第38章

There is not a nobleman's country seat but may be laid in ashes by a single person.Your own may probably contribute to the proof: in short, there is no evil which cannot be returned when you come to incendiary mischief.The ships in the Thames, may certainly be as easily set on fire, as the temporary bridge was a few years ago; yet of that affair no discovery was ever made; and the loss you would sustain by such an event, executed at a proper season, is infinitely greater than any you can inflict.The East India House and the Bank, neither are nor can be secure from this sort of destruction, and, as Dr.Price justly observes, a fire at the latter would bankrupt the nation.It has never been the custom of France and England when at war, to make those havocs on each other, because the ease with which they could retaliate rendered it as impolitic as if each had destroyed his own.

But think not, gentlemen, that our distance secures you, or our invention fails us.We can much easier accomplish such a point than any nation in Europe.We talk the same language, dress in the same habit, and appear with the same manners as yourselves.We can pass from one part of England to another unsuspected; many of us are as well acquainted with the country as you are, and should you impolitically provoke us, you will most assuredly lament the effects of it.Mischiefs of this kind require no army to execute them.The means are obvious, and the opportunities unguardable.I hold up a warning to our senses, if you have any left, and "to the unhappy people likewise, whose affairs are committed to you."* I call not with the rancor of an enemy, but the earnestness of a friend, on the deluded people of England, lest, between your blunders and theirs, they sink beneath the evils contrived for us.

* General [Sir H.] Clinton's letter to Congress."He who lives in a glass house," says a Spanish proverb, "should never begin throwing stones." This, gentlemen, is exactly your case, and you must be the most ignorant of mankind, or suppose us so, not to see on which side the balance of accounts will fall.There are many other modes of retaliation, which, for several reasons, I choose not to mention.But be assured of this, that the instant you put your threat into execution, a counter-blow will follow it.If you openly profess yourselves savages, it is high time we should treat you as such, and if nothing but distress can recover you to reason, to punish will become an office of charity.

While your fleet lay last winter in the Delaware, I offered my service to the Pennsylvania Navy Board then at Trenton, as one who would make a party with them, or any four or five gentlemen, on an expedition down the river to set fire to it, and though it was not then accepted, nor the thing personally attempted, it is more than probable that your own folly will provoke a much more ruinous act.Say not when mischief is done, that you had not warning, and remember that we do not begin it, but mean to repay it.Thus much for your savage and impolitic threat.

In another part of your proclamation you say, "But if the honors of a military life are become the object of the Americans, let them seek those honors under the banners of their rightful sovereign, and in fighting the battles of the united British Empire, against our late mutual and natural enemies." Surely! the union of absurdity with madness was never marked in more distinguishable lines than these.

Your rightful sovereign, as you call him, may do well enough for you, who dare not inquire into the humble capacities of the man; but we, who estimate persons and things by their real worth, cannot suffer our judgments to be so imposed upon; and unless it is your wish to see him exposed, it ought to be your endeavor to keep him out of sight.

The less you have to say about him the better.We have done with him, and that ought to be answer enough.You have been often told so.Strange! that the answer must be so often repeated.You go a-begging with your king as with a brat, or with some unsaleable commodity you were tired of; and though every body tells you no, no, still you keep hawking him about.But there is one that will have him in a little time, and as we have no inclination to disappoint you of a customer, we bid nothing for him.

The impertinent folly of the paragraph that I have just quoted, deserves no other notice than to be laughed at and thrown by, but the principle on which it is founded is detestable.We are invited to submit to a man who has attempted by every cruelty to destroy us, and to join him in making war against France, who is already at war against him for our support.

Can Bedlam, in concert with Lucifer, form a more mad and devilish request? Were it possible a people could sink into such apostacy they would deserve to be swept from the earth like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.The proposition is an universal affront to the rank which man holds in the creation, and an indignity to him who placed him there.It supposes him made up without a spark of honor, and under no obligation to God or man.