worthy characters, friends of peace
and lovers of justice. To such restitution was undoubtedly due, and to
many such it was made; but it is one of the many calamities incident to
war, that the innocent, from the impossibility of discrimination, are
often involved in the same distress with the guilty.

"The return of the Loyalists to their former places of residence was as
much disrelished by the Whig citizens of America as the proposal for
reimbursing their confiscated property. In sundry places Committees were
formed, who, in an arbitrary manner, opposed their peaceable residence.
The sober and dispassionate citizens exerted themselves in checking
these irregular measures; but such was the violence of party spirit, and
so relaxed were the sinews of government, that, in opposition to legal
authority and the private interference of the judicious and moderate,
many indecent outrages were committed on the persons and property of the
returning Loyalists.

"Nor were these all the sufferings of those Americans who had attached
themselves to the royal cause. Being compelled to depart from their
native country, many of them were obliged to take up their abodes in the
inhospitable wilds of Nova Scotia, or on the barren shores of the Bahama
Islands. Parliamentary relief was extended to them; but this was
obtained with difficulty, and distributed with a partial hand. Some, who
invented plausible tales of loyalty and distress, received much more
than they ever possessed; while others, less artful, were not half
reimbursed for their actual losses."[64]

Mr. Hildreth remarks, under date of September, 1783, "that at New York a
general release of prisoners had taken place on both sides; but the
necessity of finding transports for the numerous Loyalists assembled
there protracted the evacuation of New York. In consequence of laws
still in force against them, several thousand American Loyalists found
it necessary to abandon their country. A considerable portion of these
exiles belonged to the wealthier classes; they had been officials,
merchants, large landholders, conspicuous members of the colonial
aristocracy. Those from the North settled principally in Nova Scotia or
Canada, provinces the politics of which their descendants continued to
control until quite recently. Those from the South found refuge in the
Bahamas and other West India islands. Still objects of great popular
odium, the Loyalists had little to expect from the stipula