The most plausible theory upon which I can account for this harsh
proceeding is suggested by the fact that parties in the Province took
the same complexion with those in the mother country and ran parallel
with them,--that the same excitements which agitated the minds of the
people in England were industriously fomented here, where no similar
reason for them existed, as the volunteer work of demagogues who saw
in them the means of promoting their own interest,--that, in fact,
this opposition to the Proprietary grew out of a failing in our
ancestors which has not yet been cured in their descendants, a
weakness in favor of the loaves and fishes. The party in the majority
carried the elections, and felt, of course, as all parties do who
perform such an exploit, that they had made a very gigantic sacrifice
for the good of the country and deserved to be remunerated for such
an act of heroism, and thereupon set up and asserted that venerable
doctrine which has been erroneously and somewhat vaingloriously
claimed as the conception of a modern statesman, namely,--"that to
the victors belong the spoils." I rejoice in the discovery that a
dogma so profound and so convenient has the sanction of antiquity to
commend it to the platform of the patriots of our own time.
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