result, easily persuaded the colonists that their quarrel approached its decision, that England would soon have to yield, and that in the meantime they might take their ease till the moment of deliverance should arrive. This same cause, which should have excited their emulation towards their great ally, and stimulated them to concur with fresh ardor to the common aim, seemed, on the contrary, to have abated their courage. They were impatient to enjoy that repose during the continuance of danger which they ought not to have desired until they had fully attained their intent. Amidst the brilliant images of approaching felicity with which their glowing imaginations continually regaled them, they forgot to reflect that success might still elude them while in the act of grasping it. France, on seeing their torpor, might have changed her counsels; had she not in their indolence, a plausible pretext and a new motive for a policy which never hesitates to serve itself at the sacrifice of its allies? Was it not possible even that Spain, whose accession was ardently desired as the pledge of victory, might refuse to combat for a cause so frigidly supported by its own defenders? The Americans seemed not to recollect, that, if formidable armies hasten the final decision of wars, they only also can render the conditions of peace honorable. All these considerations were in a manner slighted by the bulk of the nation. Content with what they had hitherto done, and placing great reliance in the efficacy of French succours, they seemed inclined to leave to their allies the care of settling their quarrel. The indifference which had infected all classes, was as profound as the enthusiasm of former years had been intense. There could not have existed a more sinister augury; experience demonstrates that though it be but too easy to inflame a people the first time, nothing is more difficult than to rekindle its ardor when once extinct. The leading Americans, and Washington in particular, were too enlightened not to take alarm at this state of things; they saw the evil in all its extent, and spared no exertions in applying such remedies as they could. They had recourse to exhortations, to the remembrance of past exploits; they represented the necessity of not forfeiting the respect of the allies; the perils that still impended; the power and the intrigues of England; all was in vain. Imbosomed in apathy, these reckless spirits abandoned to chance the decision of their dearest interests; nothing could rouse them. The recruiting of the army progressed with the most tedious slowness. The soldiers that were under Washington, some because they had completed their engagements, others because they were tired of serving, deserted their colors, and retired to their homes. And by what means were they to be replaced? Scarcely a few individuals were found who would engage according to the regulations of Congress, for three years or till the end of the war. Engagements for a shorter term, could be of no utility to the service, and the backwardness of the people warranted no calculation

even upon that resource. To draw them by lot, and constrain them to march, was thought, and was, in fact, too dangerous a measure to be adopted in the present temper of minds. The same lethargy seemed to have overspread the army itself. It was well for it, that the English were so little enterprising.

Such was the real origin of the langor that characterised all the operations of this year's campaign. Washington, besides, adhering to his uniform purpose of never coming to action, except with every probability of success, would not commit to the hazard of battles the fate of a cause, which he considered as already gained. Far from challenging the enemy, he deemed himself extremely fortunate in not being attacked. If events had taken the direction they should have done, he would doubtless have found some opportunity to strike an important blow for the service and glory of his country. Perhaps the English would not have passed the year so quietly as they did in New York; and perhaps Rhode Island would have fallen less tardily under the domination of America.

The royal troops, in effect, had been much weakened in the first months of the year, by the detachments they were obliged to make to the West Indies and Georgia. But it almost always happens that the most propitious occasions are lost amidst the tumult of popular revolutions; wherein the government, as being new, shows itself the more feeble, as the opinions of individuals manifest themselves with less restraint, and greater violence; and public opinion, which can only originate from a settled order of things, as yet, has no basis. If sometimes success attend the enterprise, it must more frequently be imputed to chance than to calculation. Such was, at this epoch, the condition of the people of America. If in Georgia and Carolina some efforts were made to repel the enemy, it was principally the work of the militia of these two provinces, whose interest was then immediately at stake. The others folded their arms, or contented themselves with the adoption of spiritless measures. As if they considered themselves released from the ties of the confederation, they made not their own cause of the danger that menaced the neighboring provinces. Nor were the Americans chargeable only with lukewarmness, and this strange indifference to the fate of country; there also began to prevail amongst them a shameless thirst of gain, an unbridled desire of riches, no matter by what means acquired. The most illicit, the most disgraceful ways, were no obstacle to this devouring passion. As it happens but too often in political revolutions, there had sprung up a race of men who sought to make their private advantage of the public distress. Dependence or independence, liberty or no liberty, were all one to them, provided they could fatten on the substance of the state. While good citizens were wasting themselves in camps, or in the discharge of the most arduous functions; while they were devoting to their country, their

time, their estates, their very existence, these insatiable robbers were plundering, and sharing out, without a blush, the public fortune, and private fortunes. All private contracts became the object of their usurious interference and nefarious gains; all army supplies enriched them with peculations; and the state often paid dearly for what it never obtained. Nor let any imagine that the most sincere and virtuous friends of their country ever made so pompous a parade of their zeal! To hear these vile beings, they only were animated with a genuine and glowing patriotism. Every citizen of eminent rank, or invested with any public authority whatever, who refused to connive at their rapines was immediately denounced as lukewarm, tory, royalist, sold to England; it would seem that the first duty of those who governed the republic in times of such distress, was to fill the coffers of these flaming patriots. That their own praises should always have hung upon their lips is not to be wondered at; for there has never existed a robber, who had not been first a cheat; but what seems really strange, and almost staggers belief, is that they could have found partisans and dupes. This public pest spread wider every day; it had already gangrened the very heart of the state. The good were silenced, the corrupt plumed themselves upon their effrontery; every thing presaged an approaching ruin; it was the hope of England. Shall we attempt to penetrate the causes of so great a change, in a nation once so distinguished for the purity of its manners?

