th1781.
This morning Mr:
Jennings and Mr
Greves came here with An English Gazette; in which there is the
detail of the action between Cornwallis & Green.
Cornwallis writes1 that he has obtain’d
a compleat victory; but he has thought proper to run away to Wilmington, General
Green is at Camden; Cornwallis has made a Proclamation of pardon to every body
(murderers ex79cepted) but does not mention of one single
man’s having came over to him yet; his army was two days without any provisions
22provisions. He writes in one part of his letter that a
defensive war wou’d be certain destruction to the british forces; in another, he
says he can only act upon the defensive; therefore by his own confession let him
act after what manner he will; it is certain destruction to the british there.
Mr Jennings & Mr
Greves breakfasted here; I did not go out in the forenoon: Mr Waldo din’d with
us; after dinner I went and took a walk with Mr Dana we went to the printer’s of the
Amsterdam Gazette for a couple of old numbers for Mr
Dana; We Walk’d to the Western market; and look’d about the shops, and then came
home.
Continued From Yesterday from Guthries Grammar.
23Chap: 4th §:6th2
Population, Inhabitants, Manners, customs & diversions
The seven United Provinces are perhaps the best peopled of any spot of the same
extent in the world. They contain according to the best accounts 113 cities and
towns 1400 villages, and about two millions of inhabitants; besides the 25 towns,
and the people in what is call’d the lands of the Generality, or conquer’d
countries and towns of other parts of the Netherlands The manners, habits, and
even the minds of the Dutch (for so the inhabitants of the United Provinces are
call’d in general) seem to be form’d by their situation, and to arise from their
natural wants. Their country, which is preserved by mounds and Dykes, is a
perpetual incentive to labour, and the artificial drains with which it is 24is every where intersected, must be kept in perpetual repair.
Even what may be call’d their natural commodities, their butter and cheese, are
produced by a constant attention to laborious parts of life. Their principal food
they earn out of the sea by their herring fisheries, for they dispose of their
most valuable fishes to the English, and other nations for the sake of gain. Their
air and temperature of the climate incline them to phlegmatic, slow dispositions,
both of body and mind; and yet they are irascible, especially if heated with
liquor. Even their virtues are owing to their coldness with regard to every object
that does not immediately concern their own interests; for in all other respects
they are quiet neighbours & peaceable subjects. Their attention to 25to the constitution and independency of their country is owing to
the same principle for they were never known to effect a change of government but
when they thought themselves on the brink of perdition.[”]
(to be continued)
Cornwallis to Lord George Germain, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 17
March (two letters), Cornwallis to Germain, 18 April, with his Proclamation of
18 March, all published in the London Chronicle for the Year
1781, 49:537–540 (5–7 June).
On the next two and one-half pages in the Diary JQA has copied the
first paragraph of the section entitled “population, inhabitants, manners,
customs and diversions,” from Guthrie, Geographical Grammar
, p. 401.