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The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol. I

T >> Thomas Paine >> The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol. I




* General [Sir H.] Clinton's letter to Congress.

"He who lives in a glass house," says a Spanish proverb, "should
never begin throwing stones." This, gentlemen, is exactly your case,
and you must be the most ignorant of mankind, or suppose us so, not
to see on which side the balance of accounts will fall. There are
many other modes of retaliation, which, for several reasons, I choose
not to mention. But be assured of this, that the instant you put your
threat into execution, a counter-blow will follow it. If you openly
profess yourselves savages, it is high time we should treat you as
such, and if nothing but distress can recover you to reason, to
punish will become an office of charity.

While your fleet lay last winter in the Delaware, I offered my
service to the Pennsylvania Navy Board then at Trenton, as one who
would make a party with them, or any four or five gentlemen, on an
expedition down the river to set fire to it, and though it was not
then accepted, nor the thing personally attempted, it is more than
probable that your own folly will provoke a much more ruinous act.
Say not when mischief is done, that you had not warning, and remember
that we do not begin it, but mean to repay it. Thus much for your
savage and impolitic threat.

In another part of your proclamation you say, "But if the honors of a
military life are become the object of the Americans, let them seek
those honors under the banners of their rightful sovereign, and in
fighting the battles of the united British Empire, against our late
mutual and natural enemies." Surely! the union of absurdity with
madness was never marked in more distinguishable lines than these.
Your rightful sovereign, as you call him, may do well enough for you,
who dare not inquire into the humble capacities of the man; but we,
who estimate persons and things by their real worth, cannot suffer
our judgments to be so imposed upon; and unless it is your wish to
see him exposed, it ought to be your endeavor to keep him out of
sight. The less you have to say about him the better. We have done
with him, and that ought to be answer enough. You have been often
told so. Strange! that the answer must be so often repeated. You go
a-begging with your king as with a brat, or with some unsaleable
commodity you were tired of; and though every body tells you no, no,
still you keep hawking him about. But there is one that will have him
in a little time, and as we have no inclination to disappoint you of
a customer, we bid nothing for him.

The impertinent folly of the paragraph that I have just quoted,
deserves no other notice than to be laughed at and thrown by, but the
principle on which it is founded is detestable. We are invited to
submit to a man who has attempted by every cruelty to destroy us, and
to join him in making war against France, who is already at war
against him for our support.

Can Bedlam, in concert with Lucifer, form a more mad and devilish
request? Were it possible a people could sink into such apostacy they
would deserve to be swept from the earth like the inhabitants of
Sodom and Gomorrah. The proposition is an universal affront to the
rank which man holds in the creation, and an indignity to him who
placed him there. It supposes him made up without a spark of honor,
and under no obligation to God or man.

What sort of men or Christians must you suppose the Americans to be,
who, after seeing their most humble petitions insultingly rejected;
the most grievous laws passed to distress them in every quarter; an
undeclared war let loose upon them, and Indians and negroes invited
to the slaughter; who, after seeing their kinsmen murdered, their
fellow citizens starved to death in prisons, and their houses and
property destroyed and burned; who, after the most serious appeals to
heaven, the most solemn abjuration by oath of all government
connected with you, and the most heart-felt pledges and protestations
of faith to each other; and who, after soliciting the friendship, and
entering into alliances with other nations, should at last break
through all these obligations, civil and divine, by complying with
your horrid and infernal proposal. Ought we ever after to be
considered as a part of the human race? Or ought we not rather to be
blotted from the society of mankind, and become a spectacle of misery
to the world? But there is something in corruption, which, like a
jaundiced eye, transfers the color of itself to the object it looks
upon, and sees every thing stained and impure; for unless you were
capable of such conduct yourselves, you would never have supposed
such a character in us. The offer fixes your infamy. It exhibits you
as a nation without faith; with whom oaths and treaties are
considered as trifles, and the breaking them as the breaking of a
bubble. Regard to decency, or to rank, might have taught you better;
or pride inspired you, though virtue could not. There is not left a
step in the degradation of character to which you can now descend;
you have put your foot on the ground floor, and the key of the
dungeon is turned upon you.

