadvantage of Britain. Time and death, hard enemies to contend with, fight constantly against her interest; and the bills of mortality, in every part of America, are the thermometers of her decline. The children in the streets are from their cradle bred to consider her as their only foe. They hear of her cruelties; of their fathers, uncles, and kindred killed; they see the remains of burned and destroyed houses, and the common tradition of the school they go to, tells them, those things were done by the British.

These are circumstances which the mere English state politician, who considers man only in a state of manhood, does not attend to. He gets entangled with parties coeval or equal with himself at home, and thinks not how fast the rising generation in America is growing beyond knowledge of them, or they of him. In a few years all personal remembrances will be lost, and who is King or Minister in England, will be little known and scarcely enquired after.

The new British Administration is composed of persons who have ever been against the war, and who have constantly reprobated all the violent measures of the former one. They considered the American war as destructive to themselves, and opposed it on that ground. But what are these things to America? She has nothing to do with English parties. The ins and the outs are nothing to her. It is the whole country she is at war with, or must be at peace with.

Were every minister in England a Chatham, it would now weigh little or nothing in the scale of American politics. Death has preserved to the memory of this statesman, that fame, which he, by living, would have lost. His plans and opinions, toward the latter part of his life, would have been attended with as many evil consequences, and as much reprobated here as those of Lord North; and, considering him a wise man, they abound with inconsistencies amounting to absurdities.

It has apparently been the fault of many in the late minority to suppose that America would agree to certain terms with them, were they in place, which she would not even listen to, from the then administration. This idea can answer no other purpose than to prolong the war; and Britain may, at the expense of many more millions, learn the fatality of such mistakes. If the new Ministry wisely avoid this hopeless policy, they will prove themselves better pilots and wiser men than they are conceived to be; for it is every day expected to see their bark strike upon some hidden rock and go to pieces.

But there is a line in which they may be great. A more brilliant opening needs not to present itself; and it is such an one as true magnanimity would improve, and humanity rejoice in.

A total reformation is wanted in England. She wants an expanded mind — a heart which embraces the universe. Instead of shutting herself up in an island, and quarreling with the world, she would derive more lasting happiness, and acquire more real riches, by generously mixing with it, and bravely saying, I am the enemy of none. It is not now a time for little contrivances, or artful politics. The European world is too experienced to be imposed upon, and America too wise to be duped. It must be something new and masterly that can succeed. The idea of seducing America from her independence, or corrupting her from her alliance, is a thought too little for a great mind, and impossible for any honest one, to attempt. Whenever politics are applied to debauch mankind from their integrity, and dissolve the virtue of human nature, they become detestable; and to be a statesman on this plan, is to be a commissioned villain. He who aims at it, leaves a vacancy in his character, which may be filled up with the worst of epithets.

If the disposition of England should be such, as not to agree to a general and honorable peace, and the war must, at all events, continue longer, I cannot help wishing, that the alliances which America has or may enter into, may become the only objects of the war. She wants an opportunity of shewing to the world, that she holds her honor as dear and sacred as her independence, and that she will in no situation forsake those whom no negociations could induce to forsake her. Peace, to every reflecting mind, is a desirable object; but that peace which is accompanied with a ruined character, becomes a crime to the seducer, and a curse upon the seduced.

But where is the impossibility or even the great difficulty of England’s forming a friendship with France and Spain, and making it a national virtue to renounce for ever those prejudiced inveteracies it has been her custom to cherish; and which, while they serve to sink her with an increasing enormity of debt, by involving her in fruitless wars, become likewise the bane of her repose, and the destruction of her manners? We had once the fetters that she has now, but experience has shewn us the mistake, and thinking justly, has set us right.

The true idea of a great nation is that which extends and promotes the principles of universal society. Whose mind rises above the atmosphere of local thoughts, and considers mankind, of whatever nation or profession they may be, as the work of one Creator. The rage for conquest has had its fashion, and its day. Why may not the amiable virtues have the same? The Alexander and Caesars of antiquity, have left behind them their monuments of destruction, and are remembered with hatred; while those more exalted characters, who first taught society and science, are blest with the gratitude of every age and country. Of more use was one philosopher, though a heathen, to the world, than all the heathen conquerors that ever existed.

