r to deceive the multitude by making a handbill
attack on the whole body of the Congress; you got them together under
one name, and abused them under another. But the king you serve, and the
cause you support, afford you so few instances of acting the gentleman,
that out of pity to your situation the Congress pardoned the insult by
taking no notice of it.

You say in that handbill, "that they, the Congress, disavowed every
purpose for reconciliation not consonant with their extravagant and
inadmissible claim of independence." Why, God bless me! what have you to
do with our independence? We ask no leave of yours to set it up; we ask
no money of yours to support it; we can do better without your fleets
and armies than with them; you may soon have enough to do to protect
yourselves without being burdened with us. We are very willing to be at
peace with you, to buy of you and sell to you, and, like young beginners
in the world, to work for our living; therefore, why do you put
yourselves out of cash, when we know you cannot spare it, and we do not
desire you to run into debt? I am willing, sir, that you should see
your folly in every point of view I can place it in, and for that reason
descend sometimes to tell you in jest what I wish you to see in earnest.
But to be more serious with you, why do you say, "their independence?"
To set you right, sir, we tell you, that the independency is ours, not
theirs. The Congress were authorized by every state on the continent to
publish it to all the world, and in so doing are not to be considered as
the inventors, but only as the heralds that proclaimed it, or the office
from which the sense of the people received a legal form; and it was as
much as any or all their heads were worth, to have treated with you on
the subject of submission under any name whatever. But we know the men
in whom we have trusted; can England say the same of her Parliament?

I come now more particularly to your proclamation of the 30th of
November last. Had you gained an entire conquest over all the armies
of America, and then put forth a proclamation, offering (what you call)
mercy, your conduct would have had some specious show of humanity; but
to creep by surprise into a province, and there endeavor to terrify
and seduce the inhabitants from their just allegiance to the rest by
promises, which you neither meant nor were able to fulfil, is both cruel
and unmanly: cruel in its effects; because, unless you can