While it is easy to see that these interesting instances are only slightly applicable to our country, yet I do not disown any suggestion of caution or clemency they inculcate. Other instances in our own history are more applicable. All are aware that during the Revolution the property of Tories, loyalists, and refugees was confiscated; but I doubt if Senators know the extent to which this was done, or the animosity by which it was impelled. Out of many illustrations, I select the early language of the patriot Hawley, of Massachusetts, in a letter to Elbridge Gerry, under date of July 17, 1776. “Can we subsist,” said this patriot, “did any state ever subsist, without exterminating traitors?… It is amazingly wonderful, that, having no capital punishment for our intestine enemies, we have not been utterly ruined before now.”[42] The statutes of the time are most authentic testimony. I hold in my hand a list, amounting to _eighty-eight_ in number, which I have arranged according to States. Some are very severe, as may be imagined from the titles, which I proceed to give; but they show, beyond assertion or argument, how, under the exigencies of war for National Independence, the power of confiscation was recognized and employed. Each title is a witness. 1. _New Hampshire._--To confiscate estates of sundry persons therein named. November 28, 1778. 2. _Massachusetts._--To prevent the return of certain persons therein named, and others who had left that State, or either of the United States, and joined the enemies thereof. 1778. 3. To confiscate the estates of certain notorious conspirators against the government and liberties of the inhabitants of the late Province, now State, of Massachusetts Bay. 1779. 4. For repealing two laws of the State, and for asserting the rights of that free and sovereign Commonwealth to expel such aliens as may be dangerous to the peace and good order of government. March 24, 1784. 5. In addition to an Act made and passed March 24, 1784, repealing two laws of this State. November 10, 1784. 6. _Rhode Island._--To confiscate and sequester estates, and banish persons of certain descriptions. October, 1775. 7-13. To confiscate and sequester estates, and banish persons of certain descriptions. February, March, May, June, July, August, October, 1776. 14, 15. To confiscate and sequester estates, and banish persons of certain descriptions. February, October, 1778. 16-20. To confiscate and sequester estates, and banish persons of certain descriptions. February, May, August, September, October, 1779. 21-23. To confiscate and sequester estates, and banish persons of certain descriptions. July, September, October, 1780. 24, 25. To confiscate and sequester estates, and banish persons of certain descriptions. January, May, 1781.