dition, should
fail, he could scarcely expect his new friends to trust him again, while
if by any accident he should fall into the hands of those whose cause he
had betrayed, he knew full well the fate which awaited him. He was, I
believe, a man possessed of considerable military talents and of general
ability, but he wanted principle; and his extravagant habits placed him
in difficulties from which he saw no ordinary way of extricating
himself. He had just put forth an elaborate address to the inhabitants
of America, not only excusing his conduct, but taking great credit for
the motives which had induced him to join the King's arms. He stated
that he had taken up arms to redress grievances, and that those
grievances no longer existed, because Great Britain, with the open arms
of a parent, offered to embrace the colonists as children, and grant
them the wished-for redress. Her worst enemies, he told them, were in
the bosom of America. The French alliance, he assured them, was
calculated not only to ruin the mother-country, but the colonies
themselves; and that the heads of the rebellion, neglecting to take the
sentiments of the people at large, had refused to accept the British
proposals for peace; that for his part, rather than trust to the
insidious offers of France, "I preferred," he continues, "those of Great
Britain, thinking it infinitely wiser and safer to place my confidence
in her justice and generosity than to trust a monarchy too feeble to
establish your independency, so perilous to her distant dominions; the
enemy of the Protestant faith, and fraudulently avowing an affection for
the liberties of mankind while she holds her native sons in vassalage
and chains." He winds up by stating his conviction that it was the
generous intention of Great Britain not only to leave the rights and
privileges of the colonies unimpaired, together with their perpetual
exemption from taxation, but to superadd such further benefits as might
be consistent with the common prosperity of the empire; and then he
says, "I am now led to devote my life to the reunion of the British
Empire as the best and only means to dry up the streams of misery that
have deluged this country."

We had numberless copies of this address on board, ready to be
distributed throughout the country whenever we should effect a landing.
That was far from a pleasant time we had on our voyage. Not only had we
the effects of the gale to dread, but we were a