In March 1780, I published part of the Crisis, No. VIII., in the
newspapers, but did not conclude it in the following papers, and the
remainder has lain by me till the present day.
There appeared about that time some disposition in the British
cabinet to cease the further prosecution of the war, and as I had
formed my opinion that whenever such a design should take place, it
would be accompanied by a dishonorable proposition to America,
respecting France, I had suppressed the remainder of that number,
not to expose the baseness of any such proposition. But the arrival of
the next news from England, declared her determination to go on with
the war, and consequently as the political object I had then in view
was not become a subject, it was unnecessary in me to bring it
forward, which is the reason it was never published.
The matter which I allude to in the unpublished part, I shall now
make a quotation of, and apply it as the more enlarged state of
things, at this day, shall make convenient or necessary.
It was as follows:
"By the speeches which have appeared from the British Parliament, it
is easy to perceive to what impolitic and imprudent excesses their
passions and prejudices have, in every instance, carried them during
the present war. Provoked at the upright and honorable treaty
between America and France, they imagined that nothing more was
necessary to be done to prevent its final ratification, than to
promise, through the agency of their commissioners (Carlisle, Eden,
and Johnstone) a repeal of their once offensive acts of Parliament.
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