The Crisis XI
Thomas Paine
[An open letter on the present state of news; 31
May, 1782; from Philadelphia]
SINCE the arrival of two, if not three packets in quick succession,
at New York, from England, a variety of unconnected news has
circulated through the country, and afforded as great a variety of
speculation.
That something is the matter in the cabinet and councils of our
enemies, on the other side of the water, is certain- that they have
run their length of madness, and are under the necessity of changing
their measures may easily be seen into; but to what this change of
measures may amount, or how far it may correspond with our interest,
happiness and duty, is yet uncertain; and from what we have hitherto
experienced, we have too much reason to suspect them in every thing.
I do not address this publication so much to the people of America
as to the British ministry, whoever they may be, for if it is their
intention to promote any kind of negotiation, it is proper they
should know beforehand, that the United States have as much honor as
bravery; and that they are no more to be seduced from their alliance
than their allegiance; that their line of politics is formed and not
dependent, like that of their enemy, on chance and accident.
On our part, in order to know, at any time, what the British
government will do, we have only to find out what they ought not to
do, and this last will be their conduct. Forever changing and
forever wrong; too distant from America to improve in circumstances,
and too unwise to foresee them; scheming without principle, and
executing without probability, their whole line of management has
hitherto been blunder and baseness. Every campaign has added to
their loss, and every year to their disgrace; till unable to go on,
and ashamed to go back, their politics have come to a halt, and all
their fine prospects to a halter.
Could our affections forgive, or humanity forget the wounds of an
injured country- we might, under the influence of a momentary
oblivion, stand still and laugh. But they are engraven where no
amusement can conceal them, and of a kind for which there is no
recompense. Can ye restore to us the beloved dead? Can ye say to the
grave, give up the murdered? Can ye obliterate from our memories
those who are no more? Think not then to tamper with our feelings by
an insidious contrivance, nor suffocate our humanity by seducing us
to dishonor.
In March 1780, I published part of the Crisis, No. VIII., in the
newspapers, but did not conclude it in the following papers, and the
remainder has lain by me till the present day.
There appeared about that time some disposition in the British
cabinet to cease the further prosecution of the war, and as I had
formed my opinion that whenever such a design should take place, it
would be accompanied by a dishonorable proposition to America,
respecting France, I had suppressed the remainder of that number,
not to expose the baseness of any such proposition. But the arrival
of the next news from England, declared her determination to go on
with the war, and consequently as the political object I had then in
view was not become a subject, it was unnecessary in me to bring it
forward, which is the reason it was never published.
The matter which I allude to in the unpublished part, I shall now
make a quotation of, and apply it as the more enlarged state of
things, at this day, shall make convenient or necessary.
It was as follows:
"By the speeches which have appeared from the British
Parliament, it is easy to perceive to what impolitic and imprudent
excesses their passions and prejudices have, in every instance,
carried them during the present war. Provoked at the upright and
honorable treaty between America and France, they imagined that
nothing more was necessary to be done to prevent its final
ratification, than to promise, through the agency of their
commissioners (Carlisle, Eden, and Johnstone) a repeal of their once
offensive acts of Parliament. The vanity of the conceit, was as
unpardonable as the experiment was impolitic. And so convinced am I
of their wrong ideas of America, that I shall not wonder, if, in
their last stage of political frenzy, they propose to her to break
her alliance with France, and enter into one with them. Such a
proposition, should it ever be made, and it has been already more
than once hinted at in Parliament, would discover such a disposition
to perfidiousness, and such disregard of honor and morals, as would
add the finishing vice to national corruption.- I do not mention
this to put America on the watch, but to put England on her guard,
that she do not, in the looseness of her heart, envelop in disgrace
every fragment of reputation."- Thus far the quotation.
By the complection of some part of the news which has transpired
through the New York papers, it seems probable that this insidious
era in the British politics is beginning to make its appearance. I
wish it may not; for that which is a disgrace to human nature,
throws something of a shade over all the human character, and each
individual feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.
The policy of Britain has ever been to divide America in some way
or other. In the beginning of the dispute, she practised every art
to prevent or destroy the union of the states, well knowing that
could she once get them to stand singly, she could conquer them
unconditionally. Failing in this project in America, she renewed it
in Europe; and, after the alliance had taken place, she made secret
offers to France to induce her to give up America; and what is still
more extraordinary, she at the same time made propositions to Dr.
Franklin, then in Paris, the very court to which she was secretly
applying, to draw off America from France. But this is not all.