Should the present Revolution be distinguished by opening a new system of extended civilization, it will receive from heaven the highest evidence of approbation; and as this is a subject to which the Abbe’s powers are so eminently suited, I recommend it to his attention, with the affection of a friend, and the ardour of a universal citizen.

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POSTSCRIPT

Since closing the foregoing letter, some intimations respecting a general peace have made their way to America. On what authority or foundation they stand, or how near or remote such an event may be, are circumstances I am not inquiring into. But as the subject must sooner or later become a matter of serious attention, it may not be improper, even at this early period, candidly to investigate some points that are connected with it, or lead toward it.

The independence of America is at this moment as firmly established as that of any other country in a state of war. It is not length of time, but power, that gives stability. Nations at war know nothing of each other on the score of antiquity. It is their present and immediate strength, together with their connections, that must support them. To which we may add, that a right which originated to-day, is as much a right, as if it had the sanction of a thousand years; and therefore the independence and present governments of America are in no more danger of being subverted, because they are modern, than that of England is secure, because it is ancient.

The politics of Britain, so far as respects America, were originally conceived in idiotism, and acted in madness. There is not a step which bears the smallest trace of rationality. In her management of the war, she has laboured to be wretched, and studied to be hated; and in all her former propositions for accommodation, she has discovered a total ignorance of mankind, and of those natural and unalterable sensations by which they are so generally governed. How she may conduct herself in the present or future business of negotiating a peace, is yet to be proved.

He is a weak politician who does not understand human nature, and penetrate into the effect which measures of government will have upon the mind. All the miscarriages of Britain have arisen from this defect. The former Ministry acted as if they supposed mankind to be without a mind; and the present Ministry, as if America was without a memory. The one must have supposed we were incapable of feeling; and the other, that we could not remember injuries.

There is likewise another line in which politicians mistake, which is, that of not rightly calculating, or rather of misjudging, the consequences which any given circumstance will produce. Nothing is more frequent, as well in common as in political life, than to hear people complain, that such or such means produced an event directly contrary to their intentions. But the fault lies in their not judging rightly what the event would be; for the means produced only its proper and natural consequences.

It is very probable that, in a treaty of peace, Britain will contend for some post or other in North America, perhaps Canada or Halifax, or both: and I infer this from the known deficiency of her politics, which have ever yet made use of means whose natural event was against both her interest and her expectation. But the question with her ought to be, whether it is worth her while to hold them, and what will be the consequences.

Respecting Canada, one or other of the two following will take place, viz. If Canada should become populous, it will revolt; and if it does not become so, it will not be worth the expense of holding. And the same may be said of Halifax, and the country round it. But Canada never will people; neither is there any occasion for contrivances on one side or the other, for nature alone will do the whole.

Britain may put herself to great expenses in sending settlers to Canada; but the descendants of those settlers will be Americans, as other descendants have been before them. They will look round and see the neighbouring States sovereign and free, respected abroad and trading at large with the world; and the natural love of liberty, the advantages of commerce, the blessings of independence, and of a happier climate, and a richer soil, will draw them southward; and the effect will be, that Britain will sustain the expense, and America reap the advantage.

One would think that the experience which Britain has had of America, would entirely sicken her of all thoughts of continental colonization, and any part she might retain, will only become to her a field of jealousy and thorns, of debate and contention, for ever struggling for privileges, and meditating revolt. She may form new settlements, but they will be for us; they will become part of the United States of America; and that against all her contrivances to prevent it, or without any endeavours of ours to promote it. In the first place, she cannot draw from them a revenue until they are able to pay one, and when they are so they will be above subjection. Men soon become attached to the soil they live upon, and incorporated with the prosperity of the place: and it signifies but little what opinions they come over with, for time, interest, and new connections will render them obsolete, and the next generation know nothing of them.

Were Britain truly wise she would lay hold of the present opportunity to disentangle herself from all continental embarrassments in North-America, and that not only to avoid future broils and troubles, but to save expences. To speak explicitly on the matter, I would not, were I an European power, have Canada, under the conditions that Britain must retain it, could it be given to me. It is one of those kind of dominions that is, and ever will be, a constant charge upon any foreign holder.

