e so-called patriotic societies suppose it to have been. It
was on the contrary a rank and riotous rebellion against the long
established authority of a nation which had saved us from France, built
us up into prosperity and if she were ruling us to-day would, I am
entirely willing to admit, abolish lynch law, negro burning, municipal
and state legislative corruption and all the other evils about which
reformers fret.

But feeling that we were a naturally separated people, the rebel party
among us insisted that we had the inalienable right to rule ourselves.
We were seized with the spirit of independence, or as the people of your
way of thinking at that time called it "a chimera of patriotism."
Against this natural and inalienable right no authority, we declared, no
matter how meritorious and venerable need be respected.

The Boers, though receiving far greater provocation than we received,
have behaved much better. They have not tarred and feathered Englishmen
as we did or ridden them on rails, or suffocated them with smoke, or
burnt their houses or hazed or tortured them in any way. Their conduct
in the whole war has been most fair, honorable and meritorious, showing
the high character of their intelligence and morals and their
superiority to the British.

In our revolution, wherever the rebel party were most successful with
their reign of terror they drove all the judges from the bench and
abolished the courts; and for a long time there were no courts or public
administration of the law in many of the colonies, notably in New
England.

To people of the loyalist turn of mind all these lynching proceedings
were an irrefragable proof, not only that the rebel party were wicked,
but that their ideas of independence, of a country free from British
control and British law, were ridiculous, silly delusions, dangerous to
all good order and civilization. That such people could ever govern a
country of their own and have in it that thing they were howling so much
about, "liberty," was in their opinion beyond the bounds of intelligent
belief.

These lynching proceedings, the loyalists said, increased the loyalist
party very fast and made them sure of a majority. I shall not discuss
that question. But there is no doubt that many rebels went over to the
loyalist side; and many others who did not actually go over were shaken
in their faith and hardly knew what to think. Your ancestor belonged to
the party who did all this lync