number of patriots where it was possible, and to attack those who were circulating falsehoods intended to weaken the patriotic ranks.
In addition to the Tories, who openly supported the enemy, there were many worthy people who believed that the patriots were "going too far," as well as a number who, as Fiske says, magnified the losses and depreciated the gains.[1] In New York and Pennsylvania there was a large non-English population, both men and women, who had come from the continent of Europe, and in them "the pulse of Liberty did not beat so quickly" as in the English commonwealths of Virginia and Massachusetts. The Quakers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey were opposed to war, and in New York City, which had been the headquarters of the British army and the seat of the principal royal government in America, there was a strong royalist feeling.
If, as Lecky says, the revolution was the work of a minority, and the army itself was so small a part of the population, it is quite evident that the propagandist part played by the forces that converted that minority into a majority, a part greatly undervalued by most of our historians, was not inconsiderable.
At the close of the year 1774, there were thirty-one newspapers printed in English in the colonies, of which twenty-one were Whig. To these thirty-one, between that time and April, 1775, were added three more, one of which was devoted to the patriotic cause, but no less than five went over to the Tory side during the course of the war.
Until the beginning of actual hostilities newspapers were maintained in the principal cities; the activities of the enemy, however, necessitated the removal of several
- ↑ Fiske, American Revolution, i, 56.