As to Halifax, it will become useless to England after the present war, and the loss of the United States. A harbour, when the dominion is gone, for the purpose of which only it was wanted, can be attended only with expence. There are, I doubt not, thousands of people in England, who suppose, that these places are a profit to the nation, whereas they are directly the contrary, and instead of producing any revenue, a considerable part of the revenue of England is annually drawn off, to support the expense of holding them.

Gibraltar is another instance of national ill policy. A post which in time of peace is not wanted, and in time of war is of no use, must at all times be useless. Instead of affording protection to a navy, it requires the aid of one to maintain it. To suppose that Gibraltar commands the Mediterranean, or the pass into it, or the trade of it, is to suppose a detected falsehood; because though Britain holds the post she has lost the other three, and every benefit she expected from it. And to say that all this happens because it is besieged by land and water, is to say nothing, for this will always be the case in time of war, while France and Spain keep up superior fleets, and Britain holds the place. — So that, though, as an impenetrable, inaccessible rock it may be held by the one, it is always in the power of the other to render it useless and excessively chargeable.

I should suppose that one of the principal objects of Spain in besieging it, is to show to Britain, that though she may not take it, she can command it, that is she can shut it up, and prevent its being used as a harbour, though not as a garrison. — But the short way to reduce Gibraltar, is, to attack the British fleet; for Gibraltar is as dependent on a fleet for support, as a bird is on its wings for food, and when wounded there it starves.

There is another circumstance which the people of England have not only not attended to, but seem to be utterly ignorant of, and that is, the difference between permanent power, and accidental power, considered in a national sense.

By permanent power, I mean, a natural inherent, and perpetual ability in a nation, which though always in being, may not be always in action, or not advantageously directed; and by accidental power, I mean, a fortunate or accidental disposition or exercise of national strength, in whole or in part.

There undoubtedly was a time when any one European nation, with only eight or ten ships of war, equal to the present ships of the line, could have carried terror to all others, who had not begun to build a navy, however great their natural ability might be for that purpose: But this can be considered only as accidental, and not as a standard to compare permanent power by, and could last no longer than until those powers built as many or more ships than the former. After this a larger fleet was necessary, in order to be superior; and a still larger would again supersede it. And thus mankind have gone on building fleet upon fleet, as occasion or situation dictated. And this reduces it to an original question, which is: Which power can build and man the largest number of ships? The natural answer to which is, that power which has the largest revenue and the greatest number of inhabitants, provided its situation of coast affords sufficient conveniences.

France being a nation on the continent of Europe, and Britain an island in its neighborhood, each of them derived different ideas from their different situations. The inhabitants of Britain could carry on no foreign trade, nor stir from the spot they dwelt upon, without the assistance of shipping; but this was not the case with France. The idea therefore of a navy did not arise to France from the same original and immediate necessity which produced it to England. But the question is, that when both of them turn their attention, and employ their revenues the same way, which can be superior?

The annual revenue of France is nearly double that of England, and her number of inhabitants more than twice as many. Each of them has the same length of coast on the Channel, besides which, France has several hundred miles extent on the Bay of Biscay, and an opening on the Mediterranean: and every day proves that practice and exercise make sailors, as well as soldiers, in one country as well as another.

If, then Britain can maintain a hundred ships of the line, France can as well support a hundred and fifty, because her revenue and her population are as equal to the one, as those of England are to the other. And the only reason why she has not done it, is because she has not till very lately attended to it. But when she sees, as she now does, that a navy is the first engine of power, she can easily accomplish it.

England very falsely, and ruinously for herself, infers that because she had the advantage of France, while France had the smaller navy, that for that reason it is always to be so. Whereas it may be clearly seen that the strength of France has never yet been tried on a navy, and that she is able to be as superior to England in the extent of a navy, as she is in the extent of her revenues and her population. And England may lament the day, when, by her insolence and injustice, she provoked in France a maritime disposition.

It is in the power of the combined fleets to conquer every island in the West Indies, and reduce all the British navy in those places. For were France and Spain to send their whole naval force in Europe to those islands, it would not be in the power of Britain to follow them with an equal force. She would still be twenty or thirty ships inferior, were she to send every vessel she had, and in the meantime all the foreign trade of England would lay exposed to the Dutch.

