The logic of the loyalist writers is unanswerable, and their legal reasoning is usually correct and precise; the fallacy of their position was that they were in face of a revolution. Elements had been introduced into the struggle which, like the presence of an infinite quantity in an equation, vitiated the reasoning, however correct the process may have been. The author argues, for example: “To talk of subjection to the King of Great Britain, while we disclaim submission to the Parliament of Great Britain, is idle and ridiculous. It is a distinction made by the American Republicans to serve their own rebellious purposes, a gilding with which they have enclosed the pill of sedition, to entice the unwary colonists to swallow it the more readily down. The King of Great Britain was placed on the throne by virtue of an Act of Parliament: And he is king of America, by virtue of being king of Great Britain. He is therefore king of America by Act of Parliament. And if we disclaim that authority which made him our king, we, in fact, reject him from being our king, for we disclaim that authority by which he is king at all.” It may be noticed that the fundamental Whig doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament, which is here so strongly urged, was never understood or appreciated by those who called themselves Whigs in America. [167] _Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence_, i. pp. 263, 265. [168] _Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence_, ii. pp. 308, 309. [169] Jones, Thomas, _History of New York_, i. 362–3, 172–176. [170] _Christian Examiner_, viii. pp. 127, 128 (Dabney). Curwen, _Journal_, 475, 479. [171] Sabine, _North American Review_, lix. pp. 287, 288. _Loyalists_, i. 71–81. Ryerson, _Loyalists of America_, ii. 130, 136. [172] _No. Am. Rev._, lix. p. 289. [173] _The Journal and Letters of the late Samuel Curwen_, New York and Boston, 1842, p. 147.