The Loyalists, Volumes 1-3 | Page 2

puppets of vanity and petty
ambition act their insignificant parts; adversity educates and exercises
men.
Nor is the moral harvest a mere gleaning of good deeds. Where misery
and wickedness seem most to abound; where desperadoes and
plunderers go forth to destroy and pillage; the passive virtues pray, and
endure. Self-devoting generosity then interposes her shield, and
magnanimous heroism her sword; benevolence seeks out and consoles
distress; the confessor intercedes with heaven; the patriot sacrifices his
fortune and his comforts; the martyr dies on the scaffold, and the hero
in the field. England hath often witnessed such piteous scenes, and
many fear she is now on the verge of similar calamities, which threaten
to cloud her glory from the envy and admiration of foreign nations,
making her a taunting proverb of reproach to her enemies, while she
points a moral, and adorns a tale, for posterity. May those who govern
her wide extended empire, so study the records of our former woes, and
shape their political course with such single-hearted observance of the
unerring laws of God, as to become, under his Providence, our
preservers from danger; and may the governed, remembering the

tyranny which originated from insubordination; the daring ambition of
popular demagogues; the hypocrisy of noisy reformers, and all the
certain misery which arises from the pursuit of speculative unattainable
perfection, adhere to those institutions, which have been consecrated
with the best blood in England, and proved by the experience of ages to
be consistent with as large a portion of national prosperity, as any
people have ever enjoyed. Yet as our offences may prevail over our
prayers, let us prepare our minds for times of trial. The public duties
they require, are adapted to the discussion of that sex, whose physical
and mental powers fit it for active life, and deliberate policy. But the
exercise of the milder virtues is imperiously called for in seasons of
national alarm. Whether we are to endure the loss of our accustomed
wealth and luxury, or to encounter the far heavier trial of domestic
confusion, there are habits of thinking and acting, which will conduce
to individual comfort and improvement. There are sorrows which
neither "King nor laws can cause or cure;" enjoyments, that no tyrant
can withhold; and blessings, which even the wildest theories of
democracy cannot destroy. The asylum where these sacred heritages of
a good conscience are generally concealed, is the domestic hearth, that
circumscribed but important precinct where the female Lares sit as
guardians. Is it presumptuous in one, who has long officiated at such an
household altar, again to solicit the forbearance and favour, which she
has often experienced, by calling public attention to a popular way of
communicating opinions, not first invented by herself, though she has
often had recourse to it. The tale she now chooses as a vehicle, aims at
conveying instruction to the present times, under the form of a
chronicle of the past. The political and religious motives, which
convulsed England in the middle of the seventeenth century, bear so
striking a resemblance to those which are now attempted to be
promulgated, that surely it must be salutary to remind the inconsiderate,
that reformists introduced first anarchy and then despotism, and that a
multitude of new religions gave birth to infidelity.
Nor let the serious hue which a story must wear that is dated in those
times, when the church militant was called to the house of mourning,
deter the gay and young from a patient perusal. Whatever mere
prudential instructors may affirm, worldly prosperity should not be held

out as the criterion, or the reward of right conduct. Let us remember St.
Augustine's answer to those Pagans, who reproached him with the evils
that Christians, in common with themselves, suffered from the then
convulsed state of the world. They asked him, "Where is thy God?" But
he declined founding the believer's privileges on individual exemptions,
or personal providences. "My God," said he, "in all his attributes,
different from the false impotent Gods of the Heathen, is to be found
wherever his worshippers are;--if I am carried into captivity, his
consolations shall yet reach me;--if I lose the possessions of this life,
my precious faith shall still supply their want;--and if I die, not as the
suffering heathen dies, by his own impious and impatient hand, but in
obedience to the will of God, my great reward begins. I shall enter upon
a life that will never be taken from me; and henceforth all tears shall be
wiped from my eyes."
Adversity purifies communities, as well as individuals. If fastidiousness,
selfishness, pride, and sensuality, conspire to cloud, with imaginary
woes, the enjoyments of those whom others deem happy and
prosperous; faction, discontent, a querulous appetite for freedom, and
an inordinate ambition to acquire