, as
unworthy of them, all mean and petty jealousies, and be ever henceforth
what nature has designed them--friends."[123]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 123: Lord Mahon's History of England, etc., Vol. VI., Chap.
liii., pp. 150-160.]

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

TREATMENT OF THE LOYALISTS BY THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT
AFTER THE REVOLUTION.

PART I.

PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT--REFUSAL OF THE STATES TO COMPENSATE THE
LOYALISTS.

It has been seen, by the fact stated in the last preceding chapter, that
the promised recommendations of Congress to the several States, as
agreed upon by the English and American Commissioners of the peace
negotiations at Paris, were, as had been expected and predicted by Dr.
Franklin at the time, without any result, the State Legislatures passing
Acts to proscribe rather than compensate the Loyalists. In justification
of these Acts, the American writers of that period, and largely down to
the present time, assailed the character of the Loyalists in the
grossest language of calumny and abuse; but the most respectable
American writers of the present age bear testimony to the intelligence,
wealth, and respectability of the Loyalists; and the fact, no longer
questionable, that they sacrificed wealth, liberty, country, and chose
poverty and exile, in support of their principles, has fully vindicated
their character and presented their conduct in advantageous contrast
with that of those who deprived them of their liberty, and largely
profited by the confiscation of their immense property, while they and
their families were pining in exile and want.

The only resource of the exiled and impoverished Loyalists, under such
circumstances, was the Government and Parliament of the mother country
to which they had so faithfully adhered, and nothing could be more
honourable than the testimony borne in the British Parliament to their
character and merits, and the consideration given to their wants and
claims. The fifth Article of the Treaty of Paris, leaving the Loyalists
to the recommendation of the Congress to the Legislatures of the several
States, was severely reprobated in both Houses of Parliament. In the
House of Commons, Mr. Wilberforce said that "when he considered the case
of the Loyalists, he confessed he felt himself conquered; there he saw
his country humiliated; he saw her at the feet of America; still he was
induced to believe that Congress would religiously comply with the
Article,