king of Britain can look up to heaven for help against us: a common
murderer, a highwayman, or a house-breaker, has as good a pretence as
he.

'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through
a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain
has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of
flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [fifteenth] century the
whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven
back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was
performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman,
Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to
spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from
ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses;
they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short;
the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than
before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the
touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to
light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact,
they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary
apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the
hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many
a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially
solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.

As I was with the troops at Fort Lee, and marched with them to the
edge of Pennsylvania, I am well acquainted with many circumstances,
which those who live at a distance know but little or nothing of. Our
situation there was exceedingly cramped, the place being a narrow
neck of land between the North River and the Hackensack. Our force