IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-S) /. % f^. lip Ms> 1.0 t}^ IM I.I !■■ S 1^ IIIIIM 1.8 1 1.25 IIIIII.4 IIIIII.6 V] yl /: y /^ i i CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICIVIH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques 1980 Technical Notes / Notes techniques The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. Physical features of this copy which may alter any of the images in the reproduction are checked below. D D El D Coloured covers/ Couvertures de couleur Coloured maps/ Cartes g^ographiques en couleur Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/ Pages d6color6es, tachetdes ou piqudes Tight binding (may cause shadows or distortion along interior margin)/ Reliure serr6 (peut causer de I'ombre ou de la distortion le long de la marge intdrieure) L'Institut a microfilm6 le meilleur exemplaire qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Certains d6fauts susceptibles de nuire d la quality de la reproduction sont not6s ci-dessous. n n Coloured pages/ Pages de couleur Coloured plates/ Planches en couleur Show through/ Transparence Pages damaged/ Pages endommag6es The pos oft film The con ort app The filrr insi Mai in upp bot foll( D Additional comments/ Commentaires suppl6mentaires Bibliographic Notes / Notes bibliographiques D D D Only edition available/ Seule Edition disponible Bound with other material/ Reli6 avec d'autres documents Cover title missing/ Le titre de couverture manque D D n Pagination incorrect/ Erreurs de pagination Pages missing/ Des pages manquent Maps missing/ Des cartes g6ographiques manquent D D Plates missing/ Des planches manquent Additional comments/ Commentaires suppl6mentalres The images appearing here are the best quality possible considering the condition and legibility of the original copy and in keeping with the filming contract specifications. Les images suivantes ont 6tA reproduites avec le plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et de la nettet6 de I'exemplaire film6, et en conformity avec les conditions du contrat de filmage. The last recorded frame on each microfiche shall contain the symbol -^^ (meaning CONTINUED"), or the symbol V (meaning "END"), whichever applies. Un des symboles suivants apparaftra sur la der- nlAre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole -^ signifie "A SUIVRE", le symbole y signifie "FIN". The original copy was borrowed from, and filmed with, the Icind consent of the following institution: National Library of Canada L'exemplaire filmd fut reproduit grAce d la g6n6rosit6 de l'6tablissement prdteur suivant : Bibliothdque nationale du Canada Maps or plates too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper lAft hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes ou les planches trop grandes pour dtre reproduites en un seul clich6 sont filmdes d partir de I'angle sup6rieure gauche, de gauche d droite et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images n6cessaire. Le diagramme suivant illustre la m6thode : 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 ->;W'-.-' their growth and development, reveals the fact that nothing but a sinister combination of adverse (.ircumstances, such as can never occur again in the Empire, made the separation that then took place possible. A true analysis of that conflict, which has in the past and must in the future so dominate our Canadian destiny, gives the most incon- testable evidence that the principle and sentiment of loyalty and devotion to the Mother Country and the United Empire is all-[)o\ver- ful in Colonial national life, and best conserves that life's highest interests. Let us make that analysis. Like our present, the peace of Paris in 1763 marks a turning point in English history, brought on then by the growth and position of the American Colonies. Three classes in the Empire had taken part in the creation of her Co.onies. The Home Government sought by colonizing to e.\- tend England's power ; English merchants and manufacturers pro- moted colonization for the enrichment of their trade, while the Colonists left the Home Land to improve their own condition and that of their posterity. The problem given English statesmanship to solve was, by her Colonial legislation to harmonize this three-fold interest of the public weal ; to bring all three into cordial co-operation in advancing the one imperial object of growing greatness and well-being. In the past this had been fairly well done, without any perilous conflicts of rights and interests. But the Colonial legislation following upon the peace of Paris, was conceived of the impolitic design to strengthen the parent state in the Empire by weakening the Colonies. Each act of this ill-starred policy robbed the Englishmen on the western shore of the Atlantic of some birth-right or privilege sacred to them under the constitution. The Colonies, with an irrefragable unity of public conviction and purpose, stoutly resisted these measures, and the whole Empire rec wh tra jus was plunged into the throes of a great constitutional struggle, in which an appeal to arms was made, (i) But such a struggle was no new thing in English history ; It had more than one parallel in the past. It has ever been through such struggles that England's constitu- tion has broadened its freedom and deepened its rights. While the issues that inspired the victors in the