uzzle all the politicians in the universe to conceive what you
stay for, or why you should have stayed so long. You are prosecuting
a war in which you confess you have neither object nor hope, and that
conquest, could it be effected, would not repay the charges: in the mean
while the rest of your affairs are running to ruin, and a European war
kindling against you. In such a situation, there is neither doubt nor
difficulty; the first rudiments of reason will determine the choice, for
if peace can be procured with more advantages than even a conquest can
be obtained, he must be an idiot indeed that hesitates.

But you are probably buoyed up by a set of wretched mortals, who, having
deceived themselves, are cringing, with the duplicity of a spaniel, for
a little temporary bread. Those men will tell you just what you
please. It is their interest to amuse, in order to lengthen out their
protection. They study to keep you amongst them for that very purpose;
and in proportion as you disregard their advice, and grow callous to
their complaints, they will stretch into improbability, and season their
flattery the higher. Characters like these are to be found in every
country, and every country will despise them.

COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 20, 1778.

THE CRISIS VII. TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

THERE are stages in the business of serious life in which to amuse is
cruel, but to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence, in
the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a kind of
mutual consent, to the impositions of each other. That England has long
been under the influence of delusion or mistake, needs no other proof
than the unexpected and wretched situation that she is now involved in:
and so powerful has been the influence, that no provision was ever made
or thought of against the misfortune, because the possibility of its
happening was never conceived.

The general and successful resistance of America, the conquest of
Burgoyne, and a war in France, were treated in parliament as the dreams
of a discontented opposition, or a distempered imagination. They were
beheld as objects unworthy of a serious thought, and the bare intimation
of them afforded the ministry a triumph of laughter. Short triumph
indeed! For everything which has been predicted has happened, and all
that was promised has failed. A long series of politics so remarkably
dis