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.