III. THE OLD TORY.
Again we take a leap of about twenty years, and alight in the midst of
the Revolution. Indeed, having just closed a volume of colonial
newspapers, which represented the period when monarchical and
aristocratic sentiments were at the highest,--and now opening another
volume printed in the same metropolis, after such sentiments had long
been deemed a sin and shame,--we feel as if the leap were more than
figurative. Our late course of reading has tinctured us, for the moment,
with antique prejudices; and we shrink from the strangely contrasted
times into which we emerge, like one of those immutable old Tories, who
acknowledge no oppression in the Stamp Act. It may be the most effective
method of going through the present file of papers, to follow out this
idea, and transform ourself, perchance, from a modern Tory into such a
sturdy King-man as once wore that pliable nickname.
Well, then, here we sit, an old, gray, withered, sour-visaged, threadbare
sort of gentleman, erect enough, here in our solitude, but marked out by
a depressed and distrustful mien abroad, as one conscious of a stigma
upon his forehead, though for no crime. We were already in the decline
of life when the first tremors of the earthquake that has convulsed the
continent were felt. Our mind had grown too rigid to change any of its
opinions, when the voice of the people demanded that all should be
changed. We are an Episcopalian, and sat under the High-Church doctrines
of Dr. Caner; we have been a captain of the provincial forces, and love
our king the better for the blood that we shed in his cause on the Plains
of Abraham. Among all the refugees, there is not one more loyal to the
backbone than we. Still we lingered behind when the British army
evacuated Boston, sweeping in its train most of those with whom we held
communion; the old, loyal gentlemen, the aristocracy of the colonies, the
hereditary Englishman, imbued with more than native zeal and admiration
for the glorious island and its monarch, because the far-intervening
ocean threw a dim reverence around them. When our brethren departed, we
could not tear our aged roots out of the soil.
We have remained, therefore, enduring to be outwardly a freeman, but
idolizing King George in secrecy and silence,--one true old heart amongst
a host of enemies. We watch, with a weary hope, for the moment when all
this turmoil shall subside, and the impious novelty that has distracted
our latter years, like a wild dream, give place to the blessed quietude
of royal sway, with the king's name in every ordinance, his prayer in the
church, his health at the board, and his love in the people's heart.
Meantime, our old age finds little honor. Hustled have we been, till
driven from town-meetings; dirty water has been cast upon our ruffles by
a Whig chambermaid; John Hancock's coachman seizes every opportunity to
bespatter us with mud; daily are we hooted by the unbreeched rebel brats;
and narrowly, once, did our gray hairs escape the ignominy of tar and
feathers. Alas! only that we cannot bear to die till the next royal
governor comes over, we would fain be in our quiet grave.
Such an old man among new things are we who now hold at arm's-length the
rebel newspaper of the day. The very figure-head, for the thousandth
time, elicits it groan of spiteful lamentation. Where are the united
heart and crown, the loyal emblem, that used to hallow the sheet on which
it was impressed, in our younger days? In its stead we find a
continental officer, with the Declaration of Independence in one hand, a
drawn sword in the other, and above his head a scroll, bearing the motto,
"WE APPEAL TO HEAVEN." Then say we, with a prospective triumph, let
Heaven judge, in its own good time! The material of the sheet attracts
our scorn. It is a fair specimen of rebel manufacture, thick and coarse,
like wrapping-paper, all overspread with little knobs; and of such a
deep, dingy blue color, that we wipe our spectacles thrice before we can
distinguish a letter of the wretched print. Thus, in all points, the
newspaper is a type of the times, far more fit for the rough hands of a
democratic mob, than for our own delicate, though bony fingers. Nay we
will not handle it without our gloves!
