you have not, it would be civil in you to let your proclamations
alone for the present; otherwise, you will ruin more Tories by your
grace and favor, than you will Whigs by your arms.

Were you to obtain possession of this city, you would not know what
to do with it more than to plunder it. To hold it in the manner you
hold New York, would be an additional dead weight upon your hands;
and if a general conquest is your object, you had better be without
the city than with it. When you have defeated all our armies, the
cities will fall into your hands of themselves; but to creep into
them in the manner you got into Princeton, Trenton, &c. is like
robbing an orchard in the night before the fruit be ripe, and running
away in the morning. Your experiment in the Jerseys is sufficient to
teach you that you have something more to do than barely to get into
other people's houses; and your new converts, to whom you promised
all manner of protection, and seduced into new guilt by pardoning
them from their former virtues, must begin to have a very
contemptible opinion both of your power and your policy. Your
authority in the Jerseys is now reduced to the small circle which
your army occupies, and your proclamation is no where else seen
unless it be to be laughed at. The mighty subduers of the continent
have retreated into a nutshell, and the proud forgivers of our sins
are fled from those they came to pardon; and all this at a time when
they were despatching vessel after vessel to England with the great
news of every day. In short, you have managed your Jersey expedition
so very dexterously, that the dead only are conquerors, because none
will dispute the ground with them.

In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in you had
only armies to contend with; in this case you have both an army and a