such large sums of money as would be required to defray the heavy expenses of war; and this is an evil which might also have been partly remedied, had not Great Britain chosen to buy of her European neighbors, her rivals in many respects, articles which she might have had from her children here, as good in kind, and at cheaper rates. But, poor as we are, we have already exerted ourselves to the utmost in the present dispute, and we still intend to do so, desirous to convince our common mother, that we are in truth, what we have often professed ourselves to be, her dutiful children. We want not men, but only money to pay them, and to pay for arms, ammunition, and a few engineers. We wish to see none of your officers, nor indeed regulars, unless they be better than what we have seen. As to any officers which may hereafter be sent over, officers of rank, I mean; if they make as free with the liberties of the people, and the constitutions of the several governments, as a late gentleman has attempted to do, and in some particulars has actually done, I am so far a prophet as to foretell, that neither your interests nor ours will be ever promoted by them. I believe it is the general opinion here, that, liberty and property once lost, a people have nothing left worth contending for. Had we been a people conquered and enslaved, a polite and generous conqueror would have treated us with less rudeness and insolence than the gentleman above hinted at (now no more) in the plenitude of his power, adventured to treat us Americans, which, I am almost confident nothing but an honest zeal to further by all means the common cause, prevented them from resenting in the same manner as they would the acts of a public enemy. But I will add nothing further on this head, lest I break through my above-mentioned resolve, of keeping all within calm and serene,