On the 14th of September, 1778, the British court, through their
secretary, Lord Weymouth, made application to the Marquis
d'Almadovar, the Spanish ambassador at London, to "ask the
mediation," for these were the words, of the court of Spain,
for the purpose of negotiating a peace with France, leaving America
(as I shall hereafter show) out of the question. Spain readily
offered her mediation, and likewise the city of Madrid as the place
of conference, but withal, proposed, that the United States of
America should be invited to the treaty, and considered as
independent during the time the business was negotiating. But this
was not the view of England. She wanted to draw France from the war,
that she might uninterruptedly pour out all her force and fury upon
America; and being disappointed in this plan, as well through the
open and generous conduct of Spain, as the determination of France,
she refused the mediation which she had solicited.
I shall now give some extracts from the justifying memorial of the
Spanish court, in which she has set the conduct and character of
Britain, with respect to America, in a clear and striking point of
light.
The memorial, speaking of the refusal of the British court to meet
in conference with commissioners from the United States, who were to
be considered as independent during the time of the conference,
says,
"It is a thing very extraordinary and even
ridiculous, that the court of London, who treats the colonies as
independent, not only in acting, but of right, during the war,
should have a repugnance to treat them as such only in acting
during a truce, or suspension of hostilities. The convention of
Saratoga; the reputing General Burgoyne as a lawful prisoner, in
order to suspend his trial; the exchange and liberation of other
prisoners made from the colonies; the having named commissioners
to go and supplicate the Americans, at their own doors, request
peace of them, and treat with them and the Congress: and, finally,
by a thousand other acts of this sort, authorized by the court of
London, which have been, and are true signs of the acknowledgment
of their independence.
"In aggravation of all the foregoing, at the same time the
British cabinet answered the King of Spain in the terms already
mentioned, they were insinuating themselves at the court of France
by means of secret emissaries, and making very great offers to
her, to abandon the colonies and make peace with England. But
there is yet more; for at this same time the English ministry were
treating, by means of another certain emissary, with Dr. Franklin,
minister plenipotentiary from the colonies, residing at Paris, to
whom they made various proposals to disunite them from France, and
accommodate matters with England.
"From what has been observed, it evidently follows, that the
whole of the British politics was, to disunite the two courts of
Paris and Madrid, by means of the suggestions and offers which she
separately made to them; and also to separate the colonies from
their treaties and engagements entered into with France, and
induce them to arm against the house of Bourbon, or more probably
to oppress them when they found, from breaking their engagements,
that they stood alone and without protection.
"This, therefore, is the net they laid for the American
states; that is to say, to tempt them with flattering and very
magnificent promises to come to an accommodation with them,
exclusive of any intervention of Spain or France, that the British
ministry might always remain the arbiters of the fate of the
colonies.
"But the Catholic king (the King of Spain) faithful on the
one part of the engagements which bind him to the Most Christian
king (the King of France) his nephew; just and upright on the
other, to his own subjects, whom he ought to protect and guard
against so many insults; and finally, full of humanity and
compassion for the Americans and other individuals who suffer in
the present war; he is determined to pursue and prosecute it, and
to make all the efforts in his power, until he can obtain a solid
and permanent peace, with full and satisfactory securities that it
shall be observed."
Thus far the memorial; a translation of which into English, may be
seen in full, under the head of State Papers, in the Annual
Register, for 1779.
The extracts I have here given, serve to show the various endeavors
and contrivances of the enemy, to draw France from her connection
with America, and to prevail on her to make a separate peace with
England, leaving America totally out of the question, and at the
mercy of a merciless, unprincipled enemy. The opinion, likewise,
which Spain has formed of the British cabinet's character for
meanness and perfidiousness, is so exactly the opinion of America
respecting it, that the memorial, in this instance, contains our own
statements and language; for people, however remote, who think
alike, will unavoidably speak alike.
Thus we see the insidious use which Britain endeavored to make of
the propositions of peace under the mediation of Spain. I shall now
proceed to the second proposition under the mediation of the Emperor
of Germany and the Empress of Russia; the general outline of which
was, that a congress of the several powers at war should meet at
Vienna, in 1781, to settle preliminaries of peace.
I could wish myself at liberty to make use of all the information
which I am possessed of on this subject, but as there is a delicacy
in the matter, I do not conceive it prudent, at least at present, to
make references and quotations in the same manner as I have done
with respect to the mediation of Spain, who published the whole
proceedings herself; and therefore, what comes from me, on this part
of the business, must rest on my own credit with the public,
assuring them, that when the whole proceedings, relative to the
proposed Congress of Vienna shall appear, they will find my account
not only true, but studiously moderate.