It is a maxim which, I am persuaded, will ever hold good, and more especially in naval operations, that a great power ought never to move in detachments, if it can possibly be avoided; but to go with its whole force to some important object, the reduction of which shall have a decisive effect upon the war. Had the whole of the French and Spanish fleets in Europe come last spring to the West Indies, every island had been their own, Rodney their prisoner, and his fleet their prize. From the United States the combined fleets can be supplied with provisions, without the necessity of drawing them from Europe, which is not the case with England.

Accident has thrown some advantages in the way of England, which, from the inferiority of her navy, she had not a right to expect. For though she had been obliged to fly before the combined fleets, yet Rodney has twice had the fortune to fall in with detached squadrons, to which he was superior in numbers: The first off Cape St. Vincent, where he had nearly two to one, and the other in the West Indies, where he had a majority of six ships. Victories of this kind almost produce themselves. They are won without honour, and suffered without disgrace: and are ascribable to the chance of meeting, not to the superiority of fighting. For the same Admiral, under whom they were obtained, was unable, in three former engagements, to make the least impression on a fleet consisting of an equal number of ships with his own, and compounded for the events by declining the actions.(5)

To conclude: if it may be said that Britain has numerous enemies, it likewise proves that she has given numerous offenses. Insolence is sure to provoke hatred, whether in a nation or an individual. That want of manners in the British court may be seen even in its birth-days’ and new-years Odes, which are calculated to infatuate the vulgar, and disgust the man of refinement: And her former overbearing rudeness, and insufferable injustice on the seas, have made every commercial nation her foe. Her fleets were employed as engines of prey; and acted on the surface of the deep the character which the shark does beneath it. — On the other hand, the Combined Powers are taking a popular part, and will render their reputation immortal, by establishing the perfect freedom of the ocean, to which all countries have a right, and are interested in accomplishing. The sea is the world’s highway; and he who arrogates a prerogative over it transgresses the right, and justly brings on himself the chastisement, of nations.

Perhaps it might be of some service to the future tranquility of mankind, were an article were introduced into the next general peace, that no one nation should, in time of peace, exceed a certain number of ships of war. Something of this kind seems necessary; for according to the present fashion, half of the world will get upon the water, and there appears to be no end to the extent to which navies may be carried. Another reason is that navies add nothing to the manners or morals of a people. The sequestered life which attends the service, prevents the opportunities of society, and is too apt to occasion a coarseness of ideas and of language, and that more in ships of war than in the commercial employ; because in the latter they mix more with the world, and are nearer related to it. I mention this remark as a general one; and not applied to any one country more than to another.

Britain has now had the trial of above seven years, with an expense of nearly an hundred million pounds sterling; and every month in which she delays to conclude a peace costs her another million sterling, over and above her ordinary expenses of government, which are a million more; so that her total monthly expense is two million pounds sterling, which is equal to the whole yearly expenses of America, all charges included. Judge then who is best able to continue it.

She has likewise many atonements to make to an injured world, as well in one quarter as in another. And instead of pursuing that temper of arrogance, which serves only to sink her in the esteem, and entail on her the dislike, of all nations, she would do well to reform her manners, retrench her expenses, live peaceably with her neighbors, and think of war no more.

PHILADELPHIA, August 21, 1782.

FOOTNOTES:

1. The state of literature in America must one day become a subject of legislative consideration. Hitherto it has been a disinterested volunteer in the service of the Revolution, and no man thought of profits: but when peace shall give time and opportunity for study, the country will deprive itself of the honor and service of letters and the improvement of science, unless sufficient laws are made to prevent depredations on literary property. ? It is well worth remarking, that Russia, who but a few years ago was scarcely known in Europe, owes a large share of her present greatness to the close attention she has paid, and the wise encouragement she has given, to every branch of science and learning: and we have almost the same instance in France, in the reign of Louis XIV.
2. In Congress, April 22, 1778.

The committee to whom was referred the General’s letter of the eighteenth, containing a certain printed paper sent from Philadelphia, purporting to be the draft of a bill for declaring the intentions of the Parliament of Great Britain, as to the exercise of what they are pleased to term their right of imposing taxes within these United States: and also the draft of a bill to enable the King of Great Britain to appoint commissioners, with powers to treat, consult, and agree upon the means of quieting certain disorders within the said states, beg leave to observe:

That, the said paper being industriously circulated by emissaries of the enemy, in a partial and secret manner, the same ought to be forthwith printed for the public information.

