Wesley Corpus

I would fain speak a word of comfort to my poor neigh bours, that they may not be frightened to death. Perhaps, my friends, things are not in altogether so desperate a situa tion as you imagine. When I was at Cork last week, I con versed largely with some persons who were just landed from Philadelphia. I could thoroughly depend upon the account they gave, as they had had full means of information, and. had no possible interest to serve by misrepresenting anything. The substance of their account was this: “In December, General Washington had seventeen or eighteen thousand men in his army. From that time thirty, forty, sometimes fifty of them died in a day by a pestilential fever; and in two months’ time, upwards of fifteen hundred deserted to General Howe. So that many were inclined to believe he had not when we came away much more than five thousand effective men left.” Never fright yourselves, therefore, about General Washington’s huge army, that melted away like snow in. harvest. The English forces meantime are in perfect health, (about sixteen thousand,) and have plenty of all things. 4. “But there are twenty or thirty thousand recruits to: join him in a month or two; and what will General Howe do then?” Just as he does now; he will regard any number of them as much as he would so many sparrows. For what could fifty thousand raw men do, that had never seen the face of an enemy? especially when, by the tenure of their service, they were only to stay in the army mine months? (The circum stance concerning which General Washington so earnestly expostulated with the Congress.) Will these dead-doing men, do you think, be in haste to cut off all the old, weather-beaten Englishmen? Otherwise they will not have made an end of them, before the time comes for their returning home! 5. “But I do not believe the American army is in this condition.” If you do not, I cannot help it. And you have no more right to be angry at me for believing it, than I at you for not believing it. Let each of us then, without resentment or bitterness, permit the other to think for himself. 6. “O, but the French will swallow us up.” They will as soon swallow up the sea.