10 THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. [CHAP. I. 



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 realise the distress, poverty, and wretchedness 

 that must unavoidably attend my Pilgrimage in unknown 

 lands, destitute of fortune, friends, and acquaintance, yet 

 all these Evils appear to me more tolerable than the treat- 

 ment which I meet with from the hands of my ungrateful 

 countrymen. 1 



I am too well acquainted with your Paternal affection 

 for your Children to doubt of your kind care over them. 

 But you will excuse me if I trouble you with my most 

 earnest desires and entreaties for your peculiar care of my 

 family, whose distressed circumstances call for every in- 

 dulgence and alleviation you can afford them. 



I must also beg a continuance of your Prayers for me, 

 that my present afflictions may have a suitable impression 

 on my mind, and that in due time I may be extricated out 

 of all my troubles. That this may be the case, that the 

 happy time may soon come when I may return to my family 

 in peace and safety, and when every individual in America 

 may sit down under his own vine, and under his own Fig-tree, 

 and have none to moik& him afraid, is the constant and 

 devout wish of 



Your dutiful and affectionate son, 



BENJAMIN THOMPSON. 

 Eev. Tim. Walker. 



1 The following unpublished letter from General Howe to General 

 Washington, written from Philadelphia in 1776, shows what the tyranny 

 of the committees and people was : 



' You are not ignorant that numbers even of the most respectable 

 gentlemen in America have been torn from their families, confined in 

 gaols, and their property confiscated ; that many of those in this city, 

 whose religious tenets secured them from suspicion of entertaining 

 designs of hostility, have been ignominiously imprisoned, and without 



