The Virginia Gazette

To the PRINTER.

SIR,

As the great object of our immense armaments is professedly to reduce the grand American army under Washington, it seems a little strange, to one not versed in the arts of war, that General Howe could not find or come at him when he reconnoitred with his whole army for that purpose, but is sailed to the north, in order to defeat the enemy in the south. We have heard that the fairest way about it is sometimes the nearest way home, and from hence I suppose it is that the General is gone north about to the long expected victory, as he formerly took the route of Halifax a little precipitately, from Boston to New York; and no doubt, in reliance upon the same proverb, Mr. Burgoyne is now beating the fruitless bush at Fort Edward, in order to effect a junction with the Generalissimo, if he can be found, which might have been effected by sea, without danger, expense, or delay, four months ago. And if this junction could not have ferreted the arch rebel out of his lines, I do not see what business they had across the Atlantic, unless they could have surfeited settled the point to choose Mr. Washington's ground for him.

I should humbly have conceived that the honour of this nation, and our formidable army, as well as the exigency of our affairs, called loudly upon us to attack the enemy at every possible disadvantage, especially under the appellation of cowards, raw and undisciplined cowards. To march away first, and then sail away from men who will not fight, and that bravely too, is an imputation upon the veteran army that will not easily be wiped off.

There is certainly some Yankee enchantment upon the face of the country, and the very ground fights against us. Whichever Washington goes, the brute earth empathises, and forms a rebellious alliance with him, and he seems to be the tutelar god of all their cities and towns. Our Castor and Pollux can do nothing apart. The navy must fight by land, as the army has done by sea, or nothing can be effected. Neptune is jealous of Mars, and will at least share the honours of the war.

From hence the tedious and expensive armament on Lake Champlain, by which two campaigns have been lost.

Seriously, I begin now to have my doubts about the tardiness of our commanders. Threshed in the winter! asleep all the spring! and run away in the summer! this is not the way to bring America to the foot of Lord North, or the footstool of Lord George. What pity it is but some hardy Scotchman had led Englishmen against Englishmen! No false compassion, or misguided humanity, would then have retarded the operations of slaughter and subjugation. The Rubicon judge, and the Minden hero, might have been satiated with blood.

To say the truth, the brothers have been niggards in human life; there is no apologising for their weakness. Excepting in the single instance of starving the American prisoners first, and then exchanging them for sound men, they have hardly done a thing this twelvemonth to recommend them to their royal master! That, indeed, was a stroke in the very spirit of the cabinet, which might have done honour to a M--d or a G--n; and most probably they have the merit of it. Those great men think and act upon too enlarged a scale to feel for the lives of Yankees, or soldiers. They regard the former as mere food for powder, and the latter for powder. And what are the hardships and sufferings of common people, or even their lives, when weighed against the ambition of princes or the luxury and avarice of great men in office?

If the Prince of Hesse can build a new palace by selling his subjects to cut throats where he has no quarrel, or Jemmy Twitcher can portion his bastards by the brutal outrages of press gangs upon his free countrymen, is it not plain that mankind are the property and prey of their fellow men, and consequently that it is as much humanity to devour and destroy men as it is to protect and defend?

Justice and mercy may be good notions for the vulgar; they are seldom to be found in the bosoms or the counsels of princes, much less in counsels of war.

TOBY.