original settlements of New Brunswick were then
comprised--from rendering any practical aid to the revolutionists. The
authorities at Halifax authorised the fitting out of privateers in
retaliation for the damages inflicted on western ports by the same class
of cruisers sailing from New England. The province was generally
impoverished by the impossibility of carrying on the coasting trade and
fisheries with security in these circumstances. The constant demand for
men to fill the army and the fleet drained the country when labour was
imperatively needed for necessary industrial pursuits, including the
cultivation of the land. Some Halifax merchants and traders alone found
profit in the constant arrival of troops and ships. Apart, however, from
the signs of disaffection shown in the few localities I have mentioned,
the people generally appear to have been loyal to England, and rallied,
notably in the townships of Annapolis, Horton and Windsor, to the
defence of the country, at the call of the authorities.

In 1783 the humiliated king of England consented to a peace with his old
colonies, who owed their success not so much to the unselfishness and
determination of the great body of the rebels as to the incapacity of
British generals and to the patience, calmness, and resolution of the
one great man of the revolution, George Washington. I shall in a later
chapter refer to this treaty in which the boundaries between Canada and
the new republic were so ignorantly and clumsily defined that it took
half a century and longer to settle the vexed questions that arose in
connection with territorial rights, and then the settlement was to the
injury of Canada. So far as the treaty affected the Provinces its most
important result was the forced migration of that large body of people
who had remained faithful to the crown and empire during the revolution.

[Illustration: MAP SHOWING BOUNDARY BETWEEN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES
BY TREATY OF 1783]

SECTION 3.--The United Empire Loyalists

John Adams and other authorities in the United States have admitted that
when the first shot of the revolution was fired by "the embattled
farmers" of Concord and Lexington, the Loyalists numbered one-third of
the whole population of the colonies, or seven hundred thousand whites.
Others believe that the number was larger, and that the revolutionary
party was in a minority even after the declaration of independence. The
greater number of the Loya