We know at the time this mediation was on the carpet, the
expectation of the British king and ministry ran high with respect
to the conquest of America. The English packet which was taken with
the mail on board, and carried into l'Orient, in France, contained
letters from Lord G. Germaine to Sir Henry Clinton, which expressed
in the fullest terms the ministerial idea of a total conquest.
Copies of those letters were sent to congress and published in the
newspapers of last year. Colonel [John] Laurens brought over the
originals, some of which, signed in the handwriting of the then
secretary, Germaine, are now in my possession.
Filled with these high ideas, nothing could be more insolent
towards America than the language of the British court on the
proposed mediation. A peace with France and Spain she anxiously
solicited; but America, as before, was to be left to her mercy,
neither would she hear any proposition for admitting an agent from
the United States into the congress of Vienna.
On the other hand, France, with an open, noble and manly
determination, and a fidelity of a good ally, would hear no
proposition for a separate peace, nor even meet in congress at
Vienna, without an agent from America: and likewise that the
independent character of the United States, represented by the
agent, should be fully and unequivocally defined and settled before
any conference should be entered on. The reasoning of the court of
France on the several propositions of the two imperial courts, which
relate to us, is rather in the style of an American than an ally,
and she advocated the cause of America as if she had been America
herself.- Thus the second mediation, like the first, proved
ineffectual.
But since that time, a reverse of fortune has overtaken the British
arms, and all their high expectations are dashed to the ground. The
noble exertions to the southward under General [Nathaniel] Greene;
the successful operations of the allied arms in the Chesapeake; the
loss of most of their islands in the West Indies, and Minorca in the
Mediterranean; the persevering spirit of Spain against Gibraltar;
the expected capture of Jamaica; the failure of making a separate
peace with Holland, and the expense of an hundred millions sterling,
by which all these fine losses were obtained, have read them a loud
lesson of disgraceful misfortune and necessity has called on them to
change their ground.
In this situation of confusion and despair, their present councils
have no fixed character. It is now the hurricane months of British
politics. Every day seems to have a storm of its own, and they are
scudding under the bare poles of hope. Beaten, but not humble;
condemned, but not penitent; they act like men trembling at fate and
catching at a straw. From this convulsion, in the entrails of their
politics, it is more than probable, that the mountain groaning in
labor, will bring forth a mouse, as to its size, and a monster in
its make. They will try on America the same insidious arts they
tried on France and Spain.
We sometimes experience sensations to which language is not equal.
The conception is too bulky to be born alive, and in the torture of
thinking, we stand dumb. Our feelings, imprisoned by their
magnitude, find no way out- and, in the struggle of expression,
every finger tries to be a tongue. The machinery of the body seems
too little for the mind, and we look about for helps to show our
thoughts by. Such must be the sensation of America, whenever
Britain, teeming with corruption, shall propose to her to sacrifice
her faith.
But, exclusive of the wickedness, there is a personal offence
contained in every such attempt. It is calling us villains: for no
man asks the other to act the villain unless he believes him
inclined to be one. No man attempts to seduce the truly honest
woman. It is the supposed looseness of her mind that starts the
thoughts of seduction, and he who offers it calls her a prostitute.
Our pride is always hurt by the same propositions which offend our
principles; for when we are shocked at the crime, we are wounded by
the suspicion of our compliance.
Could I convey a thought that might serve to regulate the public
mind, I would not make the interest of the alliance the basis of
defending it. All the world are moved by interest, and it affords
them nothing to boast of. But I would go a step higher, and defend
it on the ground of honor and principle. That our public affairs
have flourished under the alliance- that it was wisely made, and has
been nobly executed- that by its assistance we are enabled to
preserve our country from conquest, and expel those who sought our
destruction- that it is our true interest to maintain it unimpaired,
and that while we do so no enemy can conquer us, are matters which
experience has taught us, and the common good of ourselves,
abstracted from principles of faith and honor, would lead us to
maintain the connection.
But over and above the mere letter of the alliance, we have been
nobly and generously treated, and have had the same respect and
attention paid to us, as if we had been an old established country.
To oblige and be obliged is fair work among mankind, and we want an
opportunity of showing to the world that we are a people sensible of
kindness and worthy of confidence. Character is to us, in our
present circumstances, of more importance than interest. We are a
young nation, just stepping upon the stage of public life, and the
eye of the world is upon us to see how we act. We have an enemy who
is watching to destroy our reputation, and who will go any length to
gain some evidence against us, that may serve to render our conduct
suspected, and our character odious; because, could she accomplish
this, wicked as it is, the world would withdraw from us, as from a
people not to be trusted, and our task would then become difficult.
