The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Extract of a letter from a gentleman in Philadelphia, dated Nov. 10, 1781.

The following facts will convince you, my Friends, that whatever means of corruption the Britons employ in order to establish their affairs in this country, their intrigues serve only to render themselves more base and contemptible, and to establish the cause of Independence.

Some weeks past Arnold met by accident in the streets of New-York, a man who had formerly been a writer in the office of Mr. Thomson, Secretary of Congress; and who was afterwards captured at Sea by the English, and carried to New-York. The immaculate Benedict, supposing he should find in all his countrymen the same virtue he possessed himself in so eminent a degree, engaged him by the promise of a very great reward, to return to Philadelphia, and steal the secret Journals of Congress. This man upon his arrival here, had nothing more at heart than to lay open the plot to public justice. Two British soldiers disguised, who were to have aided him in committing the theft were last night arrested. They readily made an honest confession, and have discovered upon examination more than an hundred accomplices and ill-affected persons, inhabitants of the Jerseys, whose houses have served for a resort to a band of villains and assassins, who under the name of tories or of English, frequently come from New York to spread devastation and carnage in the neighbouring States. The two culprits were brought before a Council of War, in which the Marquis de laFayette, who has been here some days, presided; and were declared spies, and subject to the punishment annexed by justice to such a crime.

This account and an hundred others of the same kind, afford a demonstration of the weakness and debasement into which Britain has fallen; seeing her forces vanquished on all sides by the defenders of our honorable cause, she has nothing left but to employ those disgraceful means, at which any nation would blush that had not enrolled an Arnold among it's Generals.