past, however great they had been, could not touch the heart and move the judg- ment with such brilliancy of sentiment and force of conviction as those then at stake ; the Colonists, like the Barons of Runnymede, were contending for their Magna Charta — hut the Magna Charta of the Greater Britain. They would be unworthy of their ancestry and unfaithful to their cause, not only in the Colonies but in the whole commonwealth, if, by renouncing their citizenship in the Empire, they gave up as hopeless their maintenance of the constitutional rights and liberties of Englishmen on the American shore. And, however much the conflict had deepened, their cause was anything but hopeless to English force of will, when Eranklin and his fellow (1) The Congress of 1775 declared the Colonies to be a unity ia their determination to defend their rights, and John Adams stated at the same time, "All America is united in sentiment, every colony, " county, city, town, and hundred upon the whole continent. One " understanding governs, one heart animates the whole." Quoted by Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. VII., chapter XXV., p. 2^. Sabine, an American historian, gives, in his " Loyalists of the American Revolution," repeated instances of leading Loyalists defend- ing the constitutional rights of the Colonies and taking the lead in this defence till the declaration of Independence made such defence no longer possible. Evidence of this is given in Ryerson's "Loyalists and their Times," vol. I., p. 479. Frothingham's " I^ise of the Republic of the United States," pp. 438-9 : "The first opposition in 1763 to the " infringement of Colonial rights proceeded from the General As- "sembly of New York." The majority of which Assembly were afterwards of the Loyalists. Bancroft (Museum Edition), vol. III.,p..S63. The same editi to take the vote by Colonies, and that the decision on the question, whatever might be the state of the vote, should appear to the world as the unanimous vote of the Congress. By this means the signatures of those who opposed, as well as of those who voted for it, were afifixed to the declaration. By such devices, after such a struggle, did the Independence party carry its resolutions in the Congress. But when they had carried them there, they never ventured to submit them to the people. A popular vote upon American Inde- pendence was never taken. The statement that the Loyalists took the side of England against America is utterly misleading. America never was given her plebiscite, never was pcimitted to choose her own destiny, never was allowed to tell us whether she looked upon the Loyalists or the Independents as her children, and the defenders of her cause. On the contrary, the Independence party, having obtain- ed control of Congress in the manner above described, and, by this control, possession of all the resources of political and military (8) Mr. Sabine, vol. L, introduction, shews that the large majority of the patriot press of the country, up to 1776, Avas in favor of main- taining at all costs the connection with England. , !i!BB 14 power in the Colonies, denied to their fellow subjects all liberty of Loyalist speech and opinion. They outlawed as traitors and followed with confiscation, imprisonment, and death, all who refused to re- nounce their allegiance to England and make their oath to the Congress. (9) The result was, that by the most vigorous pressure they could bring to bear upon popular opinion, enforced by the infliction of the most extreme Legislative and mob violence upon the citizens, the party was only able to secure the adherence, passive and active, of possibly something more than half the population. The unauthorized and tyrannous action of the Independence party in Congress changed all the issues of the conflict with those in power at home, and compelled the Loyalists to chose one of two alternatives, not at all of their making or to their liking. If they fought for the unity of the Empire in its great peril, they must take up arms against their fellow Colonists, who, up to that moment, had been their trusted compatriots. They must put off for a more con- venient season their defence of Colonial Rights, and they must join hands, for the time, with the odious faction of office holders, the hated minions of Lord North's Ministry. But if they accepted the declaration of Independence, they must turn their hand against the Mother Country, dearer to them than life, and bid adieu to all their cherished hopes of the ever broadening England of their Colonial homes ; they must seek an unnatural alhance against England with France, the hated ogre of their Colonial life, the France who for a century had mercilessly sought their utter extermination by fire and sword, had filled the encircling forests of their frontiers, for those hundred years, with the spectre and horror of the Indian's tomahawk and scalping knife, and France would form the alliance that she might wreak her vengeance on England for delivering them out of her hands. (9^) (9) As to the inhuman cruelties inflicted upon the Loyalists, see in- troduction of Sabine's American Loyalists, vol. I. (94) Bancroft tells us, vol. IV., p. 109, that Sanmel Adams, from September, 1768, struggled deliberately and unremittingly for In- dependence. And the same historian also tells us that Samuel Adams, long after this, prepared the instructions sent by Massachusetts to Dr. Franklin as her agent in England, commissioning him to assure the English Government that the people of Massachusetts wished for notning more than a permanent union with England on a con- stitutional basis. 