The committee cannot ascertain whether the contents of the said paper have been framed in Philadelphia, or in Great Britain, much less whether the same are really and truly intended to be brought into the Parliament of that Kingdom, or whether the said Parliament will confer thereon the usual solemnities of their laws. But are inclined to believe this will happen, for the following reasons:

1st, Because their General hath made divers feeble efforts to set on foot some kind of treaty during the last winter, though, either from a mistaken idea of his own dignity and importance, the want of information, or some other cause, he hath not made application to those who are invested with a proper authority.

2d, Because they suppose that the fallacious idea of a cessation of hostilities will render these states remiss in their preparations for war.

3d, Because believing the Americans wearied with war, they suppose we will accede to their terms for the sake of peace.

4th, Because they suppose our negotiations may be subject to a like corrupt influence with their debates.

5th, Because they expect from this step the same effects they did from what one of their ministers thought proper to call his conciliatory motion, viz., that it will prevent foreign powers from giving aid to these states; that it will lead their own subjects to continue a little longer the present war: and that it will detach some weak men in America, from the cause of freedom and virtue.

6th, Because their King, from his own showing, hath reason to apprehend that his fleets and armies, instead of being employed against the territories of these states, will be necessary for the defense of his own dominions. And,

7th, Because the impracticability of subjugating this country being every day more and more manifest, it is their interest to extricate themselves from the war upon any terms.

The committee beg leave further to observe, that upon a supposition the matters contained in the said paper will really go into the British statute books, they serve to show, in a clear point of view, the weakness and wickedness of the enemy.

Their weakness.

1st, Because they formerly declared, not only that they had a right to bind the inhabitants of these states in all cases whatsoever, but also that the said inhabitants should absolutely and unconditionally submit to the exercise of that right. And this submission they have endeavored to exact by the sword. Receding from this claim, therefore, under the present circumstances, shows their inability to enforce it.

2d, Because their Prince hath heretofore rejected the humblest petitions of the representatives of America, praying to be considered as subjects, and protected in the enjoyment of peace, liberty and safety: and hath waged a most cruel war against them, and employed the savages to butcher innocent women and children. But now the same Prince pretends to treat with those very representatives, and grant to the arms of America what he refused to her prayers.

3d, Because they have uniformly labored to conquer this continent, rejecting every idea of accommodation proposed to them, from a confidence in their own strength. Wherefore it is evident, from the change in their mode of attack, that they have lost this confidence.

And,

4th, Because the constant language, spoken, not only by their ministers, but by the most public and authentic acts of the nation, hath been, that it is incompatible with their dignity to treat with the Americans while they have arms in their hands. Notwithstanding which, an offer is now about to be made for treaty.

The wickedness and insincerity of the enemy appear from the following considerations:

1st, Either the bills now to be passed contain a direct or indirect cession of a part of their former claims, or they do not. If they do, then it is acknowledged that they have sacrificed many brave men in an unjust quarrel. If they do not, then they are calculated to deceive America into terms, to which neither argument before the war, nor force since, could procure her assent.

2d, The first of these bills appears, from the title, to be a declaration of the intentions of the British Parliament concerning the exercise of the right of imposing taxes within these states. Wherefore, should these states treat under the said bill, they would indirectly acknowledge that right, to obtain which acknowledgment the present war hath been avowedly undertaken and prosecuted on the part of Great Britain.

3d, Should such pretended right be so acquiesced in, then, of consequence the same right might be exercised whenever the British Parliament should find themselves in a different temper and disposition; since it must depend upon those, and such like contingencies, how far men will act according to their former intentions.

4th, The said first bill, in the body thereof, containeth no new matter, but is precisely the same with the motion beforementioned, and liable to all the objections which lay against the said motion, excepting the following particular, viz., that by the motion actual taxation was to be suspended, so long as America should give as much as the said Parliament might think proper: whereas, by the proposed bill, it is to be suspended, as long as future parliaments continue of the same mind with the present.

