time now is when he dare not give an answer to an affront from
France. The capture of Burgoyne's army will sink his consequence as
much in Europe as in America. In his speech he expresses his
suspicions at the warlike preparations of France and Spain, and as he
has only the one army which you command to support his character in
the world with, it remains very uncertain when, or in what quarter it
will be most wanted, or can be best employed; and this will partly
account for the great care you take to keep it from action and
attacks, for should Burgoyne's fate be yours, which it probably will,
England may take her endless farewell not only of all America but of
all the West Indies.

Never did a nation invite destruction upon itself with the eagerness
and the ignorance with which Britain has done. Bent upon the ruin of
a young and unoffending country, she has drawn the sword that has
wounded herself to the heart, and in the agony of her resentment has
applied a poison for a cure. Her conduct towards America is a
compound of rage and lunacy; she aims at the government of it, yet
preserves neither dignity nor character in her methods to obtain it.
Were government a mere manufacture or article of commerce, immaterial
by whom it should be made or sold, we might as well employ her as
another, but when we consider it as the fountain from whence the
general manners and morality of a country take their rise, that the
persons entrusted with the execution thereof are by their serious
example an authority to support these principles, how abominably
absurd is the idea of being hereafter governed by a set of men who
have been guilty of forgery, perjury, treachery, theft and every
species of villany which the lowest wretches on earth could practise
or invent. What greater public curse can befall any country than to
be under such authority, and what greater blessing than to be