er, always uncomfortable, threatened to become positively unbearable and many found themselves under the necessity of either signing or leaving the country. The struggle which this condition of affairs frequently produced in the minds of men who at heart were loyal to the King is well exhibited in the following unusually skillful parody which appeared in the "Middlesex Journal" for January 30, 1776, but which there is every reason to believe had been written, if not printed, shortly after the formation of the association two years before: "To sign or not to sign? That is the Whether 'twere better for an honest man Not where: And, by that flight, t' escape Devoutly to be wished. To fly-to want— For, in that chance of want, what ills To patriot rage, when I have left my all- For, who would bear th' indignities o' th' Congress decrees, and wild convention plans, The laws controll'd, and injuries unredressed, The insolence of knaves, and thousand wrongs Which patient liege men from vile rebels take, When he, sans doubt, might certain safety find, Only by flying? Who would bend to fools, And truckle thus to mad, mob-chosen upstarts, But that the dread of something after flight (In that blest country where yet no moneyless Poor wight can live) puzzles the will, And makes ten thousand rather sign-and eat, Than fly to starve on loyalty.— Thus, dread of want makes rebels of us all: And thus the native hue of loyalty Is sicklied o'er with a pale cast of trim- And enterprises of great pith and virtue, One circumstance which made satire inevitable was the marked discrepancy between the boasts of the British before the opening of the war and the actual achievements of the king's forces in it. It was commonly supposed among the British soldiery that the American provincials had no skil! at all in military affairs and, what was more, no quality of courage to employ such skill if they had it. It was loudly boasted that the colonists could never "look British regulars in the face"; that "the very sound of a gun would send them off as fast as their feet could carry them." When, therefore, on the very first day of actual conflict the British regulars were found running in confusion along the Concord road, panic-stricken before an enemy whom they could not see, but of whose uncomfortable proximity they were painfully aware, the spectacle was one which the satirically inclined could not have been expected to pass without due notice. In the following stanzas, published anonymously in the "Pennsylvania Evening Post," March 30, 1776, under the facetious title of "The King's Own Regulars, and their Triumph over the Irregulars" we have a sort of mock heroic account of the retreat at Concord as told supposedly by one of the "Regulars": That we turned our backs and ran away so fast, don't let that disgrace us,'Twas only to make good what Sandwich said, that the Yankees could not face us! "As they could not get before us, how could they look us in the face? We took good care they shouldn't-by scampering away apace; That they had not much to brag of, is a very plain case For if they beat us in the fight, we beat them in the race. Oh! the Old Soldiers of the King, and the King's Own Regulars." Second only to the British commanders and promoters of the war, the Tories throughout the colonies constituted the most constant objects of ridicule by Revolutionary writers. The "New York Journal" of February 9, 1775, contained a somewhat witty definition of the term "Tory." "Yesterday," said a correspondent of the paper, "some gentlemen were dining together in a house in New York, and in the course of the conversation, one of the company frequently used the word Tory; the gentleman at whose house they dined, asked him, 'Pray Mr. -, what is a Tory?' He replied, 'a Tory is a thing whose head is in England, and its body in America, and its neck ought to be stretched.'" Somewhat more than a year later, after the British had evacuated Boston, another New York paper, the "Packet," paid its respects to the detested Tories who remained behind. "Yesterday," says the paper, "being the Lord's day, the Reverend Mr. Bridge, of Chelmsford, in Massachusetts, preached a most animating discourse from these words, 2 Kings vii., 7: 'Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their lives.' Which passage of scripture is a good description of the late flight of our ministerial enemies from Boston, for they left their tents and their horses, and a number of Tories for asses." Feeling against them ran so high in some quarters that a considerable number of the Tories, or Loyalists, found it unsafe, or at least extremely inconvenient, to remain in America throughout the war. Accordingly many of them abandoned their property and went to England, hoping, but having slight reason to expect, sometime to regain what they had lost. Several of the refugees won royal recognition on account of their sacrifice of personal interests for the sake of the king's cause and quite a number received honors and offices of various kinds by way of reward. As a specimen. of the contempt which this aroused among the Whigs in the colonies may be quoted a few items from the correspondence of the "Constitutional Gazette," May 4, 1776. "His Majesty's right arm is lame, occasioned by a sprain from flourishing his sword over the heads of his new made knights. "The Rev. Mr. Peters [a loyal Episcopal clergyman who had been forced to flee to England in 1774], from Lebanon, in Connecticut, has obtained his Majesty's leave to pick hops at 9d per day, a penny more than the usual price, as a reward for his past faithful services; and by this lucrative business it is supposed he will soon acquire a fortune equal to that he left behind him "James Rivington, a Tory printer of New York who fled to England in January, 1776 is appointed cobweb-sweeper of his Majesty's library. There are many other posts and rewards given to persons who have fled from the colonies, equal to the abovementioned." On the 15th of September, 1776, General Howe took New York, from which city General Putnam beat a hasty retreat by way of King's Bridge, or Hell-Gate. A few weeks later one might read in the "lost, strayed, or stolen" column of the "Middlesex Journal" the following' item: "LOST, an old black dog, of the American breed; answers to the name of Putnam;-had on a yellow collar with the inscription, 'Ubi libertas ibi patria, 1776. Long Island': is an old domestic animal,barks very much at the name of North, and has a remarkable howl at that of Howe. Was seen in Long Island some time ago, but is supposed to have been alarmed at some British troops who were exercising there and ran off towards Hell-Gate. As he was a great favorite of the Washington . family, they are fearful some accident has happened to him." as The "Middlesex Journal," might be surmised from the foregoing, was an organ of the