That the invitation may want nothing of being a complete monster, you
have thought proper to finish it with an assertion which has no
foundation, either in fact or philosophy; and as Mr. Ferguson, your
secretary, is a man of letters, and has made civil society his study,
and published a treatise on that subject, I address this part to him.

In the close of the paragraph which I last quoted, France is styled
the "natural enemy" of England, and by way of lugging us into some
strange idea, she is styled "the late mutual and natural enemy" of
both countries. I deny that she ever was the natural enemy of either;
and that there does not exist in nature such a principle. The
expression is an unmeaning barbarism, and wholly unphilosophical,
when applied to beings of the same species, let their station in the
creation be what it may. We have a perfect idea of a natural enemy
when we think of the devil, because the enmity is perpetual,
unalterable and unabateable. It admits, neither of peace, truce, or
treaty; consequently the warfare is eternal, and therefore it is
natural. But man with man cannot arrange in the same opposition.
Their quarrels are accidental and equivocally created. They become
friends or enemies as the change of temper, or the cast of interest
inclines them. The Creator of man did not constitute them the natural
enemy of each other. He has not made any one order of beings so. Even
wolves may quarrel, still they herd together. If any two nations are
so, then must all nations be so, otherwise it is not nature but
custom, and the offence frequently originates with the accuser.
England is as truly the natural enemy of France, as France is of
England, and perhaps more so. Separated from the rest of Europe, she
has contracted an unsocial habit of manners, and imagines in others
the jealousy she creates in herself. Never long satisfied with peace,
she supposes the discontent universal, and buoyed up with her own
importance, conceives herself the only object pointed at. The
expression has been often used, and always with a fraudulent design;
for when the idea of a natural enemy is conceived, it prevents all
other inquiries, and the real cause of the quarrel is hidden in the
universality of the conceit. Men start at the notion of a natural
enemy, and ask no other question. The cry obtains credit like the
alarm of a mad dog, and is one of those kind of tricks, which, by
operating on the common passions, secures their interest through
their folly.

But we, sir, are not to be thus imposed upon. We live in a large
world, and have extended our ideas beyond the limits and prejudices
of an island. We hold out the right hand of friendship to all the
universe, and we conceive that there is a sociality in the manners of
France, which is much better disposed to peace and negotiation than
that of England, and until the latter becomes more civilized, she
cannot expect to live long at peace with any power. Her common
language is vulgar and offensive, and children suck in with their
milk the rudiments of insult- "The arm of Britain! The mighty arm of
Britain! Britain that shakes the earth to its center and its poles!
The scourge of France! The terror of the world! That governs with a
nod, and pours down vengeance like a God." This language neither
makes a nation great or little; but it shows a savageness of manners,
and has a tendency to keep national animosity alive. The
entertainments of the stage are calculated to the same end, and
almost every public exhibition is tinctured with insult. Yet England
is always in dread of France,- terrified at the apprehension of an
invasion, suspicious of being outwitted in a treaty, and privately
cringing though she is publicly offending. Let her, therefore, reform
her manners and do justice, and she will find the idea of a natural
enemy to be only a phantom of her own imagination.

Little did I think, at this period of the war, to see a proclamation
which could promise you no one useful purpose whatever, and tend only
to expose you. One would think that you were just awakened from a
four years' dream, and knew nothing of what had passed in the
interval. Is this a time to be offering pardons, or renewing the long
forgotten subjects of charters and taxation? Is it worth your while,
after every force has failed you, to retreat under the shelter of
argument and persuasion? Or can you think that we, with nearly half
your army prisoners, and in alliance with France, are to be begged or
threatened into submission by a piece of paper? But as commissioners
at a hundred pounds sterling a week each, you conceive yourselves
bound to do something, and the genius of ill-fortune told you, that
you must write.

