lared
all indentured servants, negroes, and others, appertaining to rebels,
who were able and willing to bear arms, and who joined his Majesty's
forces, to be free.

"The measure for emancipating the negroes," continues the Annual
Register, "excited less surprise, and probably had less effect, from its
being so long threatened and apprehended, than if it had been more
immediate and unexpected. It was, however, received with the greatest
horror in all the colonies, and has been severely condemned elsewhere,
as tending to loosen the bands of society, to destroy domestic security,
and encourage the most barbarous of mankind to the commission of the
most horrible crimes and the most inhuman cruelties; that it was
confounding the innocent with the guilty, and exposing those who were
the best of friends to the Government, to the same loss of property,
danger, and destruction with the most incorrigible rebels."[381]

It will be observed in Lord Dunmore's proclamation, as also in the
English Register, and I may add in General Stedman's History of the
American War, and in other histories of those times, the terms "rebels,"
"treason," and "traitors" are applied to those who, at that time, as in
all previous years, disclaimed all desire of separation from England,
and only claimed those constitutional rights of Englishmen to which they
were as lawfully entitled as the King was to his Crown, and very much
more so than Lord Dunmore was entitled to the authority which he was
then exercising; for he had been invested with authority to rule
according to the Constitution of the colony, but he had set aside the
Legislature of the colony, which had as much right to its opinions and
the expression of them as he had to his; he had abandoned the legal seat
of government, and taken up his residence on board a man-of-war, and
employed his time and strength in issuing proclamations against people
to whom he had been sent to govern as the representative of a
_constitutional_ sovereign, and made raids upon their coasts, and burned
their towns. In truth, Lord Dunmore and his abettors were the real
"rebels" and "traitors," who were committing "treason" against the
constitutional rights and liberties of their fellow-subjects, while the
objects of their hostility were the real loyalists to the Constitution,
which gave to the humblest subject his rights as well as to the
Sovereign his prerogatives.

Lord Dunmore, from his ship of war, had no right