These circumstances appear to me more like shocking prodigies than natural changes in human affairs.  Men of firmer minds may see them without staggering or astonishment.  Some may think them matters of congratulation and complimentary addresses; but I trust your candor will be so indulgent to my weakness as not to have the worse opinion of me for my declining to participate in this joy, and my rejecting all share whatsoever in such a triumph.  I am too old, too stiff in my inveterate partialities, to be ready at all the fashionable evolutions of opinion.  I scarcely know how to adapt my mind to the feelings with which the Court Gazettes mean to impress the people.  It is not instantly that I can be brought to rejoice, when I hear of the slaughter and captivity of long lists of those names which have been familiar to my ears from my infancy, and to rejoice that they have fallen under the sword of strangers, whose barbarous appellations I scarcely know how to pronounce.  The glory acquired at the White Plains by Colonel Rahl has no charms for me, and I fairly acknowledge that I have not yet learned to delight in finding Fort Kniphausen in the heart of the British dominions.

It might be some consolation for the loss of our old regards, if our reason were enlightened in proportion as our honest prejudices are removed.  Wanting feelings for the honor of our country, we might then in cold blood be brought to think a little of our interests as individual citizens and our private conscience as moral agents.

Indeed, our affairs are in a bad condition.  I do assure those gentlemen who have prayed for war, and obtained the blessing they have sought, that they are at this instant in very great straits.  The abused wealth of this country continues a little longer to feed its distemper.  As yet they, and their German allies of twenty hireling states, have contended only with the unprepared strength of our own infant colonies.  But America is not subdued.  Not one unattacked village which was originally adverse throughout that vast continent has yet submitted from love or terror.  You have the ground you encamp on, and you have no more.  The cantonments of your troops and your dominions are exactly of the same extent.  You spread devastation, but you do not enlarge the sphere of authority.

The events of this war are of so much greater magnitude than those who either wished or feared it ever looked for, that this alone ought to fill every considerate mind with anxiety and diffidence.  Wise men often tremble at the very things which fill the thoughtless with security.  For many reasons I do not choose to expose to public view all the particulars of the state in which you stood with regard to foreign powers during the whole course of the last year.  Whether you are yet wholly out of danger from them is more than I know, or than your rulers can divine.  But even if I were certain of my safety, I could not easily forgive those who had brought me into the most dreadful perils, because by accidents, unforeseen by them or me, I have escaped.