yet seen. For the houses are not only all built in
English fashion, regular and handsome, and most of
them like palaces, but are also all papered and very
expensively furnished. It is, therefore, a pity that this
country, which is also very fruitful, is inhabited by such
wretches, who in their luxury and wantonness have
not known what to do with themselves, and who have
only their pride to thank for their fall. Every one at
home who takes their side, and thinks they had a
reasonable ground for rebellion, should, for a punishment,
live awhile among them, and so understand the
condition of things here (for the worst man here, if he will
only do something, can live like the richest at home).
Whoever would do this would soon change his tone,
and understand that not poverty, but crime and
luxury, are the cause of the whole rebellion. For
although most of them are descended from runaway
vagabonds who were driven out from other places, yet
they are so arrogant, and live in such state in all parts
of the country, and especially in New York, as I hardly
believe to be practised anywhere else in the world.
For instance, the women, who are almost all handsome,
be they the wives of shoemakers, tailors, or day-laborers
(which last, however, are but few, for almost every
soul here has a few black slaves to wait on him), go
daily in mantles of silk or muslin. This luxury
increases daily, for they receive much money from the
troops, and do not have to give so much as a grain of
salt for nothing. Nothing is, indeed, more annoying
than that people who after all are no more than rebels,
must, by express order of the king, be treated by the
soldiers with the greatest politeness; and, as I said
Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/244
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222
THE HESSIANS.