15 Amid this craft of friends and breaking up of old issues, hunted to the death by the Independence party, looked upon coldly and askance by Lord North, whose tyrannous Colonial policy they had effectively opposed, the cause of England in the war misdirected and suffering, through the contempt of those in power for them and their councils ; amid all this the founders of Canada remained steadfast and unmovable in their loyalty. " Abdiel faithful found, " Unshaken, unsubdued, unterrified, "His loyalty he kept." The declaration of Independence has been portrayed for us as the spontaneous uprismg of an oppressed people. As a matter of fact it was, if we nay adopt a Lincolnian illustration, "a forced swapping of horses in mid-stream" that divided the Colonies, up to this time enthusiastically one, into two bitterly hostile and outraged camps. The declaration of American Independence has been proclaimed the birth of a nation ; for those who became the Canadian Loyalists it was the breaking up of the oneness of the Anglo-Saxon race in the unity of an Empire, which carried in the ark of her destinies all that is worthiest in the present and future of the world. The declaration has been held up to a people's gaze as an heroic venture for liberty. It was unquestionably an heroic venture, but it was risked for American Independence. It was anything but the free, constitiMonal action of the people in whose name it was made, and it was an abandonment of their "rational ordered English freedom that through centuries has advanced from stage to stage of progress, deliberate, calm, never breaking with her past, but making every fresh gain the basis of a new success, enlarging her people's liberty while bating nothing of the height and force of individual development." I shall speak ve^y briefly of the part taken by the Loyalists m the war after it became one of Independence. The American historian Sabine is my authority for saying that ■MHM i6 probably the Loyalists in the King's army exceeded in number the army enlisted under the Continental Congress. (lo) But probably the Loyalists did not number more than half the population, and if not, then they were more ready to defend their principles with their lives than were the so-called Liberty men ; and the fortunes and interests which the Loyalists sacrificed to take the side of the Empire were far greater than their opponents. We have evidence of the soldierly qualities and patriotism of the Loyalists in the changed fortunes of the war upon their leaving the Provincial forces after the declaration of Independence. The brilliant and all important victories gained in 1775 and tlie early jDart of 1776, by the United Colonial army, unprepared and deficient in arms as it was, upon the Loyalists leaving were turned into the disastrous defeats of 1777 and 1778. And even when France and Spain came to the rescue of the Independence Congress, nothing but the un- paralleled skill and courage of Washington, opposed to the no less unparalleled incapacity of the English Generals, turned the fortunes of the war against the Loyalists. As to the inhuman cruelties practised in the war, it makes all the difference who began them as to the relative guilt of the contend- ing parties, and the Independence men were the first offenders. Upon the Loyalists refusing to be torn from their inheritance, with its memories of the past and hopes of the future ; when they would not consent to have the ragged ends of their lives spliced by Congress surgery upon whatever might be left dangling for them in its new world of American Independence, Congress pursued them with its legislative violence, outlawed them as traitors, and sent the Indians upon the war path against them ; voted ^^40,000 at once as bounties to the Indians, not indeed for scalps, but for every (10) Sabine's American Loyalists, vol. I., p. 48 : "In nearly every Loyalist letter or other paper that I have ex- amined, and in which tht iibiect is referred to, it is either assumed or stated in terms that the Loyalists w^.e the majority, and this opinion, I am satisfied, was very generally entertained by those who professed to have a knowlege of public sentiment." And p. 72 of above : "In an address of Loyalists in 1779, presented to the King, it is said that their countrymen im His Majesty's army exceeded in number those enlisted by Congress." I? « King's man who might have fled to them for protection, or might y ave his home on their frontiers. The Massachusetts Legislature in one of its acts designated by name and occupation and residence 380 of her people, and denounc- ed against them death without benefit of clergy, and without judge, jury, or opportunity of defence, simply because they were reported to be Loyalists, and similar measures were passed in other Colonies. In political brutality the little finger of the Independence party was thicker than the loins of Lord North's Minist. " Instigated by this legislative violence, the party blackened its cause still further by their " mob violence," their brutal tarring and featheiing of their Loyalist neighbors, hissing and hooting them, burning down their