The Tyrannical Rabble of America
Being an American, and inclined to approve of the Revolution, I tend to emphasize the things that put the Americans in a good light — though I can add, in fairness to myself, that the Americans wrote more about the war than the British did, and not surprisingly, since most of it was happening on their doorstep instead of across the sea. I can’t claim to be unbiased, but I do try to be fair.
Another, though perhaps minor, reason why it’s easier to find things that were said in favor of the Revolution than against it is because that some people were intimated from speaking against it. For example, one person in Philadelphia wrote home to England on August 1, 1775, condemning the revolutionaries, but didn’t want anybody to know about it, because they were afraid of reprisals. They wrote:
You would hardly conceive, without seeing it, to what a height the political fury of this Country is arrived. I most heartily wish myself at home among free-born Englishmen, not among this tyrannical and arbitrary rabble of America. They have made many protestations of respect for England, and of their desire of union with the Mother Country, but you may take my word for it, my dear friend, it is the meanest and basest hypocrisy that ever was assumed. … You would feel the indignation I do every day, when I hear my King and Country vilified and abused by a parcel of wretches who owe their very existence to it. … Are the friends of Great Britain and their property to be left exposed at this rate to the dictates of an inhuman rabble? I expect, with many others, if I do not join in the seditious and traitorous acts in vogue, to be hauled away and confined in a prison, with the confiscation of all I have in the world. … Conceal my name; or I should run a great risk of my life and property, were it discovered here that I had sent you any account of these proceedings. Indeed, I incur some danger in writing at all; nor should I, if I could not confide in my conveyance.
While being grateful for what came of the Revolution, let’s not forget that there were mobs and other things that we shouldn’t be proud of in the Revolution. As the above writer mentioned, the people, and not just a king or dictator, can be tyrannical.
The Royal Highland Emigrants
Also on this day, in Quebec, some recruiters started looking for Scots who were willing to fight in favor of the King; although the war wasn’t in Canada yet, the British leaders rightly saw it coming:
On Tuesday last, August 1st, a recruiting party began beating up here for Volunteers, for Captain William Dunbar’s Company of the Royal Emigrants, and we hear they have already enlisted fourteen.
Conditions to be given to such Soldiers as will engage [i.e., enlist] in the Royal Highland Emigrants:
They are to engage during the present troubles in America only. Each soldier is to have two hundred acres of land in any Province in North-America he shall think proper, the King to pay the Patent fees, Secretary’s fees, and Surveyor-General’s; besides twenty years free of quitrent; each married man gets fifty acres for his wife, and fifty for each child, on the same terms.
And as a gratuity, besides the above great terms, one guinea levy money.
Notes
The phrase “beating up” didn’t mean that the recruiters in Quebec were beating people up in order to get them to join; rather, it meant that they were trying to “drum up” recruits. Today, we still use the term “drum up” in relation to business. Back then, it was often literal; they would get attention by beating drums in a public place.
“Levy money” was money that men would get just for signing up.
A “guinea” was a gold coin worth 21 shillings.
“Quitrent” wasn’t exactly the same as property tax, but you could think of it that way.
Source
American Archives, 4th Series, vol. 3, pp. 3-5