7055. PROPERTY, Restoration.—[continued].
A right to take the side,
which every man's conscience approves in a
civil contest, is too precious a right, and too
favorable to the preservation of liberty not
to be protected by all its well informed
friends. The Assembly of Virginia have
given sanction to this right in several of their
laws, discriminating honorably those who
took side against us before the Declaration
of Independence, from those who remained
among us and strove to injure us by their
treacheries. I sincerely wish that you, and
every other to whom this distinction applies
favorably, may find, in the Assembly of Virginia,
the good effects of that justice and
generosity which have dictated to them this
discrimination. It is a sentiment which will
gain strength in their breasts in proportion as
they can forget the savage cruelties committed
on them, and will, I hope, in the end
induce them to restore the property itself
wherever it is unsold, and the price received
for it, where it has been actually sold.—
To Mrs. Sprowle.
Ford ed., iv, 66.
(P.
1785)
