On the second of August last, General Carleton and Admiral Digby
wrote to General Washington in these words:
"The resolution of the House of Commons, of the 27th of February
last, has been placed in Your Excellency's hands, and intimations
given at the same time that further pacific measures were likely to
follow. Since which, until the present time, we have had no direct
communications with England; but a mail is now arrived, which brings
us very important information. We are acquainted, sir, by authority,
that negotiations for a general peace have already commenced at Paris,
and that Mr. Grenville is invested with full powers to treat with
all the parties at war, and is now at Paris in execution of his
commission. And we are further, sir, made acquainted, that His
Majesty, in order to remove any obstacles to this peace which he so
ardently wishes to restore, has commanded his ministers to direct
Mr. Grenville, that the independence of the Thirteen United Provinces,
should be proposed by him in the first instance, instead of making
it a condition of a general treaty."
Now, taking your present measures into view, and comparing them with
the declaration in this letter, pray what is the word of your king, or
his ministers, or the Parliament, good for? Must we not look upon
you as a confederated body of faithless, treacherous men, whose
assurances are fraud, and their language deceit? What opinion can we
possibly form of you, but that you are a lost, abandoned, profligate
nation, who sport even with your own character, and are to be held
by nothing but the bayonet or the halter?
To say, after this, that the sun of Great Britain will be set
whenever she acknowledges the independence of America, when the not
doing it is the unqualified lie of government, can be no other than
the language of ridicule, the jargon of inconsistency.
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