io6 Life of Count Rumford. 



upon inferences. With his great natural abilities and 

 his spirit of observation, not forgetting his own appreci- 

 ation of himself, he might have been a really valuable 

 counsellor to those who rejected such as were more 

 wise and such as were more reckless. He may have 

 satisfied himself that the rebellion would, in any event, 

 stop short of securing the independence of the Colonies, 

 and have looked upon himself as a mediator on the side 

 of the stronger party, aiming in a friendly antagonism 

 to secure the real interests of the weaker party. Besides 

 his clerkship, his first civil appointment, as he informed 

 Pictet, appears to have been as Secretary of the Prov- 

 ince of Georgia, in which position, however, he would 

 seem to have done nothing, simply because there was 

 nothing to be done in it. The British authority was 

 nominally restored in that Province by the return of 

 the Governor, Sir James Wright, July 20, 1779. 

 But it was a short and barren restoration. The loyal- 

 ists there, who had been beguiled by the royal proclama- 

 tion into a belief that an end had come to their troubles, 

 had occasion soon after to rue their confidence, when 

 orders came from England, in 1782, that the royal 

 authority should be abandoned there, orders which 

 included, of course, an abandonment of the loyalists 

 themselves, and a surrender of their property to con- 

 fiscation. In vain did they offer to the King's general 

 the assurance that they would still hold the Province for 

 him if he would give them a single regiment of foot to 

 assist the Georgia Rangers. We may be sure that 

 Thompson's secretaryship, if rewarded, was ineffective. 

 We may be sure, too, that the first occupation of 

 Thompson, apart from the discharge of his duties as a 

 private secretary and a subordinate official in his De- 



