64 Life of Count Rumford. 



8th of November, 1774, and compelled him to make, 

 on his knees, the following confession : 



" Before this company I confess I have been aiding and 

 assisting in sending men to Boston to build Barracks for the 

 soldiers to live in, at which you have reason justly to be of- 

 fended, which I am sorry for, and humbly ask your forgivness ; 

 and I do affirm, that for the future I never will be acting or 

 assisting in any wise whatever, in Act or Deed, contrary to the 

 Constitution of the Country ; as witness my hand. 



" NICHOLAS AUSTIN." * 



Benjamin Thompson was not the man to subject 

 himself to any such humiliating treatment. He, how- 

 ever, knew very well, that the military commission which 

 he had received though, it is said, without his having 

 asked for it from the partiality of Governor Went- 

 worth, while it had provoked the enmity of older men 

 who had real claims for military promotion, had also 

 led him to be classed with the partisans of that magis- 

 trate just as the popular feeling was most inflamed 

 against him. He had occasion to fear any indignity 

 which an excited and reckless country mob, directed by 

 a secret instigation, might see fit to inflict upon him, 

 whether it were by arraying him in tar and feathers, or 

 by riding him upon a rail to be jeered at by his former 

 school-pupils. The actual and visible agents in inflict- 

 ing such degrading insults were not generally the neigh- 

 bors and former companions of an obnoxious person, 

 but were such volunteers, whether in their own proper 

 garb or disguised as Indians, as were easily rallied 

 from adjoining towns. If ill-usage stopped short of 

 these extremes, the condition of escape and security 

 was, as has been given in the case of Austin, a public 



* New Hampshire Gazette, Portsmouth, November n, 1774. 



