earnestness of a friend, on the deluded people of England, lest, between
your blunders and theirs, they sink beneath the evils contrived for us.

* General [Sir H.] Clinton's letter to Congress.

"He who lives in a glass house," says a Spanish proverb, "should never
begin throwing stones." This, gentlemen, is exactly your case, and you
must be the most ignorant of mankind, or suppose us so, not to see on
which side the balance of accounts will fall. There are many other modes
of retaliation, which, for several reasons, I choose not to mention. But
be assured of this, that the instant you put your threat into execution,
a counter-blow will follow it. If you openly profess yourselves savages,
it is high time we should treat you as such, and if nothing but distress
can recover you to reason, to punish will become an office of charity.

While your fleet lay last winter in the Delaware, I offered my service
to the Pennsylvania Navy Board then at Trenton, as one who would make
a party with them, or any four or five gentlemen, on an expedition down
the river to set fire to it, and though it was not then accepted, nor
the thing personally attempted, it is more than probable that your own
folly will provoke a much more ruinous act. Say not when mischief is
done, that you had not warning, and remember that we do not begin it,
but mean to repay it. Thus much for your savage and impolitic threat.

In another part of your proclamation you say, "But if the honors of
a military life are become the object of the Americans, let them seek
those honors under the banners of their rightful sovereign, and in
fighting the battles of the united British Empire, against our late
mutual and natural enemies." Surely! the union of absurdity with madness
was never marked in more distinguishable lines than these. Your rightful
sovereign, as you call him, may do well enough for you, who dare not
inquire into the humble capacities of the man; but we, who estimate
persons and things by their real worth, cannot suffer our judgments to
be so imposed upon; and unless it is your wish to see him exposed, it
ought to be your endeavor to keep him out of sight. The less you have
to say about him the better. We have done with him, and that ought to
be answer enough. You have been often told so. Strange! that the answer
must be so often repeated. You go a-begging with your king as with a
brat, or with some unsaleable commodity you were tired of; and thoug