be calculated; but domestic foes could be numbered, and their influence could be most accurately measured. What was to be done with the Tories, who kept down the rising spirit of liberty, who flattered British officials and emissaries, who sent letters to England instigating new measures of oppression, who acted as spies, or covert enemies, or dispiriting neutrals ?

Here is the question which all candid men must meet fairly, when they would do justice to the Whigs, while claiming it for the Tories. On all such matters, we are bound to argue according to the well-understood principles of human nature, with its admitted weaknesses, and its irresistible tendencies. To suppose, that, in such a crisis, ardent "liberty-men, smarting under oppression, and leagued to defend themselves against arbitrary tyranny, would not classify their neighbours, and scan them closely, and hold them to a declaration of opinion and intention, would be unreasonable. To expect that protesters, and addressers, and salaried agents, and unprincipled office-seekers, on the side of tyranny, would be treated with gingerly tenderness is absurd. A civil war, and such was the war of the American Revolution, embodies men, women, and children, even of the same household, into regiments on one side or the other. The idea of neutrality can consist only with an entire lack of influence, and not with a mere withholding of its exercise. A Tory was a man to be disposed of in some way.

It has often been asserted, that the rupture with England and the renunciation of her sway left every one in the Colonies in a state of nature, free from all civil government, and independent of all political compacts, at least till the State constitutions were in force, and that there was no authority here which could call any individual to account. Peter Van

Schaack advanced and laid great stress upon this plea in his letter to the Convention. But can this argument be sustained? Was all the allegiance by which a Colonist was held embraced in his duty to the king and Parliament, and so nullified by a rupture with England? Did the man owe nothing to his fellow-citizens, to the public good, to the general interest of the land where his property was created and protected? A better argument, it seems to us, might be advanced to prove, that, in renouncing a foreign sway, all local, domestic, and patriotic bonds become more sacred,

and more than take the place of a renounced allegiance. Would a Tory have been willing to stand his ground as really in a state of nature, an Ishmael among Ishmaelites? The plea was false; it disregarded and left out of the account those bonds of allegiance in the social state which cannot be renounced, and which not only give authority to a social compact, but survive its dissolution.

The question still is, What was to be done with the Tories? The existence of their party was known, its influence was felt in all directions, and it could not be a matter of indifference how it was to be dealt with. The presence of a large body of neutrals, hoping to share equally the benefits of either issue of the strife, would have been a most unpropitious circumstance. What effect would have been produced, if it had been known that a portion of the enemy, should they be vanquished, were to share the fruits of victory with the conquerors? The Tories could not be permitted to enjoy an equal good whichever side should triumph, nor even to avoid all punishment by shifting their course at the eleventh hour. Some explicit terms were necessary to be settled at the beginning of the strife. The very fact, that honorable men would perceive a conflict of principles, would hesitate between lawful resistance of oppression and the sacred duty of allegiance, made it all the more necessary that even the best of them should choose one alternative, and meet its consequences. John Jay said, that "the Revolution was a subject upon which men might honestly differ." But it was also a subject which required a decision of judgment and action on the one side or the other. We must ascribe much of the severity of parties to the emergency of the times. Circumstances demanded that these explicit terms, upon which every man was held to a choice, should likewise be very rigid terms; their compulsory and stringent character should make them felt.

Now, on a fair view of the actual state of things at the time, no one can deny that the prospects of the Tories in the main were the most encouraging. It seemed impossible that America could triumph; the chances were against her. If she should be compelled, after a struggle, to succumb to the British sceptre, the Tories would flourish in the multiplied honors of victors, of wise prophets, and of favored recipients of the royal bounty. For men who calculated conse

quences, the Tory side preponderated in temptations and inducements. Even if America won her liberty, the Tory might still flatter himself that the terms of peace would save him harmless, and that the choice would still be left to him to be a citizen or a subject. The reward was certain, if England was victor; the penalty was doubtful, if the Colonists should secure their liberties. Under these circumstances, the "Rebels" were concerned to relieve that penalty of its uncertainty, and to make it as positive and as stringent as possible. Hence the uncompromising, the denunciatory and threatening terms which were used for the intimidation of the Tories. And when the contest closed, though mercy might plead for a relaxation of these terms, good faith of a certain sort required that they should be enforced. A wrong would have been done to the suffering Whigs, had the Loyalists, with all the guilt and the consequences of treason justly chargeable upon them, been admitted to an easy pardon.

