ked with
its own envied and detested Loyalists. The revolutionists
wanted some tangible spoils. The safety of peace had made
the trimmers equally 'patriotic' and equally clamorous.
So the confiscation of Loyalist property soon became the
order of the day.

It was not the custom of that age to confiscate private
property simply because the owners were on the losing
side, still less to confiscate it under local instead of
national authority. But need, greed, and resentment were
stronger than any scruples. Need was the weakest, resentment
the strongest of all the animating motives. The American
army was in rags and its pay greatly in arrears while
the British forces under Carleton were fed, clothed, and
paid in the regular way. But it was the passionate
resentment of the revolutionists that perverted this
exasperating difference into another 'intolerable wrong.'
Washington was above such meaner measures. But when he
said the Loyalists were only fit for suicide, and when
Adams, another future president, said they ought to be
hanged, it is little wonder that lesser men thought the
time had come for legal looting. Those Loyalists who best
understood the temper of their late fellow-countrymen
left at once. They were right. Even to be a woman was no
protection against confiscation in the case of Mary
Phillips, sister-in-law to Beverley Robinson, a well-known
Loyalist who settled in New Brunswick after the Revolution.
Her case was not nearly so hard as many another. But her
historic love-affair makes it the most romantic.
Eight-and-twenty years before this General Braddock had
marched to death and defeat beside the Monongahela with
two handsome and gallant young aides-de-camp, Washington
and Morris. Both fell in love with bewitching Mary
Phillips. But, while Washington left her fancy-free,
Morris won her heart and hand. Now that the strife was
no longer against a foreign foe but between two British
parties, the former aides-de-camp found themselves rivals
in arms as well as love; for Colonel Morris was Carleton's
right-hand man in all that concerned the Loyalists, being
the official head of the department of Claims and Succour:

Morris, Morgan, and Carleton were the three busiest men
in New York. Forty thick manuscript volumes still show
Maurice Morgan's assiduous work as Carleton's confidential
secretary. But Morris had the more heart-breaking duty
of the three, with no relief, day after sorrow-laden day,
from the ang