ART. VI. The American Loyalists, or Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the British Crown in the War of the Revolution, alphabetically arranged; with a Preliminary Historical Essay. By LORENZO SABINE. Boston Little & Brown. 1847. 8vo.

IT is difficult to decide whether the theme of this volume is more peculiarly English or American, whether historic justice demanded this tribute from a citizen of the United States, or from a subject of the British empire. The topic in fact belongs to both countries, and has equal interest and an equal claim to attention on both sides of the Atlantic. The facilities for its faithful and thorough treatment, the historical documents, the private papers, correspondence, and journals, which compose the materials for its discussion, are in like manner divided between England and America.

The increasing attention which, within the last twenty years, has been given to historical labors among us, could not fail to make prominent among the subjects of biographical research that class of men whose history combines all the interest of great political questions with all that is exciting in personal efforts and adventures. The Journal and Letters of Curwen, and the Life of Van Schaack, with some smaller publications, have prepared the way for Mr. Sabine's more extensive labors. We believe that the public will receive his contribution to our history with unqualified favor. There may be some few individuals among us, who, retaining in their memories the embers of an ancient strife, will regard the revival of interest in the "Tories " in any shape as a covert attempt to redeem them from merited infamy, and will think our author has engaged in a bootless task. Such persons may condemn his volume on the mere evidence of its title. But the folly will be theirs, and they must bear with it, too, the imputation of injustice. Our scholars and patriots, and all our citizens who are lovers of justice, will thank him for enriching our annals with a volume which treats with admirable candor a theme as likely to enlist passion and prejudice as any that could employ the pen of an American writer. We may say at once, that his work is not of a partisan character. It is not a defence of the Loyalists of the American Revolution, nor even a plea in palliation of their

course, or of the sentence which posterity will repeat against them. It is as harmless as a dictionary of the English language, which contains active and passive, regular and irregular verbs, and adjectives of good and ill import, and in the three degrees of comparison.

There were three parties engaged in the American Revolution: first, the native inhabitants of the Thirteen Colonies; secondly, the foreign invaders from Great Britain, and their hirelings from the continent of Europe, and from the savage woods of America; and, thirdly, those who belonged to the first party by birth, but to the second by sympathy or adoption. It is of the principles and deeds of the members of this third party, and of their individual characters and experiences, that Mr. Sabine writes. He has given us an essay upon them as a class, and a biographical dictionary of them as individuals. The author says of himself, "I may be permitted to say, in conclusion, that the history of individuals and of nations has been delightful to me from my earliest youth; that the annals of my own country have been as diligently studied as circumstances would permit ; and that, of all men of whom I have obtained any knowledge, the Whigs of the American Revolution have impressed me with the greatest respect and reverence, both on account of their personal virtues, and the objects which they sought to accomplish for themselves, their posterity, and mankind." Such a feeling for the victorious party, dwelling in the breast of an upright and judiciously discriminating man, would be his most essential qualification for doing justice to the "Tories," the discomfited party. As to other qualifications for the work, Mr. Sabine is in no respect deficient. His residence at Eastport, Maine, has brought him into near neighbourhood and frequent intercourse with the descendants of the Loyalists. Public documents and private papers, family records, and a faithful use of all other available means, have furnished him with abundant and authentic materials.

The volume opens with a Preliminary Historical Essay, which, in the compass of a hundred and fourteen pages, passes in review before us the general topics and considerations involved in the whole subject. Though this Essay is not designed to stand as an exposition of the motives, the course, and the issue of the Revolutionary War, it is still a better sketch than can elsewhere be found in such narrow