5th, From the second bill it appears, that the British King may, if he pleases, appoint commissioners to treat and agree with those, whom they please, about a variety of things therein mentioned. But such treaties and agreements are to be of no validity without the concurrence of the said Parliament, except so far as they relate to the suspension of hostilities, and of certain of their acts, the granting of pardons, and the appointing of governors to these sovereign, free and independent states. Wherefore, the said Parliament have reserved to themselves, in express words, the power of setting aside any such treaty, and taking the advantage of any circumstances which may arise to subject this continent to their usurpations.

6th, The said bill, by holding forth a tender of pardon, implies a criminality in our justifiable resistance, and consequently, to treat under it would be an implied acknowledgment that the inhabitants of these states were what Britain has declared them to be, Rebels.

7th, The inhabitants of these states being claimed by them as subjects, they may infer, from the nature of the negotiation now pretended to be set on foot, that the said inhabitants would of right be afterwards bound by such laws as they should make. Wherefore, any agreement entered into on such negotiation might at any future time be repealed. And,

8th, Because the said bill purports, that the commissioners therein mentioned may treat with private individuals: a measure highly derogatory to the dignity of national character.

From all which it appears evident to your committee, that the said bills are intended to operate upon the hopes and fears of the good people of these states, so as to create divisions among them, and a defection from the common cause, now by the blessing of Divine Providence drawing near to a favorable issue. That they are the sequel of that insidious plan, which from the days of the Stamp Act down to the present time, hath involved this country in contention and bloodshed. And that, as in other cases so in this, although circumstances may force them at times to recede from the unjustifiable claims there can be no doubt but they will as heretofore, upon the first favorable occasion, again display that lust of domination, which hath rent in twain the mighty empire of Britain.

Upon the whole matter, the committee beg leave to report it as their opinion, that as the Americans united in this arduous contest upon principles of common interest, for the defense of common rights and privileges, which union hath been cemented by common calamities and by mutual good offices and affection, so the great cause for which they contend, and in which all mankind are interested, must derive its success from the continuance of that union. Wherefore, any man, or body of men, who should presume to make any separate or partial convention or agreement with commissioners under the Crown of Great Britain, or any of them, ought to be considered and treated as open and avowed enemies of the United States.

And further your committee beg leave to report it as their opinion, that these United States cannot with propriety, hold any confidence or treaty with any commissioners on the part of Great Britain, unless they shall, as a preliminary thereto, either withdraw their fleets and armies, or else in positive and express terms, acknowledge the independence of the said states.

And inasmuch as it appears to be the design of the enemies of these states to lull them into a fatal security-to the end that they may act with becoming weight and importance, it is the opinion of your committee, that the several states be called upon to use the utmost strenuous exertions to have their respective quotas of Continental troops in the field as soon as possible, and that all the militia’ of the said states be held in readiness, to act as occasion may require.

The following is the answer of Congress to the second application of the commissioners:

“SIR: Yorktown, June 6, 1778.

“I have had the honor of laying your letter of the third instant, with the acts of the British Parliament which came inclosed, before Congress: and I am instructed to acquaint you, Sir, that they have already expressed their sentiments upon bills, not essentially different from those acts, in a publication of the twenty-second of April last.

“Be assured, Sir, when the King of Great Britain shall be seriously disposed to put an end to the unprovoked and cruel war waged against these united States, Congress will readily attend to such terms of peace, as may consist with the honor of independent nations, the interest of their constituents and the sacred regard they mean to pay to treaties.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your most obedient, and

most humble servant.

HENRY LAURENS,

President of Congress.

His Excellency,

Sir Henry Clinton. K. B., Philadelphia.

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3. Extract from “A short Review of the present Reign,” in England, p. 45, in the new “Annual Register,” for the year 1780.

“The commissioners, who, in consequence of Lord North’s conciliatory bills, went over to America, to propose terms of peace to the colonies, were wholly unsuccessful. The concessions which formerly would have been received with the utmost gratitude, were rejected with disdain. Now was the time of American pride and haughtiness. It is probable, however, that it was not pride and haughtiness alone that dictated the resolutions of Congress, but a distrust of the sincerity of the offers of Britain, a determination not to give up their independence, and, above all, the engagements into which they had entered by their late treaty with France.”