Glancing down the page, our eyes are greeted everywhere by the offer of
lands at auction, for sale or to be leased, not by the rightful owners,
but a rebel committee; notices of the town constable, that he is
authorized to receive the taxes on such all estate, in default of which,
that also is to be knocked down to the highest bidder; and notifications
of complaints filed by the attorney-general against certain traitorous
absentees, and of confiscations that are to ensue. And who are these
traitors? Our own best friends; names as old, once as honored, as any in
the land where they are no longer to have a patrimony, nor to be
remembered as good men who have passed away. We are ashamed of not
relinquishing our little property, too; but comfort ourselves because we
still keep our principles, without gratifying the rebels with our
plunder. Plunder, indeed, they are seizing everywhere,--by the strong
hand at sea, as well as by legal forms oil shore. Here are prize-vessels
for sale; no French nor Spanish merchantmen, whose wealth is the
birthright of British subjects, but hulls of British oak, from Liverpool,
Bristol, and the Thames, laden with the king's own stores, for his army
in New York. And what a fleet of privateers--pirates, say we--are
fitting out for new ravages, with rebellion in their very names! The
Free Yankee, the General Greene, the Saratoga, the Lafayette, and the
Grand Monarch! Yes, the Grand Monarch; so is a French king styled, by
the sons of Englishmen. And here we have an ordinance from the Court of
Versailles, with the Bourbon's own signature affixed, as if New England
were already a French province. Everything is French,--French soldiers,
French sailors, French surgeons, and French diseases too, I trow; besides
French dancing-masters and French milliners, to debauch our daughters
with French fashions! Everything in America is French, except the
Canadas, the loyal Canadas, which we helped to wrest, from
France. And to that old French province the Englishman of the colonies
must go to find his country!
O, the misery of seeing the whole system of things changed in my old
days, when I would be loath to change even a pair of buckles! The
British coffee-house, where oft we sat, brimful of wine and loyalty, with
the gallant gentlemen of Amherst's army, when we wore a redcoat too,--the
British coffee-house, forsooth, must now be styled the American, with a
golden eagle instead of the royal arms above the door. Even the street
it stands in is no longer King Street! Nothing is the king's, except
this heavy heart in my old bosom. Wherever I glance my eyes, they meet
something that pricks them like a needle. This soap-maker, for instance,
this Hobert Hewes, has conspired against my peace, by notifying that his
shop is situated near Liberty Stump. But when will their misnamed
liberty have its true emblem in that Stump, hewn down by British steel?
Where shall we buy our next year's almanac? Not this of Weatherwise's,
certainly; for it contains a likeness of George Washington, the upright
rebel, whom we most hate, though reverentially, as a fallen angel, with
his heavenly brightness undiminished, evincing pure fame in an unhallowed
cause. And here is a new book for my evening's recreation,--a History of
the War till the close of the year 1779, with the heads of thirteen
distinguished officers, engraved on copperplate. A plague upon their
heads! We desire not to see them till they grin at us from the balcony
before the town-house, fixed on spikes, as the heads of traitors. How
bloody-minded the villains make a peaceable old man! What next? An
Oration, on the Horrid Massacre of 1770. When that blood was shed,--the
first that the British soldier ever drew from the bosoms of our
countrymen,--we turned sick at heart, and do so still, as often as they
make it reek anew from among the stones in King Street. The pool that we
saw that night has swelled into a lake,--English blood and American,--no!
all British, all blood of my brethren. And here come down tears. Shame
on me, since half of them are shed for rebels! Who are not rebels now!
Even the women are thrusting their white hands into the war, and come out
in this very paper with proposals to form a society--the lady of George
Washington at their head--for clothing the continental troops. They will
strip off their stiff petticoats to cover the ragged rascals, and then
enlist in the ranks themselves.
What have we here? Burgoyne's proclamation turned into Hudibrastic
rhyme! And here, some verses against the king, in which the scribbler
leaves a blank for the name of George, as if his doggerel might yet exalt
him to the pillory. Such, after years of rebellion, is the heart's
unconquerable reverence for the Lord's anointed! In the next column, we
have scripture parodied in a squib against his sacred Majesty. What
would our Puritan great-grandsires have said to that? They never laughed
at God's word, though they cut off a king's head.