There is nothing which sets the character of a nation in a higher
or lower light with others, than the faithfully fulfilling, or
perfidiously breaking, of treaties. They are things not to be
tampered with: and should Britain, which seems very probable,
propose to seduce America into such an act of baseness, it would
merit from her some mark of unusual detestation. It is one of those
extraordinary instances in which we ought not to be contented with
the bare negative of Congress, because it is an affront on the
multitude as well as on the government. It goes on the supposition
that the public are not honest men, and that they may be managed by
contrivance, though they cannot be conquered by arms. But, let the
world and Britain know, that we are neither to be bought nor sold;
that our mind is great and fixed; our prospect clear; and that we
will support our character as firmly as our independence.
But I will go still further; General Conway, who made the motion,
in the British Parliament, for discontinuing offensive war in
America, is a gentleman of an amiable character. We have no personal
quarrel with him. But he feels not as we feel; he is not in our
situation, and that alone, without any other explanation, is enough.
The British Parliament suppose they have many friends in America,
and that, when all chance of conquest is over, they will be able to
draw her from her alliance with France. Now, if I have any
conception of the human heart, they will fail in this more than in
any thing that they have yet tried.
This part of the business is not a question of policy only, but of
honor and honesty; and the proposition will have in it something so
visibly low and base, that their partisans, if they have any, will
be ashamed of it. Men are often hurt by a mean action who are not
startled at a wicked one, and this will be such a confession of
inability, such a declaration of servile thinking, that the scandal
of it will ruin all their hopes.
In short, we have nothing to do but to go on with vigor and
determination. The enemy is yet in our country. They hold New York,
Charleston, and Savannah, and the very being in those places is an
offence, and a part of offensive war, and until they can be driven
from them, or captured in them, it would be folly in us to listen to
an idle tale. I take it for granted that the British ministry are
sinking under the impossibility of carrying on the war. Let them
then come to a fair and open peace with France, Spain, Holland and
America, in the manner they ought to do; but until then, we can have
nothing to say to them.
-- COMMON SENSE.
A SUPERNUMERARY CRISIS
TO SIR GUY CARLETON.
IT is the nature of compassion to associate with misfortune; and I
address this to you in behalf even of an enemy, a captain in the
British service, now on his way to the headquarters of the American
army, and unfortunately doomed to death for a crime not his own. A
sentence so extraordinary, an execution so repugnant to every human
sensation, ought never to be told without the circumstances which
produced it: and as the destined victim is yet in existence, and in
your hands rests his life or death, I shall briefly state the case,
and the melancholy consequence.
Captain Huddy, of the Jersey militia, was attacked in a small fort
on Tom's River, by a party of refugees in the British pay and
service, was made prisoner, together with his company, carried to
New York and lodged in the provost of that city: about three weeks
after which, he was taken out of the provost down to the water-side,
put into a boat, and brought again upon the Jersey shore, and there,
contrary to the practice of all nations but savages, was hung up on
a tree, and left hanging till found by our people who took him down
and buried him.
The inhabitants of that part of the country where the murder was
committed, sent a deputation to General Washington with a full and
certified statement of the fact. Struck, as every human breast must
be, with such brutish outrage, and determined both to punish and
prevent it for the future, the General represented the case to
General Clinton, who then commanded, and demanded that the refugee
officer who ordered and attended the execution, and whose name is
Lippencott, should be delivered up as a murderer; and in case of
refusal, that the person of some British officer should suffer in
his stead. The demand, though not refused, has not been complied
with; and the melancholy lot (not by selection, but by casting lots)
has fallen upon Captain Asgill, of the Guards, who, as I have
already mentioned, is on his way from Lancaster to camp, a martyr to
the general wickedness of the cause he engaged in, and the
ingratitude of those whom he served.
The first reflection which arises on this black business is, what
sort of men must Englishmen be, and what sort of order and
discipline do they preserve in their army, when in the immediate
place of their headquarters, and under the eye and nose of their
commander-in-chief, a prisoner can be taken at pleasure from his
confinement, and his death made a matter of sport.
The history of the most savage Indians does not produce instances
exactly of this kind. They, at least, have a formality in their
punishments. With them it is the horridness of revenge, but with
your army it is a still greater crime, the horridness of diversion.
