During the latter part of the nineteenth century vast numbers of Irish, and next to them German, came to New England, so at the time of writing, 1908, it is claimed that one half of the inhabitants of Boston are Irish, or of Irish parentage. During the past ten years the places of the Irish are being taken by the Italians, Jews, Portuguese, Greeks, Armenians, French Canadians, and others. The reader will see from the foregoing that the contestants in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary war were a race representing a peculiar type of the Englishmen of the seventeenth century who, sequestrated from foreign influences formed a distinct character by their own discipline, and was engaged in a work within itself, on its own problem, through a century and a half, and which terminated in the Revolutionary War, that dismembered the Empire. That the foregoing statement concerning the purity of the race at the time of the Revolution is a correct one, is shown in the following biographies of the Loyalists of Massachusetts, for in nearly every case their ancestry date back to that of the first settlers, through several generations. THE ADDRESSERS. The importance of the following addressers is out of all proportion to their apparent significance. They are an indispensable genesis to the history of the Loyalists. For the next seven years the Addressers were held up to their countrymen as traitors and enemies to their country. In the arraignments, which soon began, the Loyalists were convicted not out of their mouths, but out of their addresses. The ink was hardly dry upon the parchment before the persecution began against all those who would not recant, and throughout the long years of the war, the crime of an addresser grew in its enormity, and they were exposed to the perils of tarring and feathering, the horrors of Simbury mines, a gaol or a gallows. ADDRESS OF THE MERCHANTS AND OTHERS OF BOSTON TO GOV. HUTCHINSON. _Boston_, May 30, 1774. We, merchants and traders of the town of Boston, and others, do now wait on you, in the most respectful manner, before your departure for England, to testify, for ourselves the entire satisfaction we feel at your wise, zealous, and faithful administration, during the few years that you have presided at the head of this province. Had your success been equal to your endeavors, and to the warmest wishes of your heart, we cannot doubt that many of the evils under which we now suffer, would have been averted, and that tranquility would have been restored to this long divided province; but we assure ourselves that the want of success in those endeavors will not abate your good wishes when removed from us, or your earnest exertions still on every occasion to serve the true interest of this your native country.