For my own part, I have not put pen to paper these several months.
Convinced of our superiority by the issue of every campaign, I was
inclined to hope, that that which all the rest of the world now see,
would become visible to you, and therefore felt unwilling to ruffle
your temper by fretting you with repetitions and discoveries. There
have been intervals of hesitation in your conduct, from which it
seemed a pity to disturb you, and a charity to leave you to
yourselves. You have often stopped, as if you intended to think, but
your thoughts have ever been too early or too late.

There was a time when Britain disdained to answer, or even hear a
petition from America. That time is past and she in her turn is
petitioning our acceptance. We now stand on higher ground, and offer
her peace; and the time will come when she, perhaps in vain, will ask
it from us. The latter case is as probable as the former ever was.
She cannot refuse to acknowledge our independence with greater
obstinacy than she before refused to repeal her laws; and if America
alone could bring her to the one, united with France she will reduce
her to the other. There is something in obstinacy which differs from
every other passion; whenever it fails it never recovers, but either
breaks like iron, or crumbles sulkily away like a fractured arch.
Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest; their
suffering and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the
first wound is mortal. You have already begun to give it up, and you
will, from the natural construction of the vice, find yourselves both
obliged and inclined to do so.

If you look back you see nothing but loss and disgrace. If you look
forward the same scene continues, and the close is an impenetrable
gloom. You may plan and execute little mischiefs, but are they worth
the expense they cost you, or will such partial evils have any effect
on the general cause? Your expedition to Egg Harbor, will be felt at
a distance like an attack upon a hen-roost, and expose you in Europe,
with a sort of childish frenzy. Is it worth while to keep an army to
protect you in writing proclamations, or to get once a year into
winter quarters? Possessing yourselves of towns is not conquest, but
convenience, and in which you will one day or other be trepanned.
Your retreat from Philadelphia, was only a timely escape, and your
next expedition may be less fortunate.

It would puzzle all the politicians in the universe to conceive what
you stay for, or why you should have stayed so long. You are
prosecuting a war in which you confess you have neither object nor
hope, and that conquest, could it be effected, would not repay the
charges: in the mean while the rest of your affairs are running to
ruin, and a European war kindling against you. In such a situation,
there is neither doubt nor difficulty; the first rudiments of reason
will determine the choice, for if peace can be procured with more
advantages than even a conquest can be obtained, he must be an idiot
indeed that hesitates.

But you are probably buoyed up by a set of wretched mortals, who,
having deceived themselves, are cringing, with the duplicity of a
spaniel, for a little temporary bread. Those men will tell you just
what you please. It is their interest to amuse, in order to lengthen
out their protection. They study to keep you amongst them for that
very purpose; and in proportion as you disregard their advice, and
grow callous to their complaints, they will stretch into
improbability, and season their flattery the higher. Characters like
these are to be found in every country, and every country will
despise them.

COMMON SENSE.

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 20, 1778.

THE CRISIS

VII.

TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.

THERE are stages in the business of serious life in which to amuse is
cruel, but to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little consequence,
in the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a
kind of mutual consent, to the impositions of each other. That
England has long been under the influence of delusion or mistake,
needs no other proof than the unexpected and wretched situation that
she is now involved in: and so powerful has been the influence, that
no provision was ever made or thought of against the misfortune,
because the possibility of its happening was never conceived.