houses and maimmg their flocks. These things they did to such families as the Robinson's and Sewall's and Doane's, and many another. Against this cruelty and tryanny the Loyalists aimed their revenge, and let him who thinks that under such provocation he would have been without sin cast the first stone at them. Then the tales that have come down to us of what the Loyalists did were published by the Independence party for political effect, and were of the most exaggerated and inflammatory character, full of the grossest misrepresentations, and doing them the greatest injustice. It is now known that Dr. Franklin went so far in political enter- prise of this kind as to write a purely fictitious story of Indian and Loyalist massacre, and let it be published as true, that it might stimulate recruits for the army and apportionments from the people. And this story in many quarters was long supposed to be authentic, and passed into American history as such. When Franklin did not think connivance in this sort of thing beneath his position and character, it can easily be imagined what a sorry trade may have been done by others. (11) (11) Ryerson's United Empire Loyalists' Chapter on the Wyoming Massacre and the authority ne quotes :— Ramsay's United States, vol. II., p. 321, '* Wyoming" : " In this remote settlement, whose government was feeble, the Tories were under less control. Nevertheless 27 of them were taken i8 The Wyoming massacre is a striking instance of chis picturing of Loyalists as inhuman monsters. Instead of Wyoming being the peaceful and innocent settlement described by the historians of Con- gress, and immortalized in Campbell's song, it was a virulent hot bed of the revolution. It had sent several hundred volunteers to the Congress army, and the Royalists who planned its capture were its own people, who had been driven from the valley, whose property had been confiscated and their families mobbed by the very settlers there whom they attacked. The settlement was not surprised. The first fort attacked had surrendered, and the American commander, a Colonel Butler, sought by a ([uick movement of attack to surprise the Loyalists on their march against the remaining forts, but was discovered by an Indian scout, and found the Loyalists prepared to receive him ; was defeated and fled into Fort Wyoming, and, with the American regulars, escaped. The local garrison then surrendered on condition that the settlers in the valley should not be molested, they stipulating that the Loyalists should be restored their property and allowed to return to their homes. The Colonel Butler who commanded the English force, did all in his power to fulfil these terms, but the Indians broke away from his control and entered upon a scene of plunder. The garrison, how- ever, escaped down the river and the people had already fled into the mountains. On this basis of fact, painful no doubt, but not any- thing like a massacre, was built up the revolutionary myth of Wyo- ming, with its burning houses filled with women and children, and its army decoyed by a flag of truce into a deadly ambuscade of Indians. The employment of the Indians on either side makes one of the darkest pages in this cruel war. But we must remember, in defence of the Loyalists, that, driven from their homes, their property seized, niul sent to Hartford, in Connecticut, but were .afterwards released. These and others of the same description, instigated by revenge against the Americans, from whom some of them had suffered V)an- isiiment and loss of property, made a common cause with the Indians, and attacked the settlement." '9 their lives made a prey, there was no place for the soles of their feet but among the Indians ; — and Congress followed them there. One of its first acts after the Declaration of Independence offered large prize money for every Loyalist the Indians should betray to them. The Massachusetts Legislature wrote a secret letter to a missionary of great power among the Indians of U'estern New York, entreating him to send the Indians on the war path against the Loyalists ; though this same legislature publicly expressed the greatest indignation against the English use of the Indians at a later period. (12) The employment of the Indians by the English was brought about in this way : When the Indians who had given them refuge were attacked the Loyalists joined in the defence ; and they accepted the alliance of these Indians when, ii, Uirn, they sought to regain their homes. And what else, as men, were they likely to do? The Indians themselves suffered at the hands of the Congress Army far greater cruelties than they inflicted. The srain of their tragic fate '" on American history as indelible as the blood of a mur- dered Duncan on the hand of a Macbeth. When at length negotiations looking to a recognition of American Independence were begun at Paris, what should be the fate of the Loyalists proved to be one of the most difficult questions of the treaty. England, after the custom of the civilized nations, asked that the Loyalists should be restored to their i)roperty and civil rights. But Franklin arrogantly and bitterly opposed this with all the resources of his ingenious and fertile diplomacy, and England yielded and left the Loyalists to the tender mercies, or, as it proved, the (12) Congress on June 3, 1770, passed a resolution to raise an army of 2,(XK) Indians for the Canada expedition. Washington advised Con- gress to engage the Indians on tlieir side, in his letter of April l()th, 1776. Doctor Andrews' History (jf the American War, vol. 2, pp. 3f)l-2, and the Ladiaws' History of the War of Independence, p. 128. Lord Mahon in his history, vol. 8, pp. 420-1, gives the letter of the Mas.sachusetts Legislature to the Indian Missionary, and gives as his authority the letter of Lafayette to Washington, .June 12th, 1779, and also Life of President Reed, etc., vol. 2, p. 18. The Americans have never had the self-respect to erase from the forefront of their Constitution the misleading charge against Eng- land — embodied in the Declaration of Independence — of "endeavor- ing to bring on the inhabitants of oiir frontiers the merciless savage." 