Thus situated, business began to open up for Roderick Barclugh, Financier. Characters through whom negotiations were to be developed were not lacking. Philadelphia society rankled with Toryism that threw itself into the dust at any pretext for aristocratic government. Even some of the leaders in the Whig party of the town openly supported Congress because it was to their interest, but privately could see no good in the advanced theories of democracy as upheld by Samuel Adams. The merchant princes who had privateers scouring the seas for booty had reason for the war to continue and give them license to prey on commerce, but when order should be re-established, wished an aristocratic government for the enjoyment of their gains. Roderick Barclugh was soon a high favorite among the merchants. Robert FitzMaurice was the Financier General of Congress, and his commercial house of Milling & FitzMaurice was being enriched in every possible channel. The credit that this public position gave him, advanced his gains in trade and privateering. His credit allowed him to build ships. Nearly every week a privateer of his commission was bringing in a richly-laden merchantman as a prize to his wharves in the Delaware. These cargoes enriched Milling & FitzMaurice to the amount of 800,000 pounds sterling while the war lasted. Is it any wonder that this firm should make loans to the Continental Congress since they were merely putting capital into their stock in trade? One man at this time standing in the light of public opinion as the antithesis of Thomas Paine in his philosophy of _Common Sense_, was James Wilson, a leading lawyer of Philadelphia, and a writer of no mean abilities. He was the intimate friend of Robert FitzMaurice, and an adviser in the aristocratic plans of the financier. Whatever were the plans of the men of substance for monarchial forms in government, this clever lawyer was ever ready to advocate these principles by means of pamphlets and after-dinner speeches. He was making a fortune in the practice of law when the country was in the very throes of despair, but this Scotchman knew wherein his fat fees lay. But Roderick Barclugh did not confine his attention to the merchants and lawyers alone in pursuing his plans. One of the channels through which he pursued the objects of his mission was a fishmonger of the town,--Sven Svenson. In a raging snowstorm of the winter of 1772, a small Norwegian bark was making its course to the Swedish settlements of the Delaware, with a company of Swedish emigrants. The ship met an undeserved fate on the sands of the Jersey Coast. The whole ship’s company perished in the frigid blasts of a northeast gale in January, save one,--Sven Svenson, a young and vigorous Swede, eighteen years of age. He was found numb, and almost exhausted, by a party of Jersey fishermen. They cared for him and took him to their homes.