The general and successful resistance of America, the conquest of
Burgoyne, and a war in France, were treated in parliament as the
dreams of a discontented opposition, or a distempered imagination.
They were beheld as objects unworthy of a serious thought, and the
bare intimation of them afforded the ministry a triumph of laughter.
Short triumph indeed! For everything which has been predicted has
happened, and all that was promised has failed. A long series of
politics so remarkably distinguished by a succession of misfortunes,
without one alleviating turn, must certainly have something in it
systematically wrong. It is sufficient to awaken the most credulous
into suspicion, and the most obstinate into thought. Either the means
in your power are insufficient, or the measures ill planned; either
the execution has been bad, or the thing attempted impracticable; or,
to speak more emphatically, either you are not able or heaven is not
willing. For, why is it that you have not conquered us? Who, or what
has prevented you? You have had every opportunity that you could
desire, and succeeded to your utmost wish in every preparatory means.
Your fleets and armies have arrived in America without an accident.
No uncommon fortune has intervened. No foreign nation has interfered
until the time which you had allotted for victory was passed. The
opposition, either in or out of parliament, neither disconcerted your
measures, retarded or diminished your force. They only foretold your
fate. Every ministerial scheme was carried with as high a hand as if
the whole nation had been unanimous. Every thing wanted was asked
for, and every thing asked for was granted.

A greater force was not within the compass of your abilities to send,
and the time you sent it was of all others the most favorable. You
were then at rest with the whole world beside. You had the range of
every court in Europe uncontradicted by us. You amused us with a tale
of commissioners of peace, and under that disguise collected a
numerous army and came almost unexpectedly upon us. The force was
much greater than we looked for; and that which we had to oppose it
with, was unequal in numbers, badly armed, and poorly disciplined;
beside which, it was embodied only for a short time, and expired
within a few months after your arrival. We had governments to form;
measures to concert; an army to train, and every necessary article to
import or to create. Our non-importation scheme had exhausted our
stores, and your command by sea intercepted our supplies. We were a
people unknown, and unconnected with the political world, and
strangers to the disposition of foreign powers. Could you possibly
wish for a more favorable conjunction of circumstances? Yet all these
have happened and passed away, and, as it were, left you with a
laugh. There are likewise, events of such an original nativity as can
never happen again, unless a new world should arise from the ocean.

If any thing can be a lesson to presumption, surely the circumstances
of this war will have their effect. Had Britain been defeated by any
European power, her pride would have drawn consolation from the
importance of her conquerors; but in the present case, she is
excelled by those that she affected to despise, and her own opinions
retorting upon herself, become an aggravation of her disgrace.
Misfortune and experience are lost upon mankind, when they produce
neither reflection nor reformation. Evils, like poisons, have their
uses, and there are diseases which no other remedy can reach. It has
been the crime and folly of England to suppose herself invincible,
and that, without acknowledging or perceiving that a full third of
her strength was drawn from the country she is now at war with. The
arm of Britain has been spoken of as the arm of the Almighty, and she
has lived of late as if she thought the whole world created for her
diversion. Her politics, instead of civilizing, has tended to
brutalize mankind, and under the vain, unmeaning title of "Defender
of the Faith," she has made war like an Indian against the religion
of humanity. Her cruelties in the East Indies will never be
forgotten, and it is somewhat remarkable that the produce of that
ruined country, transported to America, should there kindle up a war
to punish the destroyer. The chain is continued, though with a
mysterious kind of uniformity both in the crime and the punishment.
The latter runs parallel with the former, and time and fate will give
it a perfect illustration.

When information is withheld, ignorance becomes a reasonable excuse;
and one would charitably hope that the people of England do not
encourage cruelty from choice but from mistake. Their recluse
situation, surrounded by the sea, preserves them from the calamities
of war, and keeps them in the dark as to the conduct of their own
armies. They see not, therefore they feel not. They tell the tale
that is told them and believe it, and accustomed to no other news
than their own, they receive it, stripped of its horrors and prepared
for the palate of the nation, through the channel of the London
Gazette. They are made to believe that their generals and armies
differ from those of other nations, and have nothing of rudeness or
barbarity in them. They suppose them what they wish them to be. They
feel a disgrace in thinking otherwise, and naturally encourage the
belief from a partiality to themselves. There was a time when I felt
the same prejudices, and reasoned from the same errors; but
experience, sad and painful experience, has taught me better. What
the conduct of former armies was, I know not, but what the conduct of
the present is, I well know. It is low, cruel, indolent and
profligate; and had the people of America no other cause for
separation than what the army has occasioned, that alone is cause
sufficient.

