TWO:On the 18th of November Lord Cornwallis crossed the North River with six thousand men, and, landing on the Jersey side, began to attack Fort Lee, standing nearly opposite Fort Washington. The garrison fled, leaving behind all its tents standing, all its provisions and artillery. Washington was compelled by this to fall back from his position on the Croton, thence to Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, and finally to the Pennsylvanian side of the Delaware. Lord Cornwallis followed at his heels. Cornwallis penetrated to the remotest parts of east and west Jersey, and everywhere the inhabitants received him as a friend and deliverer. On the 24th of November Lord Cornwallis was approaching Brunswick, when he received orders to halt. By this means, Washington was allowed to escape across the Delaware. It was not till the evening of the 16th of December that Cornwallis received[232] orders to proceed, and, though he made all haste, he was too late. The rear of the American army quitted Princeton as the van of the English army entered it. Washington, in headlong haste, fled to Trenton, and began ferrying his troops over the Delaware. When Cornwallis reached Trenton, at nine o'clock the next morning, he beheld the last boats of Washington crossing the river. Once over the water, the remains of the American troops lost all appearance of an army. They were a mere dirty, worn-out, ragged, and dispirited mob. Washington had taken the advantage of the halt of Cornwallis to collect all the boats from Delaware for the distance of seventy miles, so that the English could not cross after them. Cornwallis, being thus brought to a stand, put his army into winter quarters between the Delaware and the Hackensack.The next who took his trial was Horne Tooke. The evidence was much the same, but the man was different. Tooke was one of the keenest intellects of the time, full of wit and causticity, by which he had worsted even Junius. He summoned as witnesses the Prime Minister himself, the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of the Ordnance, and others of the Cabinet, who had all in their time been ardent Reformers, and cross-questioned them in a style which, if he were guilty, showed that they had once been as much so. Tooke's trial was very damaging to the Government, and he was also acquitted after a trial of six days, during the whole of which the jury had not been allowed to separate, that they might not receive any popular impressions from withouta course which was not calculated to put them in a particularly good humour with the prosecutors.