It will be found, that besides the general relaxation, which war too generally produces in the morals of the people, new governments, destitute of money, are constrained to procure it, and all their resources at the hands of usurers. The example is contagious; it rapidly obtains throughout the community. These same governments find themselves compelled by the force of circumstances to give the preference and yield much to individuals who adhere, or pretend to adhere to their party. They accept for security in the most important transactions, a zeal for the public good, whether real or feigned. If it is necessary that they should welcome such sort of beings when they present themselves, they must, for the same reason, be tender in punishing when they detect them in delinquency, Briefly, in such an order of things, the man of worth, must, of necessity, make room for the man of naught. Not only unpunished, but tolerated, but employed, but encouraged, the species rapidly multiplies. Like pestilential bodies, whose bare contact infects those that are sound, vice soon poisons honesty in the hearts it can steal upon.

But one of the first and most operative causes of so deplorable a change in American morality, unquestionably lay in the depreciation of paper money. It was such at the commencement of this year, that eight dollars in bills could only command one in specie. The

fall of this paper was daily accelerated, as well from the continual emissions by the Congress, as by the little efficacy of the French succours, and the disasters of Georgia. In the month of December, a dollar in specie could hardly be obtained with forty of paper.* Nor is there any thing surprising in this, when it is considered that independent of the dubious stability of the state, there was in the month of September, the sum of one hundred and fifty-nine millions, nine hundred and forty-eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-two dollars of the paper of Congress in the thirteen United States. If to this mass be added the bills emitted by the particular provinces, it will readily be seen how immeasurably the aggregate amount of this sort of debt surpassed the resources of the new republic. The rapid declension of this currency is further accounted for by the extreme activity with which the loyalists and English employed themselves in counterfeiting it. There often arrived from England entire chests of those spurious bills, and so perfectly imitated that they were scarcely to be distinguished from the genuine. The British generals, and especially Clinton, though in reluctant obedience to the orders of the ministry, spared no pains in disseminating them throughout the continent. It cannot be doubted, but that the cabinet of St. James considered this falsification of the bills of credit, as a most efficacious mean for the recovery of its colonies. The British ministers were perfectly aware that it was the only pecuniary resource at the disposal of Congress for the support of the war, and they calculated by draining it to disarm the Americans. Unquestionably it was neither the first time nor the last that this mode of making war has been resorted to; but it will always, nevertheless, be held in abhorrence by all good men. For public faith should always be respected even between enemies; and of all perfidies is there one more frightful, and especially more vile than the counterfeiting of money? In addition to all this, the commerce which the Americans had been wont to carry on by means of their products, with England and other nations, was totally interrupted; and as their soil and industry furnished them with but a small part of the articles essential to war, they were under the necessity of procuring them from abroad, and with gold and silver. Hence it resulted that specie, which even before the war had become distressingly scarce, diminished progressively, and daily advanced in price, in the ratio of its rarity. The bills proportionably lost their value in public estimation. From their alarming depreciation it followed not only that all purses were closed, and that the markets, scantily, and with extreme difficulty supplied, became the object of the continual murmurs of the people, but even that the faith of contracts was violated, and that individual probity was every where relaxed. With little, debtors acquitted themselves

*The cost of a simple repast, or a pair of shoes, was from forty to fifty dollars of this depreciated paper.

of much towards their creditors. Very few, at first, resorted to this unworthy expedient; but as evil propagates itself more rapidly than good, a multitude of citizens stained themselves with the same reproach, and the contagion became general. Herein the faithless. and avaricious debtor was no respecter of persons; Washington himself experienced this odious return from persons he had generously succoured in their necessities.

The distress of the times had likewise given birth to another race of men, who devoted themselves to the business of speculating upon the depreciation of bills, dexterously profiting of a temporary rise or fall; and these variations of current price depended much less on the more or less favorable posture of public affairs, than upon news invented and circulated by those jobbers, or their intrigues and monopolies. Useful arts, and the labors of a fair commerce, were abandoned for the more alluring chances of paper negotiations. The basest of men enriched themselves; the most estimable sunk into indigence. The finances of the state, the fortunes of individuals, experienced the same confusion. Nor was avarice the extent of the evil; the contagion of that pestiferous passion attacked the very source of every virtue. Private interest every where carried it against the interests of the public. A greater number than it is easy to believe, looked upon the love of country as a mere illusion, which held out no better prospect than ruin and desolation. Nobody would enlist without exorbitant bounty; nobody would contract to furnish the public supplies, none would supply the contractors, without enormous profits first lodged in their hands; none would accept of an office or magistracy without perfect assurance of a scandalous salary and illicit perquisites. The disorder, the depravation, were pushed to such a point, that perhaps never was the ancient adage more deplorably confirmed, that there is no haltingplace on the road of corruption.

To the insatiable thirst of gold was joined the rage of party spirit; even the members of Congress could not escape its vortex. Hence they too often disputed among themselves about their personal affairs, instead of discussing the grave and important interests of the state. When a feeble nation places itself under the patronage of one that is powerful, and looks up to it for protection, that nation must expect to find its bosom agitated by the tumults of party and the fury of faction. Some citizens, more occupied with their country's interests, or their own ambition than the necessity of maintaining a good understanding with the more powerful nation, depart from the route which policy would have prescribed. Unguarded in their language and actions, they are continually liable to give umbrage to the agents of their great ally. Others, guided by the love of their country, or by their private interest, show themselves more feeble; they yield without resistance, they flatter and caress. Each of these parties is