But no great deal is lost yet. All that Howe has been doing
for this month past, is rather a ravage than a conquest, which the
spirit of the Jerseys, a year ago, would have quickly repulsed, and
which time and a little resolution will soon recover.
* The present winter is worth an age, if rightly employed; but, if
lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the evil; and
there is no punishment that man does not deserve, be he who, or
what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a
season so precious and useful.
I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret
opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give
up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to
perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the
calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.
Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has
relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the
care of devils; and as I do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king
of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common
murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence
as he.
'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run
through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them.
Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of
flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the
whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven
back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was
performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan
of Arc.
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