Life of Count Rumford. 145 



told, specified that when this corps was completed and em- 

 barked, they were from that time to be on the British establish- 

 ment." * 



4 



Governor Carlton issued, on August 17, 1783, the 

 following disbanding order, which shows incidentally 

 the provision made for the purpose of removing the 

 most odious of those who had served in the British 

 ranks from the retribution so much dreaded by them 

 if they should be left to the mercy of the Legislature 

 and the people of the nation that had achieved its inde- 

 pendence. 



" King's American Rangers, Queen's Rangers, [with ten 

 other provincial regiments named,] and all men who wish to 

 be discharged in America, are to hold themselves in readiness 

 to embark for Nova Scotia, where they will be disbanded, unless 

 they prefer being disbanded in New York. A non-commis- 



* " A Journal of the Operations of the Queen's Rangers, from the End of the Year 

 1777 to the Conclusion of the late American War." By Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe. 

 This journal, privately printed by the author in 1787, was published in a new edi- 

 tion by Messrs. Bartlett and Welford, New York, in 1844. The extracts above are 

 from this reprint, pp. 255- 57. Personal vanity and superciliousness characterize this 

 egotistical journal. " Mr. Washington," as the conceited writer chooses always to call 

 the American commander, was the especial object of his petty spite, and chiefly for 

 his course in the case of Major Andre. Let the following specimen suffice. " In 

 the length of the war, for what one generous action has Mr. Washington been 

 celebrated ? What honorable sentiment ever fell from his lips which can invalidate 

 the belief, that, surrounded with difficulties and ignorant in whom to confide, he 

 meanly sheltered himself under the opinions of his officers and the Congress in per- 

 petrating his own previous determination? And, in perfect conformity to his in- 

 terested ambition, which, crowned with success beyond human calculation in 1783, to 

 use his own expression, 'bid a last farewell to the cares of office, and all the employ- 

 ments of public life,' to resume them at this moment (1787) as President of the 

 American Convention ?" &c. As I transcribe these sentences, I happen to sit where, 

 on raising my eyes, I see at a few rods' distance the majestic work of Ball, the 

 equestrian statue of Washington, in the Public Garden. A small cur-dog is looking 

 up at it, though I cannot hear that he barks. It should be added that Simcoe, when 

 he was afterwards Governor of Canada, exhibited more of courtesy to the representa- 

 tives of the nation which with his light corps of depredators he had sought to 

 vanquish. 



10 



