This last resort of the rebel colonists was so obvious that it was often discussed not only in the colonies but in England. It was greatly feared by the tory ministry, because it might indefinitely prolong the war. The whigs prophesied disaster from it; and Burke in one of his speeches refers to it in an eloquent passage in which he describes the rebel colonists retreating to that vast interior of fertile plains where they would grow into marvels of hardihood and desperation; how they would become myriads of American Tartars and pour down a fierce and irresistible cavalry upon the narrow strip of sea coast, sweeping before them "your governors, your councillors, your collectors and comptrollers and all the slaves that adhere to them."
In other words the tories dreaded what not so very long afterwards they accomplished in South Africa. They forced the Boers out of Cape Colony and they went by the grand trek into the interior plains where they founded two fierce and free republics, such as Washington might very readily have founded west of the Alleghenies. A turn of the hand, the failure of the French Alliance might have placed the United States in a position somewhat similar to that of South Africa or to that of Ireland if you like. The effect of British brutal and stupid violence on a high strung and independence-loving people will always be very much the same everywhere.
But to return to Washington's letter. You very likely read it when as a young man you read Irving's life of him; but it never occurred to you to think that his "predatory" and guerilla war was wicked. It was on your side; you believed that his desire for the independence of the country was just and right, and being so, could be rightfully supported by predatory as well as regular warfare. Your youthful instinct was sound. You had not then learned to worship mere financeering. You had not then imbibed a passion for that part of the British constitution which declares that any resistance whether in support of independence, home or anything else which interferes with the operations of a financial clique in London is a crime.
But when you see the principles and tactics of Washington and your own great grandfather repeated in a country far off they seem different, and when you see them turned against a country which gradually has come to embody in your mind fashionable society, you think them very dreadful. From your great grandfather's time to yours is a very short distance in history but a long distance, it seems, in political morals.