fingers and feet were rotting off with frost! There was no remedy but by impressment. Here was a pleasant predicament for this sensitive nation, who could not lately endure that they should be simply asked for taxes by the English! But, though it startled congress at first, they were compelled to sanction this last breach of every principle of personal freedom. The recruits thus obtained by being forcibly kidnapped and torn from their homes and employments, deserted in great numbers to Howe's camp, carrying there the tale of the misery and want that existed at Valley Forge.
That Howe, under such circumstances, did not sally forth and sweep away these half-frozen and three-parts famished men, which, as a modern historian has observed, he might have done as easily as to sweep a swarm of frozen flies from a dead wall, has only one mode of explanation—it was not the will of the Great Disposer of Empires.
M. TURGOT. FROM AN AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT.
Howe all this time lay comfortably at Philadelphia, as if no great interest was depending, and as if he had no responsibility to regard, or no power to maintain. Instead of being on the look-out for information which might enable him to take advantage of the enemy, this information was showered upon him daily. One sudden rush and active assault, and the whole American army in this quarter had ceased to exist. But no such thought crossed this fattest of Sybarites. He continued to sit at his luxurious table, to enjoy his game at cards, and his officers and soldiers continued to practice all the license of the most dissipated nature that ever was heard of in history.
In this city of sober, domestic, and moral quakers, they gave way to the most scandalous debauchery and disregard of all order and decency. "A want of order and proper subordination pervaded the whole army; and if disease and sickness thinned the American army encamped at Valley Forge, indolence and luxury, perhaps, did no less injury to the British troops at Philadelphia. During the winter a very unfortunate inattention was shown to the feelings of the inhabitants, whose satisfaction should have been vigilantly consulted, both from gratitude and from interest. They experienced many of the horrors of civil war. The soldiers insulted and plundered them, and their houses were
