here it is otherwise; if you get
possession of a city here, you are obliged to shut yourselves up in it,
and can make no other use of it, than to spend your country's money in.
This is all the advantage you have drawn from New York; and you would
draw less from Philadelphia, because it requires more force to keep it,
and is much further from the sea. A pretty figure you and the Tories
would cut in this city, with a river full of ice, and a town full of
fire; for the immediate consequence of your getting here would be, that
you would be cannonaded out again, and the Tories be obliged to make
good the damage; and this sooner or later will be the fate of New York.

I wish to see the city saved, not so much from military as from natural
motives. 'Tis the hiding place of women and children, and Lord Howe's
proper business is with our armies. When I put all the circumstances
together which ought to be taken, I laugh at your notion of conquering
America. Because you lived in a little country, where an army might run
over the whole in a few days, and where a single company of soldiers
might put a multitude to the rout, you expected to find it the same
here. It is plain that you brought over with you all the narrow notions
you were bred up with, and imagined that a proclamation in the king's
name was to do great things; but Englishmen always travel for knowledge,
and your lordship, I hope, will return, if you return at all, much wiser
than you came.

We may be surprised by events we did not expect, and in that interval of
recollection you may gain some temporary advantage: such was the case
a few weeks ago, but we soon ripen again into reason, collect our
strength, and while you are preparing for a triumph, we come upon you
with a defeat. Such it has been, and such it would be were you to try
it a hundred times over. Were you to garrison the places you might march
over, in order to secure their subjection, (for remember you can do it
by no other means,) your army would be like a stream of water running to
nothing. By the time you extended from New York to Virginia, you would
be reduced to a string of drops not capable of hanging together; while
we, by retreating from State to State, like a river turning back upon
itself, would acquire strength in the same proportion as you lost it,
and in the end be capable of overwhelming you. The country, in the
meantime, would suffer, but it is a day of suffering, and we ought
to expect it.