You cannot be so insensible as not to see that we have two
to one the advantage of you, because we conquer by a drawn game, and
you lose by it. Burgoyne might have taught your lordship this
knowledge; he has been long a student in the doctrine of chances.
I have no other idea of conquering countries than by subduing the
armies which defend them: have you done this, or can you do it? If you
have not, it would be civil in you to let your proclamations alone for
the present; otherwise, you will ruin more Tories by your grace and
favor, than you will Whigs by your arms.
Were you to obtain possession of this city, you would not know
what to do with it more than to plunder it. To hold it in the manner
you hold New York, would be an additional dead weight upon your hands;
and if a general conquest is your object, you had better be without
the city than with it. When you have defeated all our armies, the
cities will fall into your hands of themselves; but to creep into them
in the manner you got into Princeton, Trenton, &c. is like robbing
an orchard in the night before the fruit be ripe, and running away
in the morning. Your experiment in the Jerseys is sufficient to
teach you that you have something more to do than barely to get into
other people's houses; and your new converts, to whom you promised all
manner of protection, and seduced into new guilt by pardoning them
from their former virtues, must begin to have a very contemptible
opinion both of your power and your policy.
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