Tories, though by no means so radical as some other publications in the northern colonies. An evidence of its conservative character is seen in the keen thrust at the temporizing policy which so seriously compromised Howe's generalship. The following verses on "The Prudent Generals Compared," published January 2, 1777, were unique in that they went the round of all colonial newspapers, Whig and Tory, alike, -only that there was of course a difference of interpretation, some saying that "Billy Howe" was to save the thirteen states for the British power, others that it was for independence that they were to be preserved: "When Rome was urged by adverse fate, On Cannae's evil day, A Fabius saved the sinking state, "One only state!' reply'd a smart; When Billy Howe, by the same art, "In the country dances published in London for next year," said the Pennsylvania Journal, "there is one called 'Lord Howe's Jig,' in which there is 'cross over, change hands, turn your partner, foot it on both sides,' and other movements ad mirably depictive of the present war in America." Perhaps as subtle a thrust as one will find in the newspaper literature of the period is contained in an epigram published in "Freeman's Journal," February 11, 1777, the point to which lies in the fact that on the Hessian standards captured some weeks before at Trenton were engraved the words, "Nescit Pericula": "The man who submits without striking a blow, May be said, in a sense, no danger to know; I pray, then, what harm, by the humble submission, At Trenton was done to the standard of Hessian?" Riving The paragon of Tory printers in America was James Rivington, notice of whose "promotion" at court has already been cited from the "Constitutional Gazette." ton's printing office and book shop in New York were regarded throughout the war as indeed the very citadel of American Toryism; and no newspaper, Whig or Tory, could ever go quite so far in ridicule and vindictive abuse as "Rivington's Gazette"-more properly called the "Royal Gazette." Two of the milder and one of the more malicious satires on the American cause may serve to indicate the general quality of the organ most feared and hated by those to whom the cause of American independence was dear. The first deals with the retiring of John Hancock from the presidency of the continental congress, October 29, 1777, after the congress had moved its place of sitting from RivPhiladelphia to New York. ington's account, published December 21, is as follows: "Deacon Loudon, editor of the Whig organ, the New York Packet, has taken upon himself to give in his extraordinary Packet a garbled account of the late squabble among the Congress rapscallions, which terminated in Easy John's leaving the chair. As this production is calculated to mislead the public, we are happy to present to our readers a statement by an eye-witness, who has been watching the Congress since it left Philadelphia. Im "As soon as the rebels learned that the British fleet was at the head of the Chesapeake, a motion was made in Congress for an adjournment to some place 'at least one hundred miles from any part of God's kingdom where the British mercenaries can possibly land,' which, after some rapturous demonstrations, was carried nem. con. mediately the Congress commenced the retreat, leaving old nosey Thompson to pick up the duds and write promises to pay (when the Congress should return) the Congress debts. In the flight, as in the rebellion, Hancock, having a just apprehension of the vengeance which awaits him, took the initiative and was the first to carry out the letter of the motion of his associates. "In four days they met at York. At the opening of the session, the President, having performed his journey on horseback, and much more like an express than a lord, was unable to take his seat, and for several days the chair was filled by a pro tempore. On the return of Hancock, he gave many indications of the intense fright he had experienced, and was observed to assume the chair with more than usual care and quiet seriousness; whether from soreness or a desire for the further remove of the Congress, his best friends 'could not tell. "Out of the silent discontent murmurs soon sprung, and one day before the dinner hour of the Congress, he offered a motion that this body do adjourn until the troops under the Howes, now pursuing the freemen of America, retire altogether from the state of Pennsylvania.' This was not adopted. Hancock then arose and delivered the following, which is a fair specimen of rebel eloquence, and 'much to the pint,' as the Yankee parsons say: "Brethren, Freemen, and Legislators:It's now more'n two years sence you done me the honor of puttin' me in this seat, which however humbly I have filled I was determined to carry out. It's a responsible situation, and I've been often awaken'd of nights a hearin' them regulars a comin' for my head. I can't bear it. It's worked on me, and already I feel as though I was several years older than I was. My firmness, which has made up for all my other infirmities, has been the cause of many heartburnings, which I am sure the candor of those among you who don't like it, will pass over. As to the execution of business, I have spared no pains, and shall return to my family and folks with that satisfaction. In taking leave of you my brethren, let me wish that we may meet soon under the glories of a free, but British, government.' "After requesting the Congress to pass around his chair and shake his hand, the afflicter of his country retired, satisfied as usual with himself and the Congress, who, with equal satisfaction, welcomed his departure." That considerable number of people in the colonies who throughout the war were Whig or Tory, "according as the winds blew," met only ridicule from both sides at once. The second extract from "Rivington's Gazette," entitled "The American Vicar of Bray," sets forth the boasting confessions of one of this class: "When Royal George rul'd o'er this land, And loyalty no harm meant, For church and king I made a stand, I still opposed all party tricks, When Stamp Act pass'd the Parliament, Now all went smooth as smooth could I strutted and look'd big, sir; I was believed a Whig, sir. I laughed at all the vain pretence Of taxing at this distance, And swore before I'd pay my pence A Congress now was quickly call'd, That we might act together; I thought that Britain would ppall'd But Britain was not quickly scar'd, Declar'd it was rebellion base, I felt myself much like the ass The French alliance now came forth, When Howe, with drums and great parade, March'd through this famous town, sir, And drank confusion to the friends But poor Burgoyne's denounced my fate, I now bewailed my wretched state, By night the British left the shore, I turned the cat in pan once more, I call'd the army butchering dogs, So long till death my king shall be- |