was afterwards President
of the United States)--"millions in England and Scotland think it
unrighteous, impolitic, and ruinous to make war upon us; and a Minister,
though he may have a marble heart, will proceed with a desponding
spirit. London has bound her members under their hands to assist us;
Bristol has chosen two known friends of America; many of the most
virtuous of the nobility and gentry are for us, and among them a St.
Asaph, a Camden, and a Chatham; the best bishop that adorns the bench,
as great a judge as the nation can boast, and the greatest statesman it
ever saw." (Bancroft's History of the United States, Vol. VII., Chap.
xxi, p. 235.)]

[Footnote 400: History of the American Revolution, Vol. I., Chap. xiii.,
p. 353.]

[Footnote 401: It was the plea then, as it had and has always been in
all tyranny, whether wielded by an individual or an oligarchy or a
committee, whether under the pretext of liberty or of order, to
persecute all dissenting parties, under profession of preventing
division and promoting unity. But the true friends of liberty, even in
perilous times, have always relied upon the justice of their principles
and excellence of their policy and measures for support and success, and
not upon the prison, the gallows, and the impoverishment of the
dissenters by plunder. The Congress itself had declared to England that
the "colonists were a unit" in behalf of liberty; but their own
enactments and proceedings against the Loyalists refuted their own
statements. Even in England, tyrannical and corrupt as was the
Government at the time, and divided as were both Parliament and people,
and assailed by foreign and domestic enemies, the proceedings of both
Houses of Parliament were open to the public; every member was not only
free to express his opinions, but those opinions were forthwith
published to the world, and every man throughout the kingdom enjoyed
freedom of opinion. It was reserved for the American Congress, while
professing to found liberty, to conduct its proceedings in secret for
eleven years, to suppress the freedom of the press and individual
freedom of opinion, and to treat as criminals those who dissented from
its acts of policy. The private biography and letters of the principal
actors in the American revolution, published during the present century,
show (with the exception of Washington and very few others) that
individual ambition had quite as much to do in the contest of separati