mix with such an impurity, and leaves it as rubbish, fit only for narrow and suspicious minds to grovel in. Had the Quakers minded their religion and their business, they might have lived through this dispute in enviable ease; but now their conduct comes as a matter of criminality before either the authority of the particular State in which it was acted, or of the Continent against which it operates. Every attempt to support the authority of the King of Great Britain over America, is treason against every State; therefore it is impossible that any one State can pardon, or screen from punishment, an offender against them all."

At the time this hardened villain was thus crying for the blood of the loyal Quakers, for opposing the measures of the Congress, nineteen-twentieths of the people of Pennsylvania were averse to those measures, and eagerly wished for a reconciliation with the mother country; but, as the rebel M'Kean observed at the time, the other twentieth had the arms in their hands. Those glittering minions, those play-acting generals and captains, who disgusted the Philadelphians by their dissolute manners, and by their shameful want of zeal in the service of their King, have studiously represented the people of Pennsylvania as being universally treacherous, and disaffected to the royal cause. Never did timidity and neglect of duty seek for shelter from a more vile and impudent misrepresentation. Had the residents in the county of Middlesex been as loyal as those in Pennsylvania, America would to this day have formed a part of the British empire.

But, to return to the Quakers. The poisonous doctrines of Paine were but slowly adopted by the Whigs. Plans of confiscation and murder were not to be, all at once, rendered popular, even amongst those who had dared to set up the standard

of

of rebellion. Availing himself, however, of every circumstance favourable to the views of his base employers, he, by degrees, succeeded in accomplishing the object to which all his nefarious labours were directed..

"The Quakers," said he, in his Crisis, dated April, 1777," trusting to their shortsighted sagacity, have, most unluckily, for themselves, made their declaration, and we ought now to take them at their word. They have voluntarily excommunicated themselves from our union, and ought not to be restored to it again but by payment and penitence." He next draws a picture of the pecuniary embarrassments of the Congress, and of the Whigs in general; and concludes with the following exhortation to plunder the Quakers. I copy it entire, as a complete specimen of republican reasoning; and as a proof, that the Jacobins of France were no more than imitators of the American Whigs.

"The quantity of our paper money is too great, and the price of goods can be only effectually reduced by reducing the quantity of this money. The next point, then, to be considered is, the method to reduce it. Mark well this method.] The circumstances of the times require, that the public characters of all men should now be fully understood, and the only general method of ascertaining it is by an oath or affirmation, renouncing all allegiance to the King of Great Britain, and to support the independence of the United States, as declared by Congress. Let, at the same time, a tax of ten, fifteen, or twenty per cent. per annum, be collected quarterly, be levied on the property of all those who refuse to take the oath. These alternatives, being perfectly voluntary, will take in all sorts of people. HERE IS THE TEST; OR HERE IS THE TAX. Further, it would not only

only be good policy, but strict justice, to raise fifty or an hundred thousand pounds, or more, if necessary, out of the estates and property of the Quakers in Philadelphia, to be distributed as a reward to those inhabitants of the city and state who shall turn out against the enemy; and likewise to bind the property of the Tories, to make good the damages which that of the Whigs may sustain."

These were the means recommended for giving freedom to America! The advice was not thrown away. The intrigues of the leading Whigs, that is to say, rebels (the terms were, and are, synonymous), had so far succeeded, as to gain over agreat number of the sturdy rabble to their side, while the violence with which they exercised the power they had usurped, struck terror into the hearts of the peaceable and the rich.

Now began a scene of pillage, of confiscation, of insult, of cruelty, of persecution of every species, in which the loyal and unfortunate Quakers were the principal sufferers. They were robbed of their corn, their flour, their cattle, their shop goods, and sometimes of their household furniture, and the very beds from under them, by virtue of those requisitions, on which the French have so greatly improved. This moveable property was generally seized by armed ruffians, sent by the Committee of Safety, (another institution which the French have borrowed from the Americans,) who generally accompanied the execution of their orders with the grossest indecencies towards the females of the families they plundered. The men they frequently beat and lacerated in the most unmerciful manner. Some they ducked and pumped on; others they carried astride upon a sharp rail, till they dropped off in a state of insensibility; others they dragged to prison, shut them up with deserters or common thieves, giving them the cold earth to

.lic

lie on, and bread and water for their only sustenance. Barely to enumerate the various modes which the ingenious cruelty of the Whigs discovered for the tormenting of these inoffensive people, for their fidelity to their King, would occupy one half of the pages of your Review.

One regulation which these inexorable rebels adopted, has not, as far as I have heard, been imitated by the regicides of France. It was this: They issued a decree, forbidding any person, who refused to take the test, that is, who refused to abjure his King, and become a rebel, to go out of his township, or parish; and, as the houses and inhabitants are so widely scattered, this prohibition operated as a most unbearable cruelty. A great portion of the loyalists, the Quakers in particular, were at once totally cut off from their places of worship, from their markets, their neighbours, their acquaintances, their friends, relations, parents, and children. If a man were at the point of death, his child, if a loyalist, dared not cross the township boundary to see him. An old Quaker doctor, in Chester county, was called up in the night to come to the assistance of his daughter, who was suddenly taken in child-birth, in a township where no midwife resided. It was thought that the father (who also lived out of the township), might escape, if detected in passing the boundary; but those who thought so were not yet fully acquainted with the barbarity of Whiggism. The old man was seized just before he reached the house of his daughter, who actually expired for want of help, while the father was dragged to Chester, and lodged in the common psison, from the grates of which he afterwards saw his daughter's corpse carrying to the burying-ground. In fact, this cold-blooded, this savage, this most hellish decree, severed the Quakers from all the felicities, all the comforts, all the

chari

charities of life. I myself knew a man in Bucks County, who, during a part of the continuance of this decree, was, by its operation, separated from 'all medical aid, at a time when a dysentery raged in the neighbourhood, and when he had ten children, together with his wife and himself, stretched on their beds by that most dreadful disease. A physician was at last found bold enough to cross the township line, and to come to this scene of human woe; but, for want of timely aid, four of the children died in one and the same day. One would think, that distress like this would have softened the hearts of tygers: it might, perhaps; but it produced no such effect on the Whigs, who, having heard that this Quaker had a Tory doctor of another township secreted in his house, sent a detachment of ruffians to search for him, and to carry him to prison! I do not believe it possible for the Jacobins of France to surpass in cruelty the Whigs of America. The former have been more violent, more fierce, they have discovered more of what may be called ferociousness; but, that they have been more cruel, that they have discovered greater delight in tormenting the mind or the body of the objects of their persecution, I ûtterly deny.

These things ought not to be buried in oblivion. The success of the American Whigs has stifled the voice of truth in that country; and the singular situation of parties here, at and since the end of the war, has hitherto stifled it in this country' also but, Sir, I hope, we shall yet see the day when all the crimes of this most foul, unprovoked, and unnatural rebellion, and when all the criminals (whether British or American) therein concerned, shall be exposed to the abhorrence of the present generation, and be so collected and recorded as to ensure the abhorrence of posterity. As an humble

effort