three weeks after which, he was taken
out of the provost down to the water-side, put into a boat, and brought
again upon the Jersey shore, and there, contrary to the practice of all
nations but savages, was hung up on a tree, and left hanging till found
by our people who took him down and buried him. The inhabitants of that
part of the country where the murder was committed, sent a deputation
to General Washington with a full and certified statement of the fact.
Struck, as every human breast must be, with such brutish outrage, and
determined both to punish and prevent it for the future, the General
represented the case to General Clinton, who then commanded, and
demanded that the refugee officer who ordered and attended the
execution, and whose name is Lippencott, should be delivered up as
a murderer; and in case of refusal, that the person of some British
officer should suffer in his stead. The demand, though not refused, has
not been complied with; and the melancholy lot (not by selection, but by
casting lots) has fallen upon Captain Asgill, of the Guards, who, as I
have already mentioned, is on his way from Lancaster to camp, a
martyr to the general wickedness of the cause he engaged in, and the
ingratitude of those whom he served.

The first reflection which arises on this black business is, what sort
of men must Englishmen be, and what sort of order and discipline do
they preserve in their army, when in the immediate place of their
headquarters, and under the eye and nose of their commander-in-chief,
a prisoner can be taken at pleasure from his confinement, and his death
made a matter of sport.

The history of the most savage Indians does not produce instances
exactly of this kind. They, at least, have a formality in their
punishments. With them it is the horridness of revenge, but with your
army it is a still greater crime, the horridness of diversion. The
British generals who have succeeded each other, from the time of General
Gage to yourself, have all affected to speak in language that they have
no right to. In their proclamations, their addresses, their letters
to General Washington, and their supplications to Congress (for they
deserve no other name) they talk of British honor, British generosity,
and British clemency, as if those things were matters of fact; whereas,
we whose eyes are open, who speak the same language with yourselves,
many of whom were born on the same spot with you, and who can no more
b