is not in our situation, and that alone,
without any other explanation, is enough. The British Parliament suppose
they have many friends in America, and that, when all chance of conquest
is over, they will be able to draw her from her alliance with France.
Now, if I have any conception of the human heart, they will fail in this
more than in any thing that they have yet tried.

This part of the business is not a question of policy only, but of honor
and honesty; and the proposition will have in it something so visibly
low and base, that their partisans, if they have any, will be ashamed of
it. Men are often hurt by a mean action who are not startled at a wicked
one, and this will be such a confession of inability, such a declaration
of servile thinking, that the scandal of it will ruin all their hopes.

In short, we have nothing to do but to go on with vigor and
determination. The enemy is yet in our country. They hold New York,
Charleston, and Savannah, and the very being in those places is an
offence, and a part of offensive war, and until they can be driven from
them, or captured in them, it would be folly in us to listen to an idle
tale. I take it for granted that the British ministry are sinking under
the impossibility of carrying on the war. Let them then come to a fair
and open peace with France, Spain, Holland and America, in the manner
they ought to do; but until then, we can have nothing to say to them.

COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, May 22, 1782.

A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS

TO SIR GUY CARLETON.

IT is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune; and I
address this to you in behalf even of an enemy, a captain in the British
service, now on his way to the headquarters of the American army, and
unfortunately doomed to death for a crime not his own. A sentence so
extraordinary, an execution so repugnant to every human sensation, ought
never to be told without the circumstances which produced it: and as the
destined victim is yet in existence, and in your hands rests his life or
death, I shall briefly state the case, and the melancholy consequence.

Captain Huddy, of the Jersey militia, was attacked in a small fort on
Tom's River, by a party of refugees in the British pay and service, was
made prisoner, together with his company, carried to New York and lodged
in the provost of that city: about