FRtR > Documents > Charles Inglis, The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, 1776 > Context

Charles Inglis


The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, 1776


Context

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One of the best evidences of the power of Paine's Common Sense is the number of Loyalists who leaped to the counterattack. Some of these are better known to history then the Anglican clergyman Charles Inglis, but none made a more succinct statement of the forebodings of Loyalists. His anonymous counterblast against Paine was entitled, The True Interest of America Impartially Stated in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense.

Inglis had come to live in America in 1755 and, at the outbreak of hostillties, was attached to Trinity Church in New York City. Throughout the war he kept writing essays intended to convince the patriots that they were on the wrong track.

But in 1783, when he was about to sail for exile In England, he declared: "I do not leave behind me an individual, against whom I have the smallest degree of resentment or ill-will.

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