This was the case in great part of the country, the
wealth and culture, with distinguished exceptions, being for the king
and parliament; though, I must own, a great quantity of the brains
being on the other side: but in Virginia and her Southerly neighbours,
strange to say, the aristocracy largely, though not entirely, leaned
toward revolt; for what reason I never knew, unless it was that many
of them, descended from younger sons of good English stock who had
been exiled as black sheep or ne'er-do-wells, inherited feelings
similar to Mr. Faringfield's. Or perhaps 'twas indeed a pride, which
made them resentful of the superiority assumed by native Englishmen
over them as colonists. Or they may have felt that they should
actually become slaves in submitting to be taxed by a parliament in
which they were not represented. In any case, they (like Philip
Winwood and Mr. Faringfield, the Adamses of Boston, and thousands of
others) had motives that outweighed in them the sentiment of loyalty,
the passion of attachment to the land whence we had drawn our race and
still drew our culture and all our refinements and graces. This
sentiment, and this passion, made it impossible for Tom Faringfield
and me to see any other course for us than undeviating fidelity to the
king and the mother-country. There were of course some loyalists (or
Tories, if you prefer that name) who took higher views than arose from
their mere affections, and who saw harm for America in any revolt from
English government; and there were others, doubtless, whose motives
were entirely low and selfish, such as holders of office under the
crown, and men who had powers and privileges of which any change of
system, any disturbance of the royal authority, might deprive them.
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