In time, a distinct order of the
community was formed, whose sole occupation appears to have been that of
relieving their fellow citizens from any little excess of temporal
prosperity they might be thought to enjoy, under the pretense of
patriotism and the love of liberty.
Occasionally, the aid of military authority was not wanting, in
enforcing these arbitrary distributions of worldly goods; and a petty
holder of a commission in the state militia was to be seen giving the
sanction of something like legality to acts of the most unlicensed
robbery, and, not infrequently, of bloodshed.
On the part of the British, the stimulus of loyalty was by no means
suffered to sleep, where so fruitful a field offered on which it might
be expended. But their freebooters were enrolled, and their efforts more
systematized. Long experience had taught their leaders the efficacy of
concentrated force; and, unless tradition does great injustice to their
exploits, the result did no little credit to their foresight. The
corps--we presume, from their known affection to that useful animal--had
received the quaint appellation of "Cowboys."
Caesar was, however, far too loyal to associate men who held the
commission of George III, with the irregular warriors, whose excesses
he had so often witnessed, and from whose rapacity, neither his poverty
nor his bondage had suffered even him to escape uninjured.
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