tary discipline sheltered him from actual violence, he was exposed to insults that a man of spirit could not brook, and which his position prevented him from resenting. If thus treated within the army, he might infer what awaited him when he should emerge from the out-posts of the camp.' In these circumstances, he came to the desperate resolution of leaving his native country. 'I cannot any longer,' he writes to his father-in-law on the 14th of August 1775, 'bear the insults that are daily offered to me. I cannot bear to be looked upon and treated as the Achan of society. I have done nothing that can deserve this cruel usage. And notwithstanding I have the tenderest regard for my wife and family, and really believe I have an equal return of love and affection from them, though I feel the keenest distress at the thoughts of what Mrs. Thompson and my parents and friends will suffer on my account, and though I foresee and realize the distress, poverty, and wretchedness that must attend my pilgrimage in unknown lands, destitute of fortune, friends, and acquaintances, yet all these evils appear to me more tolerable than the treatment which I meet with at the hands of my ungrateful countrymen.'
Two months after writing the above, he carried his resolution into effect. Paying off his debts, and converting some of his property into cash, with the expressed intention of removing to some of the southern states, where he might live in greater security, he set out from Cambridge, the headquarters of the American army, on the 10th of October 1775, accompanied by his half-brother, Josiah Pierce, who took leave of him at the nearest post-town. 'From that hour,' says his biographer, 'until the close of the revolutionary struggle, his friends and relatives were without any positive tidings of his fate.' From accounts afterwards received, it appeared that he had reached Newport on the 11th of October, apparently undecided as to his future movements; that there finding a boat belonging to the British frigate Scarborough, he went on board that vessel, and was afterwards landed at Boston, which his friend General Gage, as commander of the British garrison, was at that time maintaining against the American forces. Here he remained under the protection of the British till the evacuation of the town in March 1776, when he again embarked on board the Scarborough, and set sail for England, the bearer of despatches from General Gage to Lord George Germain, the British secretary of state for colonial affairs. Thus had he fairly renounced all connexion with his native country, and gone to push his fortunes in the old world.
Arriving in England, as he did, the bearer of gloomy despatches, and sustaining the equivocal character of a deserter from the American cause, Thompson soon proved that he was a man who could command his fortune anywhere. The capacity in which he had come over introduced him to various public men, who could not fail to be struck by his abilities, as well as charmed by his manner; and the consequence was, that in a short time after his arrival he was offered a post in the colonial office. Probably the minister was of opinion that none of all the American refugees, who then swarmed in London, was able to render such assistance as Thompson in conducting the department over which he presided.
Of whatever nature were the services which Thompson rendered to the public business, they must have been of considerable value; for in 1780, four years after his arrival in England, he was raised by his patron, Lord Germain, to the post of under-secretary of state for the colonies; an in-
