wonder and admire.

Here I rest my arguments and finish my address. Such as it is, it is a
gift, and you are welcome. It was always my design to dedicate a Crisis
to you, when the time should come that would properly make it a Crisis;
and when, likewise, I should catch myself in a temper to write it, and
suppose you in a condition to read it. That time has now arrived, and
with it the opportunity for conveyance. For the commissioners--poor
commissioners! having proclaimed, that "yet forty days and Nineveh shall
be overthrown," have waited out the date, and, discontented with their
God, are returning to their gourd. And all the harm I wish them is, that
it may not wither about their ears, and that they may not make their
exit in the belly of a whale.

COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 21, 1778.

P.S.--Though in the tranquillity of my mind I have concluded with a
laugh, yet I have something to mention to the commissioners, which, to
them, is serious and worthy their attention. Their authority is derived
from an Act of Parliament, which likewise describes and limits their
official powers. Their commission, therefore, is only a recital, and
personal investiture, of those powers, or a nomination and description
of the persons who are to execute them. Had it contained any thing
contrary to, or gone beyond the line of, the written law from which
it is derived, and by which it is bound, it would, by the English
constitution, have been treason in the crown, and the king been subject
to an impeachment. He dared not, therefore, put in his commission what
you have put in your proclamation, that is, he dared not have authorised
you in that commission to burn and destroy any thing in America. You are
both in the act and in the commission styled commissioners for restoring
peace, and the methods for doing it are there pointed out. Your last
proclamation is signed by you as commissioners under that act. You
make Parliament the patron of its contents. Yet, in the body of it, you
insert matters contrary both to the spirit and letter of the act, and
what likewise your king dared not have put in his commission to you. The
state of things in England, gentlemen, is too ticklish for you to run
hazards. You are accountable to Parliament for the execution of that act
according to the letter of it. Your heads may pay for breaking it, for
you certainly have broke it by exceeding it. And as a friend, who would
wish you to escape the paw of t