The field of politics in England is far more extensive than that of
news. Men have a right to reason for themselves, and though they
cannot contradict the intelligence in the London Gazette, they may
frame upon it what sentiments they please. But the misfortune is,
that a general ignorance has prevailed over the whole nation
respecting America. The ministry and the minority have both been
wrong. The former was always so, the latter only lately so. Politics,
to be executively right, must have a unity of means and time, and a
defect in either overthrows the whole. The ministry rejected the
plans of the minority while they were practicable, and joined in them
when they became impracticable. From wrong measures they got into
wrong time, and have now completed the circle of absurdity by closing
it upon themselves.

I happened to come to America a few months before the breaking out of
hostilities. I found the disposition of the people such, that they
might have been led by a thread and governed by a reed. Their
suspicion was quick and penetrating, but their attachment to Britain
was obstinate, and it was at that time a kind of treason to speak
against it. They disliked the ministry, but they esteemed the nation.
Their idea of grievance operated without resentment, and their single
object was reconciliation. Bad as I believed the ministry to be, I
never conceived them capable of a measure so rash and wicked as the
commencing of hostilities; much less did I imagine the nation would
encourage it. I viewed the dispute as a kind of law-suit, in which I
supposed the parties would find a way either to decide or settle it.
I had no thoughts of independence or of arms. The world could not
then have persuaded me that I should be either a soldier or an
author. If I had any talents for either, they were buried in me, and
might ever have continued so, had not the necessity of the times
dragged and driven them into action. I had formed my plan of life,
and conceiving myself happy, wished every body else so. But when the
country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my
ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir. Those
who had been long settled had something to defend; those who had just
come had something to pursue; and the call and the concern was equal
and universal. For in a country where all men were once adventurers,
the difference of a few years in their arrival could make none in
their right.

The breaking out of hostilities opened a new suspicion in the
politics of America, which, though at that time very rare, has since
been proved to be very right. What I allude to is, "a secret and
fixed determination in the British Cabinet to annex America to the
crown of England as a conquered country." If this be taken as the
object, then the whole line of conduct pursued by the ministry,
though rash in its origin and ruinous in its consequences, is
nevertheless uniform and consistent in its parts. It applies to every
case and resolves every difficulty. But if taxation, or any thing
else, be taken in its room, there is no proportion between the object
and the charge. Nothing but the whole soil and property of the
country can be placed as a possible equivalent against the millions
which the ministry expended. No taxes raised in America could
possibly repay it. A revenue of two millions sterling a year would
not discharge the sum and interest accumulated thereon, in twenty
years.

Reconciliation never appears to have been the wish or the object of
the administration; they looked on conquest as certain and
infallible, and, under that persuasion, sought to drive the Americans
into what they might style a general rebellion, and then, crushing
them with arms in their hands, reap the rich harvest of a general
confiscation, and silence them for ever. The dependents at court were
too numerous to be provided for in England. The market for plunder in
the East Indies was over; and the profligacy of government required
that a new mine should be opened, and that mine could be no other
than America, conquered and forfeited. They had no where else to go.
Every other channel was drained; and extravagance, with the thirst of
a drunkard, was gaping for supplies.

If the ministry deny this to have been their plan, it becomes them to
explain what was their plan. For either they have abused us in
coveting property they never labored for, or they have abused you in
expending an amazing sum upon an incompetent object. Taxation, as I
mentioned before, could never be worth the charge of obtaining it by
arms; and any kind of formal obedience which America could have made,
would have weighed with the lightness of a laugh against such a load
of expense. It is therefore most probable that the ministry will at
last justify their policy by their dishonesty, and openly declare,
that their original design was conquest: and, in this case, it well
becomes the people of England to consider how far the nation would
have been benefited by the success.

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