rit of the
Jerseys, a year ago, would have quickly repulsed, and which time and a
little resolution will soon recover.

* The present winter is worth an age, if rightly employed; but, if
lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the evil; and
there is no punishment that man does not deserve, be he who, or what, or
where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious
and useful.

I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret
opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up
a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish,
who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities
of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent. Neither have I
so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the
government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils; and as I
do not, I cannot see on what grounds the king of Britain can look up
to heaven for help against us: a common murderer, a highwayman, or a
house-breaker, has as good a pretence as he.

'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through
a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has
trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed
boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the whole English army,
after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified
with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces
collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might
inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair
fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases,
have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is
always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer
habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the
touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to
light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact,
they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary
apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the
hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many
a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially
solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

As I was with the