ve
proceeded from the recommendations made from time to time _by Congress_,
and that body passed several acts and resolutions of its own. Thus they
subjected to _martial law_ and to _death_ all who should furnish
provisions and certain other articles to the King's troops in New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and they resolved that all Loyalists
taken in arms should be sent to the States to which they belonged, there
to be _dealt with as traitors_" (not as prisoners of war, as were
Americans taken in arms against the British).[113]

REMARKS ON THE CONFISCATION ACTS ABOVE CITED.

The Draconian Code or the Spanish Inquisition can hardly be said to
exceed in severity and intolerance, the acts of the several State
Legislatures and Committees above quoted, in which mere opinions are
declared to be treason, as also the refusal to renounce a solemn oath of
allegiance. The very place of residence, the non-presenting one's self
to be tried as a traitor, the mere _suspicion_ of holding Loyalist
opinions, involved the loss of liberty and property. Scores of persons
were made criminals, not after trial by a verdict of a regularly
empanelled jury, but by name, in acts or resolutions of Legislatures,
and sometimes of Committees. No modern civilized country has presented
such a spectacle of the wholesale disposal, by name, of the rights,
liberties and properties, and even lives of citizens, by inquisition and
various bodies, as was here presented against the Loyalists, guilty of
no crime against their neighbours except holding to the opinions of
their forefathers, and the former opinions of their present persecutors,
who had usurped the power to rob, banish, and destroy them--who embodied
in themselves, at one and the same time, the functions of law makers,
law judges, and law executioners, and the receivers and disposers, or,
as was the case, the possessors of the property which they confiscated
against the Loyalists.

Is it surprising, then, that under such a system of oppression and
robbery, Loyalists should be prompted to deeds of heroism, and sometimes
of desperation and cruelty, to avenge themselves for the wrongs
inflicted upon them, and to recover the liberties and properties of
which they had thus been deprived, rendering themselves and their
families homeless, and reducing them to poverty and distress? No one can
justify many deeds of the Loyalists; but who could be surprised had they
been more desperate than they w