With such testimony as this, and there is an abundance of other testimony which is even stronger in its terms, the honest historian of these events finds great difficulty in reconciling the facts with the persistent assertion that the War of the Revolution was originated by the great body of the Colonists arising, en masse, for the protection of their several properties aud homes and families from outrages threatened or inflicted by a foreign tyrant; that it was conducted by that same great body of people, through agencies of its own appointment and under its control, always unselfishly and with nothing else than the common weal in view ; and that the willing hands and the patriotic hearts of the entire body of the people were in accord with the patriotism of the Army which it had created, which it was sustaining with all which it possessed, and on which, alone, all its hopes for security, for happiness, for prosperity, and for peace, were rested. Surely, where mutiny and plundering were officially threatened in default of

2 General Washington to Colonel Joseph TrumbvM, Commissary-general OJ Provisions, "Head-o.uaetk.rs, King's Bridge, October 20,1776."

WESTCHESTEK COUNTY.

contributions, forced contributions, demanded and expected, there could not have been much sympathy between the Army and the body of the people; and, surely, in that condition of the popular feeling, the Army can scarcely be said, in truth, to have been fighting for the cause of the country, at large, but, on the contrary, as Armies have always fought, at 'the expense of the body of the people, of the working-bees of the hive, for the promotion, only, of the private ends and the private aims and the private interests of an individual or of a family or of a faction or of a party, neither of them a producer nor anything else than a cumbrance and a burden on those who have labored.