een
confiscated. In New York and South Carolina, where they remained in
great numbers, they were still waging a desultory war with the patriots,
which far exceeded in cruelty and bitterness the struggle between the
regular armies. In many cases they had, at the solicitation of the
British government, joined the invading army, and been organized into
companies and regiments. The regular troops defeated at King's Mountain,
and those whom Arnold took with him to Virginia, were nearly all
American loyalists. Lord Shelburne felt that it would be wrong to
abandon these unfortunate men to the vengeance of their fellow
countrymen, and he insisted that the treaty should contain an amnesty
clause providing for the restoration of the Tories to their civil
rights, with compensation for their confiscated property. However
disagreeable such a course might seem to the victorious Americans, there
were many precedents for it in European history. It had indeed come to
be customary at the close of civil wars, and the effect of such a policy
had invariably been good. Cromwell, in his hour of triumph, inflicted no
disabilities upon his political enemies; and when Charles II. was
restored to the throne the healing effect of the amnesty act then passed
was so great that historians sometimes ask what in the world had become
of that Puritan party which a moment before had seemed supreme in the
land. At the close of the war of the Spanish Succession, the rebellious
people of Catalonia were indemnified for their losses, at the request of
England, and with a similar good effect. In view of such European
precedents, Vergennes agreed with Shelburne as to the propriety of
securing compensation and further immunity for the Tories in America.
John Adams insinuated that the French minister took this course because
he foresaw that the presence of the Tories in the United States would
keep the people perpetually divided into a French party and an English
party; but such a suspicion was quite uncalled for. There is no reason
to suppose that in this instance Vergennes had anything at heart but the
interests of humanity and justice.

On the other hand, the Americans brought forward very strong reasons why
the Tories should not be indemnified by Congress. First, as Franklin
urged, many of them had, by their misrepresentations to the British
government, helped to stir up the disputes which led to the war; and as
they had made their bed, so they must lie in it.