Note 161 — IV. THE LOYALISTS.

A specimen from a comparatively moderate article upon the loyalists may serve to substantiate the statement of the text (No. Am. Rev., lxv. p. 142): “The meanest, most dastardly, and most cruel scenes and deeds of the Revolution were enacted as the proper fruits of a civil war by a large majority of the Tories, who remained at home, and who, as regulars, as volunteers, in gangs, or as individual outlaws, were the instigators of nearly every foul and atrocious act in the whole strife. It is from these, the majority of the whole number, that the name of Tory has received its hateful associations, which will cling to it to the end of time. A class that includes an Arnold and a Butler can never hope for complete redemption, at least so long as Judas remains in ‘his own place.’”

One is glad to appeal from this intemperate and exaggerated language to the essay upon the loyalists by Dr. George E. Ellis, in Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History, vol. vii. It would be as undesirable as it is unnecessary to supply, as could readily be done, instances of gross cruelty and barbarity inflicted by the Whigs upon the unfortunate loyalists “who remained at home.” The Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis gives a most painful picture of the condition of things in the South (Corr., i. 73), and the letters of Count Fersen, who cannot be suspected of prejudice, reveal the hardly less savage condition of affairs in the North. He says, for example, of Rhode Island (Letters, i. 40, 41):

“C’est un pays qui sera fort heureux s’il jouit d’une paix longue, et si les deux partis qui le divisent à present ne lui font subir le sort de la Pologne et de tant d’autres républiques. Ces deux partes sont appelés les Whigs et les Torys. Le premier est entièrement pour la liberté et l’independance; il est composé de gens de la plus basse extraction qui ne possédent point de biens; la plupart des habitants de la compagne en sont. Les Torys sont pour les Anglais, ou, pour mieux dire, pour la paix, sans trop se soucier d’être libres ou dépendants; ce sont les gens d’une classe plus distinguée, les seuls qui eussent des biens dans le pays. Lorsque les Whigs sont les plus forts, ils pillent les autres tant qu’ils peuvent.”