e
proportion of the population of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Upper
Canada.

"It is equally to be regretted on grounds of policy that the
_majorities_[119] in the State Legislatures did not remember, with Mr.
Jefferson, that separation from England 'was contemplated with
affliction by all,' and that, like Mr. Adams, many sound Whigs 'would
have given everything they possessed for a restoration to the state of
things before the contest began, provided they could have had sufficient
security for its continuance.' Then they might have done at an early
moment after the cessation of hostilities, what they actually did do in
a few years afterwards--namely, have allowed the banished Loyalists to
return from exile, and, excluding those against whom enormities could
have been proved, have conferred upon them, and upon those who had
remained to be driven away at the peace, the rights of citizens. Most of
them would have easily fallen into respect for the new state of things,
old friendships and intimacies would have been revived, and long before
this time all would have mingled in one mass. * *

"As a matter of _expediency_, how unwise was it to perpetuate the
feelings of the opponents of the revolution, and to keep them a distinct
class for a time, and for harm yet unknown! How ill-judged the measures
that caused them to settle the hitherto neglected possessions of the
British Crown! Nova Scotia had been won and lost, and lost and won, in
the struggle between France and England, and the blood of New England
had been poured out upon its soil like water. But when the Loyalists
sought refuge there, what was it? Before the war, the fisheries of its
coast, for the prosecution of which Halifax itself was founded,
comprised, in public estimation, its chief value; and though Great
Britain had quietly possessed it for about seventy years, the emigration
to it of the adherents of the Crown from the United States, in a single
year, more than doubled its population. Until hostile events brought
Halifax into notice, no civilized people were poorer than the
inhabitants of that colony; since, in 1775, the Assembly estimated that
L1,200 currency--a sum less than $5,000--was the whole amount of money
which they possessed. By causing the expatriation, then, of many
thousands of our countrymen, among whom were the well-educated, the
ambitious, and the well-versed in politics, we became the founders of
two agricultural and commercial colonies