 | III. THE OLD TORY. The snow-image |  |
3. 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, sourvisaged,
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 Doctor Caner; we have
been a captain of the provincial forces, and love our king
Plains of Abraham. Among all the refugees, there is
not one more loyal to the back-bone 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.
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 an 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
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 on 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 Green, 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 loth to change
even a pair of buckles! The British coffee-house,
where oft we sat, brimfull of wine and loyalty, with the
gallant gentlemen of Amherst's army, when we wore a
red-coat too, — the British coffee-house, forsooth, must
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 Robert 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 copper-plate. 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
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. Now-a-days 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
on horse-back. And is not the whole land like a beggar
on horse-back riding post to the devil? Ha! here is a
murder, too. A woman slain at midnight, by an
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
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
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.
| III. THE OLD TORY. The snow-image | |