St.
Lawrence. One Canadian priest, La Valiniere, who was connected with
the seminary of St. Sulpice in Montreal, was sent to England with the
approval of the bishop, for his openly expressed sympathy with France.
Happily Monseigneur Briand and the great majority of the clergy stood
always firm on the side of England.

[1] The first paper printed in French Canada was the _Quebec Gazette_,
which appeared in 1764.

{291}

XXI.

COMING OF THE LOYALISTS.

(1783-1791.)

It was during Governor Haldimand's administration that one of the most
important events in the history of Canada occurred as a result of the
American war for independence. This event was the coming to the
provinces of many thousand people, known as United Empire Loyalists,
who, during the progress of the war, but chiefly at its close, left
their old homes in the thirteen colonies. When the Treaty of 1783 was
under consideration, the British representatives made an effort to
obtain some practical consideration from the new nation for the claims
of this unfortunate people who had been subject to so much loss and
obloquy during the war. All that the English envoys could obtain was
the insertion of a clause in the treaty to the effect that Congress
would recommend to the legislatures of the several States measures of
restitution--a provision which turned out, as Franklin intimated at the
time, a perfect nullity. The English Government subsequently {292}
indemnified these people in a measure for their self-sacrifice, and
among other things gave a large number of them valuable tracts of land
in the provinces of British North America. Many of them settled in
Nova Scotia, others founded New Brunswick and Upper Canada, now
Ontario. Their influence on the political fortunes of Canada has been
necessarily very considerable. For years they and their children were
animated by a feeling of bitter animosity against the United States,
the effects of which could be traced in later times when questions of
difference arose between England and her former colonies. They have
proved with the French Canadians a barrier to the growth of any
annexation party, and as powerful an influence in national and social
life as the Puritan element itself in the Eastern and Western States.

Among the sad stories of the past the one which tells of the exile of
the Loyalists from their homes, of their trials and struggles in the
valley of the St. Lawrence, then a wild