20 gauntlet of their implacable foes. In these negotiations one knows not at which most to marvel — the boldness and skill of the American Commissioner, or the subserviency and ignorance of the English. They were very unequally matched — Franklin, a man of remarkable parts and great public spirit, Mr. Oswald, an ordinary merchant en- gaged in the American trade, and knowing nothing of the matter in hand except as it affected his private interests. The one was a pal- pable tool in the hands of the other. Franklin's plea that Congress had no power in granting amnesty to the Loyalists because it had no power over the action of the Colonial Legislatures, was manifestly a mere pretext. If true, how could Congress agree as it did, under the treaty, that those Legislatures should make no more confiscations and con- scriptions ; and, if the i)lea had been good. Congress had ample resources at hand for compensating the Loyalists in that vast territory comprising the present States of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and the States west of them to the Rockies, a domain ceded to Congress by England in the treaty, and in which not one of the thirteen Colonies held any separate rights. Besides, there was no necessity, as Mr. Oswald urged in defence of his surrender, that England should con- tinue the active prosecution of the war, if she insisted upon Congress acknowledging the rights of the Loyalists. She was mistress of the seas ; she had only to continue to hold the American forts on the Atlantic — New York, Charleston, Long Island — until Congress grant- ed what England was in all honor bound to claim. And it made all the difference whether the rights of the Loyalists were secured to them under treaty from the American Government, or they were to come before an English Board of Commissioners in fortna pauperis asking for help out of the pockets of English ratepayers, a thing which some who suffered most did not bring themselves to do. There were some 30,000 Loyalists who settled in what is now Canada, leaving out those who went to England, the West Indies and else- where, while only between 3000 and 4000 ever sent in their claims for compensation. When the treaty was signed, England hastened to make all the 21 amends jjossible by most j^cnerous treatment of her faithful subjects beyond seas, who had suffered the loss of all things in her cause. But do what she might, it was then impossible to prevent the untold sufferings and hardships the Loyalists had still to pass through in that noblest epic migration of modern times, their settlement of Canada. "Why did you come here," was asked of a distinguished Loyalist of New Hrunswick, "when you were certain to endure all the sufferings and absolute want of food and shelter you have narrated ?" " Why did we come here?" replied he, with emotions that could not keep back the tears, " For our Loyalty." That was the clay, baptized in their sufferings, which the hands of the coming years were to mould into Canada. It was with no light heart the Loyalists set their faces northward, that once more their feet might find English soil. Can- ada, as reported to them, was a land of intense cold, wilderness and swamp, full of venomous reptiles, prowled by savage beasts and still more to be dreaded Indians. The hardships, exposures and privations endured by the Loyal ists in making their way from their confiscated homes to Canada, were longer and more severe than any Everett has been able to tell us of the New England Pilgrim Fathers ; and the persecutions which sent these Fathers of New England voyaging to Plymouth Rock was but a morning shower when compared to the mobbings and imprison- ments, confiscations and death, that fell in savage fury upon the Faith- ful of Old England in the days of the American Revolution ; and drove the remnant that was left into the wilderness of Canada. The Pilgrim Fathers could keep harvest home festival of a week's continu- ''nce, at the end of the first year from their landing. But the Loyalists were in most instances forced to seek a home in Canada, without food or shelter, and at a season too late for any clearing of the forest and seed sowing ; and the supply of food and other necessaries the Eng- lish (iovernment was endeavoring to send them, by some misman- agement, was frozen up in the River St. Lawrence. While I. New England Fathers were keeping harvest home, the Loyalists of Canada were passing through all the rigors of famine. In some instances the cattle that were browsed upon felled trees in ai the forest were from time to time [)le(l, that the blood might he had for food, so fierce and close was the struggle for life. On the Hay of (^)iiinte and in the Niagara I )istrict ladies brought up in luxury and comfort might be seen in the early s|)ring woods gather- ing in their aprons and l)askets the swelling buds of the basswood for food for theniselves and their children, and, later on, plucking the rye and barley heads as soon as the kernel began to form. No wonder that even to their brave hearts the swallows sang in those days, " Hard times in Caiuula." 