Let me ask of you, if a workman skilful in the founding of brass and iron cannon can be engaged in Holland to go to America? Also, if I can engage two or three persons of approved skill in lead mines, to go to America on good engagement. Your answer will oblige me, and by the next post I will write you more particularly. The British arms will not, probably, effect anything in America this season, as they had not begun to act the 8th of August, and that brings winter to the very door, as I may say, and an indecisive campaign must prove to Great Britain a fatal one.
I am, &c.
SILAS DEANE.
ARTHUR LEE TO C. W. F. DUMAS.
London, September 23d, 1776.
Dear Sir,
My absence from town till now prevented my answering your two last favors of September 3d.
By our latest and best accounts from America the die is now cast, and we may every day expect to hear of a decisive action at New York; decisive I mean as to the fate of General Howe and New York, but not of America, which depends very little upon the event of New York being taken or saved.
There is a public torpor here, which, without being superstitious, one may regard as a visitation from heaven. The people in general think the declaration of independence as a thing of course, and do not seem to feel themselves at all interested in the vast consequences, which that event must inevitably draw after it. The Ministry have by certain manœuvres contrived to keep up the demand for, and price of manufactures; and while trade and manufactures apparently prosper, the people are so deaf, that wisdom may cry out in the streets and not be heard. But the course of the seasons is not more fixed, than it is certain that these ministerial arts must be temporary in their operation and fatal in their issue; because the more men are flattered, the more desperate they are when the calamity comes upon them. Already the West India Islands begin to cry out, as you will have seen in the address from the Island of Barbadoes. The great number of captures lately made of West India ships by the Americans, have already had very visible effects upon the Royal Exchange. Holland taking the alarm, which the least movement on the part of France would produce, must shake our stocks to the foundation, and give an equal shock to a deluded prince and a deluded people.
The characters you desire me to touch upon are such as seldom occur in the same period. Lord Sandwich has been noted through a long life for everything in word and deed, directly opposite to honesty and virtue. With moderate abilities, and little real application, he maintains an appearance of both by impositions and professions, which at a time so averse to inquiry as the present pass for facts. Lord George Germain, though cradled in England, has all the principles of a Scotchman; subtle, proud, tyrannical, and false. In consequence of his patronising the Scots, they have always been his panegyrists and his advocates, and as they are a people indefatigable in all interested pursuits, they have procured him a character for ability, which he very little deserves. Dissimulation and craft in worldly occurrences too often pass for real wisdom; and, in that sense, Lord George is a wise man. Such a man could not long pass unnoticed and unpatronised by a Court, which searches with Lyncean eyes for the basest hearts, and is actuated by Scotch principles and Scotch counsels. Lord Suffolk is a peer of sullen pride and arbitrary principles. He listed in the public cause with Mr Wedderburne, under the banner of George Grenville; and while his life gave the hope of success in getting preferment, they were the loudest in opposition; but immediately upon his death, they made their terms, and have been ever since the most devoted tools of the Court. Lord Suffolk recommends himself very much to the King, by an indefatigable attention to the little detail business of his department, and an obsequiousness that knows no bounds. Lord Rochford is by birth a tory, and is linked with Lord Mansfield; but his fears have made him withdraw himself upon an ample pension, for he is persuaded, that France will soon strike a blow, which will endanger the heads of those who conduct these measures.