ABSTRACT
While most commentators on the American rebellions and revolution argued about taxation and sovereignty, some took more wide-ranging views of the issues. One such person was Beilby Porteus. Beilby was the son of Robert Porteus, a Virginia planter, and Sarah Jennings, daughter of Colonel Jennings, superintendent of Indian affairs in the colony, who was thought to be related to the Marlboroughs. Porteus does attribute some of this misbehaviour to empire, noting that The successes of the last war were too great for our feeble virtue to bear. The immense wealth that they poured in upon us, from every quarter of the globe, bore down before it every barrier of morality and religion, and produced a scene of wanton extravagance and wild excess. Horace Walpole would complain that ‘The Fast Sermon of Dr Porteus let loose all the zeal of the clergy and contributed to raise the infatuation of England against America’.
