[153] The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was founded in 1701. A previous organization bearing a similar name had been founded during the period of the Commonwealth, especially for work among the aborigines in New England, and it is to this association that we owe that most interesting of missionary relics, Eliot’s Indian Bible. Great interest was taken in this by the celebrated Robert Boyle, and scholarships were endowed by Sir Leoline Jenkyns in Jesus College, Oxford, one condition of which was that the beneficiary should devote his life after taking his degree to missionary work in the plantations. The reports of Commissary Bray, who had been sent out to Maryland, of the spiritual destitution of the American colonies and of the difficulties under which the ministers of the Church of England labored, led to the organization and incorporation of the Society, which has been from that day to this an active agency in the spread of religion and knowledge in the colonies of Great Britain. Humphreys, Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Hawkins, Missions of the Church of England.
[154] For a full account of this most interesting revolution, see E. Edwards Beardsley, D. D., The History of the Church in Connecticut. See also Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D. D., and Yale College and the Church (History of the American Episcopal Church, vol. i. 561). Humphreys, Historical Account, 339.
[155] Franklin’s Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 218, 220. An amusing instance of the prevailing ignorance in regard to American affairs even among its friends is given by Benjamin Vaughan in a note in Franklin’s Memoirs, vol. v. p. 320. “To guard against the incursions of the Indians a plan was sent over to America (and, as I think, by authority) suggesting the expediency of clearing away the woods and bushes from a tract of land, a mile in breadth, and extending along the back of the colonies.” It is said that this plan was the contribution of Dean Tucker towards the solution of the Indian problem of the day.
[156] Jones, Hist. New York, ii. 291, 559. Political Magazine, Apr., 1780. Hutchinson, History Mass. Bay, iii. 86–88, 166 note, 254, 293. Hutchinson’s Diary, i. 65. For reasons assigned by Hutchinson for the patriotism of John Adams, Hist. iii. 297.
[157] North American Review, lix. p. 270 (Sabine). “It may be asked, why, when the oppressions of the mother country were so very flagrant and apparent, there was not greater unanimity than appears to have existed; and why a party, so large in numbers, which in so many colonies included persons so respectable, and hitherto so universally esteemed, was seemingly, or in fact, averse to breaking away from British dominion. These questions have been put to loyalists themselves. They have answered, that, upon the original formation of parties, they were generally regarded as the common organizations of the ins and outs; the one striving to retain, and the other to gain, patronage and place; and that the mass in taking sides with or against the royal governors, were stimulated by the hopes which politicians have always been able to excite in their followers.”
[158] Moore’s Diary of the American Revolution, i. 37–52, 138. Massachutensis, Letters I., III., IV. Hutchinson, History of Mass. Bay, iii. passim. A. W. Farmer, The Congress Canvassed, p. 8. The name Tory was given first in 1763, as a title of reproach to officers of the crown and such as were for keeping up their authority. Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 103.
[159] Adams’s Works, ii. 362.
[160] For the manner in which the temperate remonstrance of the loyal colony of New York was treated, see Parliamentary Register, vol. i. 467–478.
[161] 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):