sh, you cannot live long to
look at them; and at any rate, the black account hereafter is not far
off. What lately appeared to us misfortunes, were only blessings in
disguise; and the seeming advantages on your side have turned out to
our profit. Even our loss of this city, as far as we can see, might be a
principal gain to us: the more surface you spread over, the thinner
you will be, and the easier wiped away; and our consolation under that
apparent disaster would be, that the estates of the Tories would become
securities for the repairs. In short, there is no old ground we can fail
upon, but some new foundation rises again to support us. "We have put,
sir, our hands to the plough, and cursed be he that looketh back."

Your king, in his speech to parliament last spring, declared, "That
he had no doubt but the great force they had enabled him to send to
America, would effectually reduce the rebellious colonies." It has not,
neither can it; but it has done just enough to lay the foundation of
its own next year's ruin. You are sensible that you left England in a
divided, distracted state of politics, and, by the command you had here,
you became a principal prop in the court party; their fortunes rest on
yours; by a single express you can fix their value with the public, and
the degree to which their spirits shall rise or fall; they are in your
hands as stock, and you have the secret of the alley with you. Thus
situated and connected, you become the unintentional mechanical
instrument of your own and their overthrow. The king and his ministers
put conquest out of doubt, and the credit of both depended on the proof.
To support them in the interim, it was necessary that you should make
the most of every thing, and we can tell by Hugh Gaine's New York
paper what the complexion of the London Gazette is. With such a list
of victories the nation cannot expect you will ask new supplies; and
to confess your want of them would give the lie to your triumphs, and
impeach the king and his ministers of treasonable deception. If you make
the necessary demand at home, your party sinks; if you make it not, you
sink yourself; to ask it now is too late, and to ask it before was too
soon, and unless it arrive quickly will be of no use. In short, the part
you have to act, cannot be acted; and I am fully persuaded that all you
have to trust to is, to do the best you can with what force you have
got, or little more. Though we have greatly excee