I wish to see the city saved, not so much from military as from
natural motives. 'Tis the hiding place of women and children, and Lord
Howe's proper business is with our armies. When I put all the
circumstances together which ought to be taken, I laugh at your notion
of conquering America. Because you lived in a little country, where an
army might run over the whole in a few days, and where a single
company of soldiers might put a multitude to the rout, you expected to
find it the same here. It is plain that you brought over with you
all the narrow notions you were bred up with, and imagined that a
proclamation in the king's name was to do great things; but Englishmen
always travel for knowledge, and your lordship, I hope, will return,
if you return at all, much wiser than you came.
We may be surprised by events we did not expect, and in that
interval of recollection you may gain some temporary advantage: such
was the case a few weeks ago, but we soon ripen again into reason,
collect our strength, and while you are preparing for a triumph, we
come upon you with a defeat. Such it has been, and such it would be
were you to try it a hundred times over. Were you to garrison the
places you might march over, in order to secure their subjection, (for
remember you can do it by no other means,) your army would be like a
stream of water running to nothing. By the time you extended from
New York to Virginia, you would be reduced to a string of drops not
capable of hanging together; while we, by retreating from State to
State, like a river turning back upon itself, would acquire strength
in the same proportion as you lost it, and in the end be capable of
overwhelming you.
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