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4. COMMON SENSE.

“Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.”

“Society is produced by our wants and governments by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively, by uniting our affections-the latter negatively, by restraining our vices.”

ABBE RAYNAL

“Care must be taken not to confound together society with government. That they may be known distinctly, their origin should be considered.”

“Society originates in the wants of men, government in their vices. Society tends always to good-government ought always to tend to the repression of evil.”

In the following paragraphs there is less 1ikeness in the language, but the ideas in the

one are evidently copied from the other.

COMMON SENSE.

“In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons, meeting in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the peopling of any country or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto. The strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance of another, who, in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness; but one man might labor out the common period of life, without accomplishing anything; after he has felled his timber, he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed-hunger, in the mean time would urge him from his work, and every different want call him a different way.”

“Disease, nay, even misfortune would be death-for although neither might be immediately mortal, yet either of them would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die. Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal benefits of which would supersede and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary, while they remained perfectly just to each other. But as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it unavoidably happens, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other, and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.”

ABBE RAYNAL

“Man, thrown, as it were, by chance upon the globe, surrounded by all the evils of nature, obliged continually to defend and protect his life against the storms and tempests of the air, against the inundations of water, against the fire of volcanoes, against the intemperance of frigid and torrid zones, against the sterility of the earth which refuses him aliment, or its baneful fecundity, which makes poison spring up beneath his feet-in short against the teeth and claws of savage beasts, who dispute with him his habitation and his prey, and, attacking his person, seem resolved to render themselves rulers of this globe, of which he thinks himself to be the master: Man, in this state, alone and abandoned to himself, could do nothing for his preservation. It was necessary, therefore, that he should unite himself, and associate with his like, in order to bring together their strength and intelligence in common stock.

“It is by this union that he has triumphed over so many evils, that he has fashioned this globe to his use, restrained the rivers, subjugated the seas, insured his subsistence, conquered a part of the animals in obliging them to serve him, and driven others far from his empire, to the depths of deserts or of woods, where their number diminishes from age to age. What a man alone would not have been able to effect, men have executed in concert: and altogether they preserve their work. Such is the origin, such the advantages, and the end of society. Government owes its birth to the necessity of preventing and repressing the injuries which the associated individuals had to fear from one another. It is the sentinel who watches, in order that the common laborers be not disturbed.”

5. See the accounts, either English or French, of three actions, in the West Indies, between Count de Guichen and Admiral Rodney, in 1780.

November 20, 1782

Second Street, PHILADELPHIA,

SIR:

As I do not sit down with a design of making a fair copy of this letter, but only to communicate a few thoughts, you will, I hope, excuse what blotting or scratching there may be in the course of it.

I have made a beginning on the citizens of R[hode] I[sland] which will appear in Bradford’s and Claypoole’s Sunday’s papers, I intend to continue the subject to three Letters, as you will see by the conclusion of the first. The second will be on the convenience and equality of the Tax, and the third on the Union of the States. I shall not put the signature, Common Sense, to them, because I do not wish to bring them into more notice than there is occasion for. But I intend putting them under cover to the printers of the Providence paper, and that he may not grumble I shall pay the postage.

All these embarrassments are ascribable to the loose and almost disjointed condition of the Union. The States severally not knowing what each will do are unwilling to do anything themselves. But the point to be considered now is, whether we cannot make the inconvenience a foundation for a reform, by applying the inconvenience as a reason for it.

In our situation, as a republic, made up of many parts, there are matters Continental, others which are Statacal. The first, like the second, is easily conceived to divide itself into two parts, Executive and Legislative. Of the first kind (a Continental executive) is the right of war and peace, all foreign affairs, the direction of the Army and Navy when we have one, the ascertainment of expenses in the gross, and perhaps the quotoing them out in the several States. Of the second kind (Continental legislation) is the regulation of the Post Office, the regulation of Commerce and consequently of all taxes to be raised by commerce to, or from foreign parts, the right of making laws for treason against the United States, against forgery of Continental bills bonds or notes, and other matters (which are not many) in which all the States are interested alike and for which reason the law therefore must be alike in each.

