upon your understandings. As to the latter, it were to be wished you
had preserved a line of conduct equal to the delicacy of your feelings.
You could not but know that men who sincerely love freedom disdain the
consideration of all evils necessary to attain it. Had not your own
hearts borne testimony to this truth, you might have learned it from
the annals of your own history; for in those annals instances of this
kind at least are not unprecedented. But should those instances be
insufficient, we pray you to read the unconquered mind of America.

That the acts of Parliament you transmitted were passed with singular
unanimity, we pretend not to doubt. You will pardon me, gentlemen, for
observing that the reasons of that unanimity are strongly marked in the
report of a committee of Congress agreed to on the 22d of April last,
and referred to in a late letter from Congress to Lord Viscount Howe
and Sir Henry Clinton.

You tell us you are willing "to consent to a cessation of hostilities
both by sea and land." It is difficult for rude Americans to determine
whether you are serious in this proposition or whether you mean to jest
with their simplicity. Upon a supposition, however, that you have too
much magnanimity to divert yourselves on an occasion of so much
importance to America, and, perhaps, not very trivial in the eyes of
those who sent you, permit me to assure you, on the sacred word of a
gentleman, that if you shall transport your troops to England, where
before long your Prince will certainly want their assistance, we shall
never follow them thither. We are not so romantically fond of fighting,
neither have we such regard for the city of London, as to commence a
crusade for the possession of that holy land. Thus you may be certain
hostilities will cease by land. It would be doing singular injustice to
your national character to suppose you are desirous of a like cessation