148 Life of Count Rumford. 



ist of Long Island, the assertion is simply preposterous. 

 There was an army of suppliants and mendicants for 

 whom the justice and mercy of Parliament were be- 

 sieged, not without strong opposition, through many of 

 its sessions. Benjamin West's allegorical picture of 

 the reception of the American refugees in England had 

 in it many elements of the purely ideal. Before Thomp- 

 son had reached England on his return, a Parliamentary 

 commission had already been revising the list of pension- 

 ers and their allowances ; and by their award in June, 

 1783, a sum of less than fifty thousand pounds had 

 been distributed among nearly seven hundred loyalists. 

 The claimants and their urgency so increased as to 

 engage a permanent commission for seven successive 

 years. That Thompson should have received the lion's 

 share to such an exorbitant excess in this distribution 

 would have been altogether unlikely, even if he had had 

 pre-eminent claims for losses incurred, or for great 

 services performed. He had really left but very little 

 of his own behind when he first abandoned his birth- 

 place. He had had a lucrative post in England, and 

 his military services here were abundantly remunerated 

 by promotion and a permanent position on the British 

 establishment. The whole tenor of his life, his gen- 

 erosity, and his public and private munificence, secure 

 him against the imputation either of greed in getting 

 or of selfishness in hoarding money. Cuvier said of 

 him most truly, that he lavished his own money to 

 teach others how to save theirs. 



I am glad to be able to close at this point the refer- 

 ence which I have had to make to the influence and 

 efforts exerted by Major Thompson, both in a civil 

 and a military capacity, adverse to the cause of Amer- 