limits of the actual state of things in the Colonies before and during the struggle with Great Britain. The author gives a brief account of the condition of the Thirteen Colonies, and of the political parties within their borders, and defines with more exactness than is usual the cause of the contest. How common is the assertion in our most popular histories, in our school-books and our occasional orations, that taxation was the first and chief outrage of which our fathers complained! The open and candidly expressed design, suggested by Mr. Grenville in the House of Commons, in 1764, to draw from the Colonies a tax which should help Great Britain in the payment of her debts, was the least dishonorable and oppressive act in the whole course of the legislation of the mother country toward us. We know that this may be regarded as a rather bold assertion, but we stand prepared, if need be, to sustain it. Such a tax, if it had been the only exercise of authority, and if it had been asked, rather than demanded, would have been paid with cheerfulness and promptitude. The character of oppression was attached to that measure because of its place in a series of extortionary, arbitrary, and crushing enactments, some of which preceded it, and others were designed to put it in force. Mr. Sabine observes, that nearly all the Parliamentary enactments which were here resisted laid restrictions upon labor and industry. There were no less than twenty-nine such laws, hardly one of which imposed a direct tax. "They forbade the use of waterfalls, the erection of machinery, of looms and spindles, and the working of wood and iron; they set the king's arrow upon trees that rotted in the forest; they shut out markets for boards and fish, and seized sugar and molasses, and the vessels in which these articles were carried; and they defined the limitless ocean as but a narrow pathway to such of the lands that it embosoms as wore the British flag." This is the simple, naked truth, concerning the oppressions inflicted by Great Britain upon the Colonies, the Northern ones especially. "Taxation" was but the cord which held the knotted whips together. The great purpose, the noble and justifiable end, of the Revolution was to release labor from these restrictions. The spirit prompted by that design spread with an electric sympathy, united all classes of men into a league to give it a triumph, proved the patriotism of those who suffered to accomplish

it, and consigned to reproach-which, after all allowances, will remain a heavy burden all those who were faithless to the cause of freedom, and offered aid, however indirect, to the oppressor.

Mr. Sabine presents a view of the state of parties in each particular Colony, inquiring into the circumstances with great candor, to account for the fact that the Loyalists were less numerous in New England than in the other Colonies. The interests of the South, lying in agriculture and raw products, were not thwarted, as were the manufacturing interests of the North, by Parliamentary restrictions, and therefore the South was naturally less sensitive to the rising zeal for freedom. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that, while the relative strength of parties was so unequal in the different Colonies, the love of liberty should bring together armies composed, though with many inequalities, of all classes of men in each Colony.

The classes and avocations in Colonial society are next reviewed, for the sake of making yet more definite the lines of division between the Whigs and the Tories. The officeholders of all kinds, from the highest to the lowest, were of course the principal adherents of the crown. Mr. Sabine accounts for the fact without an indiscriminate imputation of a base and sordid spirit upon all of them. Merchants and ship-owners were the first to resist the agents of the king and ministry. One quarter of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were men of this class. Of the clergy, nearly all of the Episcopal sect, and a few of each of the other sects were Loyalists. A majority of the lawyers throughout the continent were Whigs, though some of the highest eminence were Tories. Many physicians adhered to the crown. A great majority of the newspapers were on the Whig side. While thus, in the walks of civil life, the third party of which we have spoken was represented everywhere by men of distinction and influence, at least twenty thousand of our own colonists took arms against the cause of liberty. The foes of our own household, compared with our foreign enemies, had at least a double measure of power for harm. Indeed, the continuance of the war year after year is to be chiefly ascribed to the representations which the Tories made of their own relative strength, and to the encouraging accounts sent over by them to England. The Tories asserted, and prob

ably believed, nearly to the close of the war, that they had a majority among the Colonists. As to the motives which actuated the Loyalists, Mr. Sabine makes a few brief and pertinent suggestions, such as fair discrimination and charity would prompt. We defer remarks of our own on this point. to our closing pages, after we shall have done justice to the body of the work.

The course pursued by the Tories from the beginning to the end was disastrous. They commenced their wanderings from their homes on the opening of the controversy, before the sword was drawn ; and but few of them returned. They roamed abroad in increasing numbers, and as the reverses of war darkened their hopes, many who had availed themselves of the discord at home to make what they supposed would be a transient visit to Europe, till quiet should be restored, found themselves brought first to the contemplation, and then to the endurance, of perpetual exile. Those who remained at home, suffering in different ways, though in a less degree, were either the timid, the infirm, or the peace-loving, or they were the active enemies of their native land. Those who were either neutral or quiet submitted to fines, which scarce exceeded the voluntary or forced sacrifices endured by the Whigs. Those neutrals who practised tongue-prudence were generally protected by intimates and friends, and their lot was far preferable to the destiny of their brethren, who, living in England, hung about coffee-houses and reading-rooms, keeping each other company in their misery, or living in loneliness and neglect, alternately excited and depressed by intelligence from America, and dying on a foreign soil.

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 such as 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 which includes an Arnold and a Butler can never hope for complete redemption, at least so long as Judas remains in "his own place."

The measures adopted by the Whigs in the treatment of the Loyalists were all of them uncompromising, though of