The British generals who have succeeded each other, from the time
of General Gage to yourself, have all affected to speak in language
that they have no right to. In their proclamations, their addresses,
their letters to General Washington, and their supplications to
Congress (for they deserve no other name) they talk of British
honor, British generosity, and British clemency, as if those things
were matters of fact; whereas, we whose eyes are open, who speak the
same language with yourselves, many of whom were born on the same
spot with you, and who can no more be mistaken in your words than in
your actions, can declare to all the world, that so far as our
knowledge goes, there is not a more detestable character, nor a
meaner or more barbarous enemy, than the present British one. With
us, you have forfeited all pretensions to reputation, and it is only
by holding you like a wild beast, afraid of your keepers, that you
can be made manageable. But to return to the point in question.
Though I can think no man innocent who has lent his hand to destroy
the country which he did not plant, and to ruin those that he could
not enslave, yet, abstracted from all ideas of right and wrong on
the original question, Captain Asgill, in the present case, is not
the guilty man. The villain and the victim are here separated
characters. You hold the one and we the other. You disown, or affect
to disown and reprobate the conduct of Lippincut, yet you give him a
sanctuary; and by so doing you as effectually become the executioner
of Asgill, as if you had put the rope on his neck, and dismissed him
from the world. Whatever your feelings on this interesting occasion
may be are best known to yourself. Within the grave of your own mind
lies buried the fate of Asgill. He becomes the corpse of your will,
or the survivor of your justice. Deliver up the one, and you save
the other; withhold the one, and the other dies by your choice.
On our part the case is exceeding plain; an officer has been taken
from his confinement and murdered, and the murderer is within your
lines. Your army has been guilty of a thousand instances of equal
cruelty, but they have been rendered equivocal, and sheltered from
personal detection. Here the crime is fixed; and is one of those
extraordinary cases which can neither be denied nor palliated, and
to which the custom of war does not apply; for it never could be
supposed that such a brutal outrage would ever be committed. It is
an original in the history of civilized barbarians, and is truly
British.
On your part you are accountable to us for the personal safety of
the prisoners within your walls. Here can be no mistake; they can
neither be spies nor suspected as such; your security is not
endangered, nor your operations subjected to miscarriage, by men
immured within a dungeon. They differ in every circumstance from men
in the field, and leave no pretence for severity of punishment. But
if to the dismal condition of captivity with you must be added the
constant apprehensions of death; if to be imprisoned is so nearly to
be entombed; and if, after all, the murderers are to be protected,
and thereby the crime encouraged, wherein do you differ from
[American] Indians either in conduct or character?
We can have no idea of your honor, or your justice, in any future
transaction, of what nature it may be, while you shelter within your
lines an outrageous murderer, and sacrifice in his stead an officer
of your own. If you have no regard to us, at least spare the blood
which it is your duty to save. Whether the punishment will be
greater on him, who, in this case, innocently dies, or on him whom
sad necessity forces to retaliate, is, in the nicety of sensation,
an undecided question? It rests with you to prevent the sufferings
of both. You have nothing to do but to give up the murderer, and the
matter ends.
But to protect him, be he who he may, is to patronize his crime,
and to trifle it off by frivolous and unmeaning inquiries, is to
promote it. There is no declaration you can make, nor promise you
can give that will obtain credit. It is the man and not the apology
that is demanded.
You see yourself pressed on all sides to spare the life of your own
officer, for die he will if you withhold justice. The murder of
Captain Huddy is an offence not to be borne with, and there is no
security which we can have, that such actions or similar ones shall
not be repeated, but by making the punishment fall upon yourselves.
To destroy the last security of captivity, and to take the unarmed,
the unresisting prisoner to private and sportive execution, is
carrying barbarity too high for silence. The evil must be put an end
to; and the choice of persons rests with you. But if your attachment
to the guilty is stronger than to the innocent, you invent a crime
that must destroy your character, and if the cause of your king
needs to be so supported, for ever cease, sir, to torture our
remembrance with the wretched phrases of British honor, British
generosity and British clemency.
From this melancholy circumstance, learn, sir, a lesson of
morality. The refugees are men whom your predecessors have
instructed in wickedness, the better to fit them to their master's
purpose. To make them useful, they have made them vile, and the
consequence of their tutored villany is now descending on the heads
of their encouragers. They have been trained like hounds to the
scent of blood, and cherished in every species of dissolute
barbarity. Their ideas of right and wrong are worn away in the
constant habitude of repeated infamy, till, like men practised in
execution, they feel not the value of another's life.
The task before you, though painful, is not difficult; give up the
murderer, and save your officer, as the first outset of a necessary
reformation.
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