What can be done? Will gold and silver remedy this evil? By your accounts of board, horsekeeping, etc., I fancy you are not better off than we are here. I live in hopes that we see the most difficult time we have to experience. Why is Carolina so much better furnished than any other State, and at so reasonable prices?
I hate to tell a story unless I am fully informed of every particular. As it happened yesterday, and to-day is Sunday, I have not been so fully informed as I could wish. About eleven o'clock yesterday William Jackson, Dick Green, Harry Perkins, and Sargent, of Cape Ann, and A. Carry, of Charlestown, were carted out of Boston under the direction of Joice[170] junior, who was mounted on horseback, with a red coat, a white wig, and a drawn sword, with drum and fife following. A concourse of people to the amount of five hundred followed. They proceeded as far as Roxbury, when he ordered the cart to be tipped up, then told them if they were ever caught in town again it should be at the expense of their lives. He then ordered his gang to return, which they did immediately without any disturbance.
Whether they had been guilty of any new offense I cannot learn. 'T is said that a week or two ago there was a public auction at Salem, when these five Tories went down and bid up the articles to an enormous price, in consequence of which they were complained of by the Salem Committee. Two of them, I hear, took refuge in this town last night.
I believe we shall be the last State to assume government. Whilst we harbor such a number of designing Tories amongst us, we shall find government disregarded and every measure brought into contempt by secretly undermining and openly contemning them. We abound with designing Tories and ignorant, avaricious Whigs.
Monday, 21st.
Have now learned the crime of the carted Tories. It seems they have refused to take paper money, and offered their goods lower for silver than for paper; bought up articles at a dear rate, and then would not part with them for paper.
Yesterday arrived two French vessels—one a twenty, some say thirty-six gun frigate; dry goods, and four hundred stand of arms, 't is said they contain. I believe I wrote you that Manly had sailed, but it was only as far as Cape Ann. He and MacNeal both lie at anchor in the harbor.
FOOTNOTES:
[170] A man used to ride on an ass, with immense jack boots and his face covered with a horrible mask, and was called Joice junior. His office was to assemble men and boys in mob style, and ride, in the middle of them, to terrify the adherents to the royal government.—Niles's Principles and Acts of the Revolution, p. 490.