sylvania, and going to some other part of America not in the possession of the enemy, not to return to this State without leave.” If he obeyed these requirements, it was only for a short time, for he had returned to his old neighborhood in 1782, and there, before 1798, he probably died.[1] The latter part of his life seems to be involved in impenetrable obscurity, and doubtless his relatives and friends were loath to renew the recollections of a career which, though it opened with much brilliancy, was afterward tarnished by suspicion, if not stained with crime.
Was he guilty? A hundred years have rolled away, and who can answer now a question which was not determined then? While the intelligent wife of an English baronet can recognize the coarse features of an Australian butcher as those of her own educated and refined son; while thousands of people believe, and scores of them declare upon oath, that an unfortunate convict is the heir of one of the oldest Saxon families of the realm, who can solve the mysteries of the past? His long flight lends color to the accusations, and his subsequent readiness to meet his accusers has the appearance of innocence. If blameless, he was the unhappy victim of one of those webs of circumstance which are sometimes woven about even the purest of men, checking their usefulness and darkening their fame, and if guilty, strength of intellect and craft enabled him to conceal the traces so effectually that the keenest of his enemies were powerless to discover them. In reaching a decision, it should not be forgotten that whatever were the virtues of our revolutionary grandsires, lenity toward those suspected of loyalty was not one of them, and the repeated arrests and imprisonments of Richardson show what would have been
- ↑ Jacobs' MSS.
