bill for the British army that was a matter for discussion. They
had never before done it and they must not be told that they had
to meet the demand within a year or be compelled to pay. Was it
not to impose tyranny and slavery to tell a people that their
property would be taken by force if they did not choose to give
it? What free man would not rather die than yield on such a
point?

The familiar workings of modern democracy have taught us that a
great political issue must be discussed in broad terms of high
praise or severe blame. The contestants will exaggerate both the
virtue of the side they espouse and the malignity of the opposing
side; nice discrimination is not possible. It was inevitable that
the dispute with the colonies should arouse angry vehemence on
both sides. The passionate speech of Patrick Henry in Virginia,
in 1763, which made him famous, and was the forerunner of his
later appeal, "Give me Liberty or give me Death, " related to so
prosaic a question as the right of disallowance by England of an
act passed by a colonial legislature, a right exercised long and
often before that time and to this day a part of the
constitutional machinery of the British Empire. Few men have
lived more serenely poised than Washington, yet, as we have seen,
he hated the British with an implacable hatred. He was a humane
man. In earlier years, Indian raids on the farmers of Virginia
had stirred him to "deadly sorrow," and later, during his retreat
from New York, he was moved by the cries of the weak and infirm.
Yet the same man felt no touch of pity for the Loyalists of the
Revolution. To him they were detestable parricides, vile
traitors, with no right to live. When we find this note in
Washington, in America, we hardly wonder that the high Tory,