The British Parliament suppose they have many friends in America,
and that, when all chance of conquest is over, they will be able to
draw her from her alliance with France. Now, if I have any
conception of the human heart, they will fail in this more than in any
thing that they have yet tried.
This part of the business is not a question of policy only, but of
honor and honesty; and the proposition will have in it something so
visibly low and base, that their partisans, if they have any, will
be ashamed of it. Men are often hurt by a mean action who are not
startled at a wicked one, and this will be such a confession of
inability, such a declaration of servile thinking, that the scandal of
it will ruin all their hopes.
In short, we have nothing to do but to go on with vigor and
determination. The enemy is yet in our country. They hold New York,
Charleston, and Savannah, and the very being in those places is an
offence, and a part of offensive war, and until they can be driven
from them, or captured in them, it would be folly in us to listen to
an idle tale. I take it for granted that the British ministry are
sinking under the impossibility of carrying on the war. Let them
then come to a fair and open peace with France, Spain, Holland and
America, in the manner they ought to do; but until then, we can have
nothing to say to them.
COMMON SENSE.
PHILADELPHIA, May 22, 1782.
A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS
TO SIR GUY CARLETON.
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