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7421. RETALIATION, Burning cities.—

Perhaps the British fleet will burn New
York or Boston. If they do, we must burn the
city of London, not by expensive fleets or
Congreve rockets, but by employing an hundred
or two Jack-the-painters, whom nakedness,
famine, desperation, and hardened vice, will
abundantly furnish from among themselves.—
To William Duane. Washington ed. vi, 76. Ford ed., ix, 366.
(M. Aug. 1812)