The affairs of America seem to be drawing towards a crisis.  The Howes are at this time in possession of, or are able to awe, the whole middle coast of America, from Delaware to the western boundary of Massachusetts Bay; the naval barrier on the side of Canada is broken; a great tract of country is open for the supply of the troops; the river Hudson opens a way into the heart of the provinces; and nothing can, in all probability, prevent an early and offensive campaign.  What the Americans have done is, in their circumstances, truly astonishing; it is, indeed, infinitely more than I expected from them.  But having done so much, for some short time I began to entertain an opinion that they might do more.  It is now, however, evident that they cannot look standing armies in the face.  They are inferior in everything, even in numbers,—­I mean, in the number of those whom they keep in constant duty and in regular pay.  There seem, by the best accounts, not to be above ten or twelve thousand men, at most, in their grand army.  The rest are militia, and not wonderfully well composed or disciplined.  They decline a general engagement,—­prudently enough, if their object had been to make the war attend upon a treaty of good terms of subjection; but when they look further, this will not do.  An army that is obliged at all times and in all situations to decline an engagement may delay their ruin, but can never defend their country.  Foreign assistance they have little or none, nor are likely soon to have more.  France, in effect, has no king, nor any minister accredited enough either with the court or nation to undertake a design of great magnitude.

In this state of things, I persuade myself Franklin is come to Paris to draw from that court a definitive and satisfactory answer concerning the support of the colonies.  If he cannot get such an answer, (and I am of opinion that at present he cannot,) then it is to be presumed he is authorized to negotiate with Lord Stormont on the basis of dependence on the crown.  This I take to be his errand:  for I never can believe that he is come thither as a fugitive from his cause in the hour of its distress, or that he is going to conclude a long life, which has brightened every hour it has continued, with so foul and dishonorable a flight.  On this supposition, I thought it not wholly impossible that the Whig party might be made a sort of mediators of the peace.  It is unnatural to suppose, that, in making an accommodation, the Americans should not choose rather to give credit to those who all along have opposed the measure of ministers, than to throw themselves wholly on the mercy of their bitter, uniform, and systematic enemies.  It is, indeed, the victorious enemy that has the terms to offer; the vanquished party and their friends are, both of them, reduced in their power; and it is certain that those who are utterly broken and subdued have no option.  But, as this is hardly yet the case of the Americans,