'I'his early Loyalist life that came to the Canadian forest is full of romantic interest, tragic and epic. In it our |)oets may find more than a Miles Standish or an Evangeline to enrich at once our literature and history. Such a theme some Canadian Wordsworth might find in the story of Robert Land, a Loyalist, whose home was in one of the loveliest vales of the Delaware and whose knowledge of the country and known ability had enabled him to perform va'uable services for the King's army, and placed him in the way of being intrusted with imi)ortant missions. While engaged upon one of these, and having upon his person valuable despatches, he was discovered by the enemy and fired ui)on and wounded. Hut, by heroic exertion and fertility of resource, he hid himself away from the foe in a dense undergrowth of bushes. The rebels, finding traces of his wound, which bled |)rofusely, reported him slain. Hut he finally made good his escape and delivered his despatches. When at length he was able to visit his home, to his horror he found it in ashes, and, believing his family massacred, he finally escaped to Canada, and came first to Drummondville at Niag- ara Falls, and afterwards acquired a farm of 300 acres, in what is now East Hamilton. Here he built a log cabin with one window, having a wolf skin for glass, and became for several years its solitary occu- pant. Returning from the field and forest one day, to his great sur- prise, he found a wearied and travel worn woman had crossed his threshold, accompanied by two grown up young men. His wife and two sons had come to him. His home by the Delaware had been 23 fired by the rebels, but his wife had escaped with her children ; and hearing the report that her husband had been slain, broken hearted and in despair she fled with her family to New Hrunswick. Hut, ill at ease there, clinging to the fond hope that her husband was still alive, her widowed heart sent her, a Canadian Evangeline, with a happier fate, searching through the Loyalist settlements to Niagara Falls. Here she learned that a man named Robert Land had, at one time, dwelt in the neighborhood, and now lived a solitary under the shadow of the mountain beyond Stoncy Creek. Thither she at once set out, and, accompanied by her two sons, walked the whole distance, some fifty miles, through the then forest, to restore to the lonely arms of her husband the long lost wife of his youth, to fill that lonesome cabin, between the mountain and the shore, with the glad halo of the joy and hapj)incss of the reunited family. Uijon their settlement in Canada the Loyalists took an miport- ant and dominant part in shaping the history of the country. They included the cleverest and the most able of all classes : Discharged soldiers, lawyers, clergymen, merchants, farmers and mechanics ; and all were in indigent circumstances, but willing to build their fortunes afresh and develope those of the country by honest toil. They renewed at once, in the Canadian Colonies, their old en- deavors after constitutic 1 rights for Flnglishmen beyond seas ; and this time there was no American Independence party to surprise and checkmate them. The Loyalists who settled in Nova Scotia asked for a larger representation of the people in the Colonial Government, and then for a division of the Province ; and both n^quests were finally granted. Those who settled in Old Canada objected to the Quebec Act of 1774, and obtained the Constitutional A :'v of 1791, and the creation of Upper Canada into a separate Province, more in accord with English institutions. This constitution of representative Government obtained ^or us by the Loyalists of the Maritime Pro- vinces and of Old Canada, with enlarged application, after the man- ner of English Constitutional History, is the basis of the British North American Act of the Canadian Dominion. This Dominion is the splendid monument of the Loyalists' constitutional victory won in the H (ireatcr Britain. The country steadily prospered from its settlement up to 1812. 'I'he j^overnment was satisfactory; tlie Colonial parlia- ments held short sessions, devoted to makinj^ provision for the [)uild ing of roads, the establishment of schools, the making, in short, such necessary improvements as the |)ul)lic need recjuired, and when this was done 'he Loyalist members of Parliament gave very little lime or heed to what occupies so largely the party i)olitics of to-day. They gave their lime and energies to the enlargement of their farms and mills, and of this action of theirs we, to-day, reap large advantage. They kept themselves from that l)esetting tem|)tation of Knglish colonists, the running heavily into debt, handicap[)ing their future with the necessity of an exorbitant |)ul)lic revenue. No civilized country was less burdened with taxes than was Canada West during that period of its history. jCi,5oo met its annual expenditure. During the closing years of the last century and the first of the present, France, now with her anarchy and now \yith her despotism, threatened the overthrow (>{ civilization with all its rights and liberties, and Kngland stood between her and victory. In 181 2 the United States strengthened the hand of the French despot l)y declaring war against F^ngland, and Canada became at once involved in the struggle. 