The people in all the States have conceived an im[pro]priety, or rather what they call an inconsistency an imblending the executive with the legislative (I observe the objection is thrown out by the Citizens of R[hode] Ifsland] in the Freeman’s Journal of today) and I am apt to think that some of the embarrassments respecting the present duly arises from an idea, that Congress is pointing out the law itself, instead of calling for the sum only, slips into a legislative character.

Now in all matters of this kind which must be alike in all the States, to secure any one from having an unfair advantage taken of her situation by another, were Congress in the form of a message and recommendation to lay the matter with the necessity, propriety and advantage before the several States and summon, once a year or occasionally a legislature of 3 or 5 persons from each State, to meet and enact the law for and in behalf of the whole, and that to be the operating law for all. I think much of the difficulty would be got over and Congress stand in a much better and more exalted situation than at present, because being obliged now to act in cases where it is conceived they have not a delegated right, and subjects their whole authority to suspicious observation; and consequently to take from them the occasion of acting out of character, will establish their acting in character.

As the people of America do not feel themselves legislatively connected, and are not willing that Congress should supply it, they feel a link wanting in the chain of union which something like what I have mentioned might complete, because I would have all these sort of laws ceremoniously passed by a legislature summoned for the purpose. It would remove the present little and prevailing suspicion of the Executive powers.

But my immediate view in suggesting these thoughts to you is to find a way to carry us over the present difficulty with R[hode] I[sland]. I see a train of evils attending a rupture, and many inconveniences following from his present conduct.

But if you think these hints worthy of some attention, and should find on conversing with others, that they are of the same opinion, might it not be suggested to Rhode Island that it is in contemplation to recommend to the State to depute a number from their bodies for the express purpose of deliberating upon, and framing such a law as shall operate with equal justice over all, inferring at the same time the necessity of her cordially going hand and hand with the States as far as they have already gone, and refer herself in common with the rest to a legislative decision of the whole.

My third Number will be particularly calculated to ENJOIN THE NECESSITY OF A STRONGER UNION, FOR AT PRESENT WE HANG SO LOOSELY TOGETHER THAT WE ARE IN DANGER OF HANGING ONE ANOTHER; and it appears to me more likely that the Union may be strengthened by the adoption of another Cord, than by twisting a new strand into the old one.

Before I publish my third Letter, I should be glad of an opportunity of talking the subject over. Mr. Livingston once mentioned to me that I should see an occasion of taking up the subject of the Confederation, and as this letter has a reference thereto, I wish when you have an opportunity that you would show it [to] him.

As I bargained with you for blots and blunders, I close with reminding you of it. I have just time to close my letter and that is all. It is now past eight O’clock, the 20th of November which is the anniversary of the evacuation of Fort Lee in which I had my share of difficulties and I am going to spend the evening with a Whig of that year who was in the same situation.

I am Sir Your Obedient Humble Servant,

THOMAS PAINE.

The American Crisis pamphlets in chronological order: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, The Crisis Extraordinary, X, XI, Subernumary Crisis I, XII, XIII and Subernumary Crisis II.

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The AMERICAN CRISIS PART XII

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, October 30, 1782. Original title below, “Crisis XII” title added in later collections.

TO THE EARL OF SHELBURNE.

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 inconsistence. 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 for ever. 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 for ever; 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 honourable 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. We have been the seat of war. You have 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 brutishness 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 now 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, now cast themselves at 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 the more consistent conduct would be to bear it without complaint, and to shew 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 expence 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 desarts 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 expence 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 pay, may go home rich. But the case is very different with the labouring 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 meer 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 expences than before, is a new doctrine in politics. We have heard much clamour of national savings and oeconomy, 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 expence, or the danger of attempting it. Will not the capture of one army after another satisfy him, but all must become prisoners? Must England ever be the sport of hope, and the dupe 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 as mad and foolish as Britain. And thus, from year to year, has every straw been catched at, and every Will-with-a-whisp 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 answers which Congress has given, 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 shew such a spirit of meanness in her, that we could not but despise her for accepting it. And so far from Lord Shelburne 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 door-keeper 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 the 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, ever 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 shews 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 colours.

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 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 assurances, because they thought it impossible that men who had their characters to establish, would begin it 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, October 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 Reynal, which will serve to give your Lordship some idea of the principles and sentiments of America.

C. S.

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