nd to all others who had opposed the revolution, the privilege of
voting at the elections or of holding office. In another State, all who
had sought royal protection were declared to be aliens, and to be
incapable of claiming and holding property within it, and their return
was forbidden. Other Legislatures refused to repeal such of their laws
as conflicted with the conditions of the treaty of peace, and carried
out the doctrines of the States alluded to above without material
modification. But the temper of South Carolina was far more moderate.
Acting on the wise principle that 'when the offenders are numerous, it
is sometimes prudent to overlook their crimes,' she listened to the
supplications made to her by the fallen, and restored to their civil and
political rights a large portion of those who had suffered under her
banishment and confiscation laws. The course pursued by New York,
Massachusetts, and Virginia was different. These States were neither
merciful nor just; and it is even true that Whigs, whose gallantry in
the field, whose prudence in the Cabinet, and whose exertions in
diplomatic stations abroad, had contributed essentially to the success
of the conflict, were regarded with enmity on account of their attempts
to produce a better state of feeling and more humane legislation. Had
these States adopted a different line of conduct, their good example
would not have been lost, probably, upon others, smaller and of less
influence; and had Virginia especially been honest enough to have
permitted the payment of debts which her people owed to British subjects
before the war, the first years of our freedom would not have been
stained with a breach of our public faith, and the long and angry
controversy with Great Britain, which well-nigh involved us in a second
war with her, might not have occurred.

"Eventually, popular indignation diminished; the statute book was
divested of its most objectionable enactments, and numbers were
permitted to occupy their old homes, and to recover the whole or part of
their property; but by far the greater part of the Loyalists who quitted
the country at the commencement of, or during the war, never returned;
and of the many thousands who abandoned the United States after the
peace, and while these enactments were in force, few, comparatively, had
the desire or even the means to revisit the land from which they were
expelled. Such persons and their descendants form a very considerabl