Yes; it was for us to prove how disloyalty goes hand in hand with
irreligion, and all other vices come trooping in the train. Nowadays men
commit robbery and sacrilege for the mere luxury of wickedness, as this
advertisement testifies. Three hundred pounds reward for the detection
of the villains who stole and destroyed the cushions and pulpit drapery
of the Brattle Street and Old South churches. Was it a crime? I can
scarcely think our temples hallowed, since the king ceased to be prayed
for. But it is not temples only that they rob. Here a man offers a
thousand dollars--a thousand dollars, in Continental rags!--for the
recovery of his stolen cloak, and other articles of clothing. Horse-
thieves are innumerable. Now is the day when every beggar gets on
horseback. And is not the whole land like a beggar on horseback riding
post to the Davil? Ha! here is a murder, too. A woman slain at
midnight, by all unknown ruffian, and found cold, stiff, and bloody, in
her violated bed! Let the hue-and-cry follow hard after the man in the
uniform of blue and buff who last went by that way. My life on it, he is
the blood-stained ravisher! These deserters whom we see proclaimed in
every column,--proof that the banditti are as false to their Stars and
Stripes as to the Holy Red Cross,--they bring the crimes of a rebel camp
into a soil well suited to them; the bosom of a people, without the heart
that kept them virtuous,--their king!
Here flaunting down a whole column, with official seal and signature,
here comes a proclamation. By whose authority? Ah! the United States,
--these thirteen little anarchies, assembled in that one grand anarchy,
their Congress. And what the import? A general Fast. By Heaven! for
once the traitorous blockheads have legislated wisely! Yea; let a
misguided people kneel down in sackcloth and ashes, from end to end, from
border to border, of their wasted country. Well may they fast where
there is no food, and cry aloud for whatever remnant of God's mercy their
sins may not have exhausted. We too will fast, even at a rebel summons.
Pray others as they will, there shall be at least an old man kneeling for
the righteous cause. Lord, put down the rebels! God save the king!
Peace to the good old Tory! One of our objects has been to exemplify,
without softening a single prejudice proper to the character which we
assumed, that the Americans who clung to the losing side in the
Revolution were men greatly to be pitied and often worthy of our
sympathy. It would be difficult to say whose lot was most lamentable,
that of the active Tories, who gave up their patrimonies for a pittance
from the British pension-roll, and their native land for a cold reception
in their miscalled home, or the passive ones who remained behind to
endure the coldness of former friends, and the public opprobrium, as
despised citizens, under a government which they abhorred. In justice to
the old gentleman who has favored us with his discontented musings, we
must remark that the state of the country, so far as can be gathered from
these papers, was of dismal augury for the tendencies of democratic rule.
It was pardonable in the conservative of that day to mistake the
temporary evils of a change for permanent diseases of the system which
that change was to establish. A revolution, or anything that interrupts
social order, may afford opportunities for the individual display of
eminent virtues; but its effects are pernicious to general morality.
Most people are so constituted that they can be virtuous only in a
certain routine; and an irregular course of public affairs demoralizes
them. One great source of disorder was the multitude of disbanded
troops, who were continually returning home, after terms of service just
long enough to give them a distaste to peaceable occupations; neither
citizens nor soldiers, they were very liable to become ruffians. Almost
all our impressions in regard to this period are unpleasant, whether
referring to the state of civil society, or to the character of the
contest, which, especially where native Americans were opposed to each
other, was waged with the deadly hatred of fraternal enemies. It is the
beauty of war, for men to commit mutual havoc with undisturbed good-
humor.
The present volume of newspapers contains fewer characteristic traits
than any which we have looked over. Except for the peculiarities
attendant on the passing struggle, manners seem to have taken a modern
cast. Whatever antique fashions lingered into the War of the Revolution,
or beyond it, they were not so strongly marked as to leave their traces
in the public journals. Moreover, the old newspapers had an
indescribable picturesqueness, not to be found in the later ones.
Whether it be something in the literary execution, or the ancient print
and paper, and the idea that those same musty pages have been handled by
people once alive and bustling amid the scenes there recorded, yet now in
their graves beyond the memory of man; so it is, that in those elder
volumes we seem to find the life of a past age preserved between the
leaves, like a dry specimen of foliage. It is so difficult to discover
what touches are really picturesque, that we doubt whether our attempts
have produced any similar effect.
