iberation I conclude you are right, and
that more than a third of influential characters were
against it.'

CHAPTER III

PERSECUTION OF THE LOYALISTS

In the autumn of the year 1779 an English poet, writing
in the seclusion of his garden at Olney, paid his respects
to the American revolutionists in the following lines:

Yon roaring boys, who rave and fight
On t'other side the Atlantic,
I always held them in the right,
But most so when most frantic.

When lawless mobs insult the court,
That man shall be my toast,
If breaking windows be the sport,
Who bravely breaks the most.

But oh! for him my fancy culls
The choicest flowers she bears,
Who constitutionally pulls
Your house about your ears.

When William Cowper wrote these lines, his sources of
information with regard to affairs in America were probably
slight; but had he been writing at the seat of war he
could not have touched off the treatment of the Loyalists
by the revolutionists with more effective irony.

There were two kinds of persecution to which the Loyalists
were subjected--that which was perpetrated by 'lawless
mobs,' and that which was carried out 'constitutionally.'

It was at the hands of the mob that the Loyalists first
suffered persecution. Probably the worst of the
revolutionary mobs was that which paraded the streets of
Boston. In 1765, at the time of the Stamp Act agitation,
large crowds in Boston attacked and destroyed the
magnificent houses of Andrew Oliver and Thomas Hutchinson.
They broke down the doors with broadaxes, destroyed the
furniture, stole the money and jewels, scattered the
books and papers, and, having drunk the wines in the
cellar, proceeded to the dismantling of the roof and
walls. The owners of the houses barely escaped with their
lives. In 1768 the same mob wantonly attacked the British
troops in Boston, and so precipitated what American
historians used to term 'the Boston Massacre'; and in
1773 the famous band of 'Boston Indians' threw the tea
into Boston harbour.

In other places the excesses of the mob were nearly as
great. In New York they were active in destroying
printing-presses from which had issued Tory pamphlets,
in breaking windows of private houses, in stealing live
stock and personal effects, and in destroying property.
A favourite pastime was tarring and feathering 'obnoxious
Tories.' This consisted in stripping the victim naked,
smearing him wi