In the year 1775 armed vessels were fitted out in several of the ports of New England to prey on the commerce of Nova Scotia. Many of these carried no proper commissions and were manned by hands of brutal marauders whose conduct was so outrageous that even so warm a partizan as Col. John Allan sent a remonstrance to congress regarding their behaviour: “Their horrid crimes,” he says, “are too notorious to pass unnoticed,” and after particularizing some of their enormities he declares “such proceedings will occasion more Torys than a hundred such expeditions will make good.” The people.