'I'he spirit of the Loyalists shone out again in all its ancient splendor ; they gave the strongest example in this century of the attachment of a people to their Mother Country, and of their determination at whatever sacrifice, and against whatever disparity, to maintain their connection with her. 'I'he Loyalists were the larger part of the population, and gave to the public spirit of the country its tone and sentiment. That sentiment found fitting expression in the address of the House of Assembly to the people of Upper Canada, made in response to the noble a|)peal of General Brock. Its tone may be seen in the following extracts : "That the GovernmeJit of the United States, while |)i'ofe.s.sinK to he the friend of man and the siinportei-of his liberties, should, brined by t e tyrant of France, lij^ht the torch of war against Enf^lnnd, the last pillar of true liberty and last refuge of oppressed humanity, is a madness altogether ineomjjr'ehensible. * * * Qur enemies in this wai- are they who once arove us from our homes and posses- sions, to this pi'ovince. Their lands ai*e nuinured with the blood of oui friends and kinsmen. They drove our wives and childi'en into 25 th«' vvofxls, or I hiinv tliciii into (liin^<«*ni»H. ]{friicii)lH'i-, whfn you uo toi-th to coinhat that you i\^ht not for yoursflvcs alone, hut tor tne parent Stat*? contending for the oppre.ssed of the nations." There were Canadian boys of ten years in Crock's army which captured Detroit, and ihey volunteered out of families like the Kyersons. The Loyalists formed the greater jjart of the Lnf^lish forces, while their wives and daui^hters ennobled Canada with the heroism and daring of her Secords. " A I'aee Of manly hero heart In all IukJi ventiu-eH." The Canadian I-oyalists were ready at every crisis in their histciry to imperil life and fortune, personal and national, that they might secure for themselves and their children their home in the United I'jiipire under her constitution. Their history gives abundant proof that I^ngland has the power to make us all, everywhere in her world-wide home, Abdiels of her cause — that she can take us Cana- dians. Australasians, or whatever we may be, and make us all one in our common fealty. The Loyalist devotion of Canadian life for the United Emj)ire, as shewn in the American Revolution, the epic migration of Canada, and the war of 1812, gives its elo(iuent answer to the question — Will not Imperial Federation j)rove a broken reed to lean upon for pur[)oses of statesmanship in critical moments, when the more immediate and local interests and patriotisms may have such perilous tendency to become the demons of all centrifugal organization and life in the constitution and cosmos of the Empire ? Through holding the geographical position Canada does to the American Republic, one with her to a large extent in race and sjjeech, no part of the (Ireater Britain can ever have its loyalty to the Empire put to a severer test than is ours, and yet no colony is more loyal. Canada, in any "dark forest " of popular despair or passion, tempted by any annexation " Stanley's handkerchief," however brilliantly dyed in any "Commercial Union," bartering her Loyalist inheritance of a United Empire with all its possibilities of material greatness, its coming " days of King Solomon " within measurable distance — an } 26 Empire the crowning growth of time and nature, and that great impersonal artist, the English constitution — an Empire dowered by the ages with poetry and beauty, all that can charm the imagination and win the loving loyalty of the better feeling and higher intelligence of mankind, and hallowed in Canadian eyes by our Loyalist past — Canada parting with all this for American machine politics would be the most dismal performance ever enacted by man. Whatever surprises the future may have in store, it certainly cannot give us this. Canada at the inception of her birth was consecrated by her Loyalist martyrs and confessors a Nazarite of their cause. As the Silurian and Devonian rocks of England re-appear across the Atlantic as Canada, so the Loyalists made Canada in all that creates a people's heart one with England. They gave to Canada her English nationality to be our Canadian sentiment and instinct, made up of memory and hope, to be our national spirit, which swells every Canadian's heart — makes what else would be common earth, or the Indian's land, his Fatherland of Loyal English life sacred and dear, sending up to him brave messages from her loyal past and bright prophesies of her future — a future ever revealing the lofty secret of our parentage and destiny — a future that, issuing forth from our Loyalists' heights, and broadening our Canadian Dominion like our Lower St. Lawrence, shall merge into the world-wide Imperial re- sponsibilities, powers and glories of the United Empire, enthroned amid her encircling seas and sceptered with the never setting sun. 325 4S0 3 5' o ^memmm^- <^ .r*.