itia, and where both sides endeavoured to
strengthen themselves by oaths and by laws, denouncing the penalties of
treason on those who aided or abetted the opposite party, the sufferings
of individuals were renewed as often as fortune varied her standard.
Each side claimed the co-operation of the inhabitants, and was ready to
punish them when it was withheld.

"In the first institution of the American governments the boundaries of
authority were not properly fixed. Committees exercised legislative,
executive, and judicial powers. It is not to be doubted that in many
instances these were improperly used, and that private resentments were
often covered under the specious veil of patriotism. The sufferers, in
passing over to the Loyalists, carried with them a keen remembrance of
the vengeance of Committees, and when opportunity presented were tempted
to retaliate. From the nature of the case, the original offenders were
less frequently the objects of retaliation than those who were entirely
innocent. One instance of severity begat another, and they continued to
increase in a proportion that doubled the evils of common war. * * The
Royalists raised the cry of persecution, and loudly complained that,
merely for supporting the Government under which they were born, and to
which they owed a natural allegiance, they were doomed to suffer all the
penalties of capital offenders. Those of them who acted from principle
felt no consciousness of guilt, and could not but look with abhorrence
upon a Government which could inflict such severe punishments for what
they deemed a laudable line of conduct. Humanity would shudder at a
particular recital of the calamities which the Whigs inflicted on the
Tories and the Tories on the Whigs. It is particularly remarkable, that
many on both sides consoled themselves with the belief that they were
acting and suffering in a good cause." (History of the United States,
Vol. II., Chap. xxvi., pp. 467, 468, 469.)]

CHAPTER XXXII.

ORIGIN OF REPUBLICANISM AND HATRED OF MONARCHY IN AMERICA--THOMAS PAINE:
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, AND WRITINGS, AND THEIR EFFECTS.

No social or political phenomenon in the history of nations has been
more remarkable than the sudden transition of the great body of the
American colonists, in 1776, from a reverence and love of monarchical
institutions and of England, in which they had been trained from their
forefathers, to a renunciation of those institutio