The Loyalists, Volumes 1-3 | Page 3

sudden pre-eminence, disturb public
tranquillity, when a country has long enjoyed the blessings of plenty
and repose. Previous to the commencement of that great rebellion,
which tore the crown and mitre from the degraded shield of Britain, our
forefathers, as we are informed by the noble historian of his country's
woes and shames[1], experienced an unusual share of prosperity.
During the early part of the reign of King Charles the First, he tells us,
"this nation enjoyed the greatest calm, and the fullest measure of
felicity that any people of any age for so long a time together had been
blessed with, to the envy and wonder of all the other parts of
Christendom." The portrait he draws is so striking, that I must exhibit it
in its native colours. "A happiness invidiously set off by this distinction,
that every other kingdom, every other state, were entangled and almost
destroyed by the fury of arms. The court was in great plenty, or rather
(which is the discredit of plenty) excess and luxury, the country rich,
and what is more, fully enjoying the pleasure of its own wealth, and so
the more easily corrupted with the pride and wantonness of it. The
church flourishing with learned and extraordinary men; trade increased

to that degree, that we were the exchange of Christendom; foreign
merchants looking upon nothing so much their own, as what they had
laid up in the warehouses of this kingdom; the royal navy in number
and equipage, very formidable at sea; lastly, for a complement of all
these blessings, they were enjoyed under the protection of a King of the
most harmless disposition; the most exemplary piety; the greatest
sobriety, chastity, and mercy, that ever Prince had been endowed with:
But all these blessings could but enable, not compel, us to be happy.
We wanted that sense, acknowledgement, and value of our own
happiness, which all but we had; and we took pains to make, when we
could not find ourselves miserable. There was in truth a strange
absence of understanding in most, and a strange perverseness of
understanding in the rest. The court full of excess, idleness, and luxury;
the country full of pride, mutiny, and discontent. Every man more
troubled and perplexed at what they called the violation of one law,
than delighted or pleased with the observance of all the rest of the
charter. Never imputing the increase of their receipts, revenue, and
plenty, to the wisdom, virtue, and merit of the crown; but objecting
every small imposition to the exorbitancy and tyranny of the
government. The growth of knowledge and virtue were disrelished for
the infirmities of some learned men, and the increase of grace and
favour to the church was more repined and murmured at than the
increase of piety and devotion in it were regarded."
Such was the lowering calm of ungrateful discontent, which ushered in
a fearful season of crime and punishment, described at large by one
who was an illustrious actor on that eventful stage, and composed his
history, "that posterity might not be deceived by the prosperity of
wickedness into a belief that nothing less than a general combination of
an whole nation, and a universal apostacy from their religion and
allegiance, could, in so short a time, have produced such a prodigious
and total alteration; and that the memory of those, who out of duty and
conscience have opposed that torrent which overwhelmed them, may
not lose the recompence due to their virtues, but having undergone the
injuries and reproaches of that, might find a vindication in a better age."
In describing the scenes which ensued, "when an infatuated people, ripe

and prepared for destruction, plunged by the just judgment of God into
all the perverse actions of folly and madness," he reads us such
important lessons as must strike an enlightened public, if recalled to
their attention. He tells us, by fatal experience, "that the weak
contributed to the designs of the wicked, while the latter, out of a
conscience of their guilt, grew by desperation worse than they intended
to be. That the wise were often imposed upon by men of small
understandings. That the innocent were possessed with laziness, and
slept in the most visible article of danger, and that the ill-disposed,
though of the most different opinions, opposite interests, and distant
affections, united in a firm and constant league of mischief, while those
whose opinions and interests were the same, divided into factions and
emulations more pernicious to the public than the treasons of others.
Meanwhile the community, under pretence of zeal for religion, law,
liberty, and parliament, (words of precious esteem in their just
signification,) were furiously hurried into actions introducing atheism,
and dissolving all the elements of the Christian religion."
So great were the miseries