Again, it is to be considered that attempts at conciliating and winning over the Loyalists were frequently made by the Whigs, and repulsed by their opponents, while the latter never made any advances which helped to mitigate the strife. Congress, in 1778, recommended to the several States to repeal the sanguinary laws against the Loyalists, and to restore their confiscated property. Washington made several overtures for their protection. But they would not be won; their refusal tended to increase their own malignity, and of course to increase the irritation against them. Very many facts might be arrayed to prove how exasperating to the Whigs was the whole course pursued by their domestic enemies. The remembrance of these facts formed the chief obstacle to the exercise of mercy, and prevented any abatement from the rigidity of the terms which had been proclaimed or implied at the opening of hostilities.

One other suggestion seems to have a most essential bearing on the case before us, and to help towards a fair and candid review of the treatment of the Tories. The Whigs were compelled to outlaw the Tories because Great Britain first adopted them. From the very beginning of the dissensions in the Colonies, allurements and promises were held out by his majesty's commissioners, and by the royal governors and commanders, to all who should aid in opposing the rebels and in sustaining government. These promises of VOL. LXV. - No. 136.

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favor were actual bribes and advanced pay. Such, for instance, is the significance of Lord Viscount Howe's proclamation in 1776, which promised "due consideration" and every suitable encouragement" to those who should retain their loyalty, and bring it into practical operation against the spirit of sedition. As the contest advanced, such solicitations and inducements became very common; they were often repeated, while the consideration held out in them became more tempting by increase of value. When the Loyalists, after the peace, pressed their claims for compensation upon Parliament, they recurred to these successive promises, and held Great Britain to fulfil the contract voluntarily made by herself. Indeed, it was by repeatedly urging this sound plea that the Loyalists obtained the recompense already mentioned. Lord North, most justly their advocate, described them in Parliament as men "invited under every assurance of military, Parliamentary, political, and affectionate protection," to commit their lives and fortunes to the kingly side in the great venture. Undoubtedly these repeated promises, which were perfectly sure of being honored either from the colonial or the royal treasury, had the effect of winning many to the Tory side, of fixing the vacillating, and engaging the mean and selfish by the hope of reward. any rate, this preliminary bribery on the part of his majesty called for some opposing and counteracting measures on the part of the rebels. Hence, we are persuaded, more than from any other single cause amid the turmoil and heat of the strife, were the Tories made to suffer. The Whigs outlawed them, because the king adopted them. The Whigs refused to remunerate them, because they had been hired by the party whom they served.

We have thus reviewed what seem to us to be the more essential points bearing upon the course pursued toward the Tories. We find a warrant for the aspect in which we have presented the case, in the fact that the English government was far more generous in making compensation to Loyalists, than was our own impoverished country in indemnifying individual Whigs for their personal sacrifices.

It has been far from our purpose in these remarks to reflect upon the general integrity, the pureness of motives, or the wisdom of the Loyalists as a class. Still less is it in our hearts to revive and renew the obloquy which has been

visited upon them, or to imitate with an inverted moral the example of the Palestine Jews, who heap stones of reproach upon Absalom's pillar as they pass through the King's Dale. Sufferers as we are in our own patrimony by the confiscation of the ancestral property of a Loyalist, we might feel some prejudice upon the suffering side. But to our minds, the experience of the Loyalists, and indeed of the Whigs, for there was, in fact, but a slight difference of amount between their personal trials, is good mainly as it mingles with all the dear-bought wisdom of the human race to prove that war is the heaviest of all calamities; and, since it does not admit of any of those alleviations which mitigate the heaviest chastisements of the Almighty, that it cannot be numbered among his plagues, but must stand first amid the voluntary follies of man. England was the wrongdoer, and her exchequer has ever since borne the penalty, and will bear it so long as she is numbered among the nations. We were the sufferers; and though we feel now no burden and no infliction from it, as we ought in justice to feel none, yet our annals and our domestic records will ever perpetuate the griefs and horrors of the civil strife which were our unavoidable portion. The most cheerful incident connected with the history of the Tories is, that while they were waiting in the British Northern Provinces for the tardy relief of the English government, their trials were lightened by charitable help sent by individuals and associations in the United States, particularly by the Quakers.

We close by asking for Mr. Sabine's volume a grateful reception, and the place to which it is entitled in our enlarging libraries.

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ART. VII. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England. By JOHN LORD CAMPBELL, A. M., F. R. S. E. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 3 vols. 8vo. 1847.

THE sort of biography which this work contains is entertaining, and valuable for its illustrations of character, but not