at these considerations will excuse our having so far deviated
from the spirit of our instructions. The Count de Vergennes, on perusing
the articles, appeared surprised (but not displeased) at their being so
favorable to us.

We beg leave to add our advice that copies be sent us of the accounts
directed to be taken by the different States, of the unnecessary
devastations and sufferings sustained by them from the enemy in the
course of the war. Should they arrive before the signature of the
definitive treaty, they might possibly answer very good purposes.

JOHN M. LUDLOW

Paradoxical as it may seem, two things must equally surprise the reader
on studying the history of the war of American Independence--the first,
that England should ever have considered it possible to succeed in
subduing her revolted colonies; the second, that she should not have
succeeded in doing so. At a time when steam had not yet baffled the
winds, to dream of conquering by force of arms on the other side of the
Atlantic a people of English race numbering between three millions and
four millions with something like twelve hundred miles of seaboard, was
surely an act of enormous folly. Horace Walpole had wittily said, at the
very commencement of the so-called rebellion, that "if computed by the
tract of the country it occupies, we, as so diminutive in comparison,
ought rather be called in rebellion to that."

We have seen in our own days the difficulties experienced by the far
more powerful and populous Northern States in quelling the secession of
the Southern, when between the two there was no other frontier than at
most a river, very often a mere ideal line, and when armies could be
raised by a hundred thousand men at a time. England attempted a far more
difficult task with forces which, till 1781, never reached 35,000 men,
and never exceeded 42,075, including "provincials," _i.e._, American
loyalists.

Yet it is impossible to doubt that, not once only, but repeatedly during
the course of the struggle, England was on the verge of triumph. The
American armies were perpetually melting away before the enemy directly
through the practice of short enlistments, and indirectly through
desertions. These desertions, if they might be often palliated by the
straits to which the men were reduced through arrears in pay and want of
supplies, arose in other cases, as after the retreat from New York, from
sheer loss of heart in the cause. The main army unde