"On this subject I can give your Excellency certain and positive information; the storm of tyranny and oppression, which had for some years been constantly growing more black and more terrible, began to burst with violence on the people of North America in the year 1774. It was seen and felt and deprecated by all except those, who expected to gather spoils in the ruins it was designed to occasion. These were those who enjoyed, or expected, emoluments from Great Britain, together with their immediate dependants and connexions; such as the officers of government throughout the Colonies, but with some very distinguished exceptions; those of the clergy of the church of England almost without exception, who received annual salaries from the society established in England for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts; foreign adventurers, buyers and sellers, who, being no further attached to the country than as it afforded the means of gain, soon prepared to speculate in confiscations, and courted the notice of their sovereign by intemperate zeal for the ruin of his subjects. With these exceptions, the great body of the people moved together, and united in such firm and considerate measures for the common safety, and conducted their affairs with such regularity, order, and system, as to leave no room to suppose them to be the work of only a prevailing party, as our enemies have always represented and affected to consider them. "There was, it is true, another class of persons not much less dangerous, though far more contemptible than those I first mentioned; persons who in every revolution, like floating weeds in every storm, obey the strongest wind, and pass from side to side as that happens to change. I mean the _neutrals_, a pusillanimous race, who having balanced in their minds the advantages and disadvantages, the gains and dangers of joining either side, are seduced by their fears to form a thousand pretexts for joining neither; who, to manifest their loyalty to their King, when his armies were successful, gave them every aid in their power, except drawing their swords against their country, and who, when their countrymen prevailed, were ready to render them all possible service, except taking arms against their Prince.