John Adams
and Dr. Franklin--bitter enemies to reconciliation--dreaded; and they
very shrewdly saw and improved the imprudent exposure of the Royal
Commissioners, by directing the publication of their circular letter and
declaration in all the provincial newspapers, "that the good people of
the United States may be informed of what nature are the Commissioners,
and what the terms, with expectation of which the insidious Court of
Great Britain had endeavoured to amuse and disarm them; and that the few
who still remain suspended by a hope, founded either on the justice or
moderation of their late King, might now at length be convinced that the
valour alone of their country is to save its liberties."

Thus all conference with the Royal Commissioners was refused on the part
of the leaders in Congress; war and bloodshed followed, and a year of
disastrous defeats to the Revolutionists; but the position of the
Loyalists may be inferred from the resolution of the New York
Revolutionary Convention, adopted a few days after the Declaration of
Independence, and before the actual commencement of hostilities, and
which was as follows: "That all persons residing within the State of New
York, and claiming protection from its laws, owed it allegiance; and
that any person owing it allegiance, and levying war against the State,
_or being an adherent to the King of Great Britain, should be deemed
guilty of treason and suffer death_." The Convention also resolved:
"That as the inhabitants of King's County had determined not to oppose
the enemy, a Committee should be appointed to inquire into the
authenticity of these reports, and to _disarm and secure the
disaffected, to remove or destroy the stock of grain, and, if necessary,
to lay the whole county waste_." Such treatment of adherents to the
unity of the empire, and of even neutrals, at the very commencement of
the war, goes far to account for the warfare of extermination in many
places between the two parties in subsequent years. This mode of warfare
was first instituted against the Loyalists, who acted on the defensive,
and who have been loudly complained of by American historians for having
afterwards, and on some occasions cruelly retaliated upon those who had
driven them to desperation.

A little more than eighteen months after the Declaration of
Independence, 17th of February, 1778, three Bills were introduced into
and passed by the British Parliament, which entirely removed all t