d with the
claims of the Loyalists. Essays and tracts were published; letters and
communications appeared in the newspapers on the subject; in 1786, the
agents of the Loyalists presented a petition to Parliament, which
contained among other things the following touching words: "It is
impossible to describe the poignant distress under which many of these
persons now labour, and which must daily increase should the justice of
Parliament be delayed until all the claims are liquidated and reported;
* * ten years have elapsed since many of them have been deprived of
their fortunes, and with their helpless families reduced from
independent affluence to poverty and want; some of them now languishing
in British jails; others indebted to their creditors, who have lent them
money barely to support their existence, and who, unless speedily
relieved, must sink more than the value of their claims when received,
and be in a worse condition than if they had never made them; others
have already sunk under the pressure and severity of their misfortunes;
and others must, in all probability, soon meet the same melancholy fate,
should the justice due them be longer postponed. But, on the contrary,
should provision be now made for payment of those whose claims have been
settled and reported, it will not only relieve them from their distress,
but give credit to others whose claims remain to be considered, and
enable all of them to provide for their wretched families, and become
again useful members of society."

Two years later, in 1788, a tract was published by a Loyalist, entitled
"The Claim of the American Loyalists Reviewed and Maintained upon
Incontrovertible Principles of Law and Justice." The writer of that
tract thus forcibly states the situation of the Loyalists: "It is well
known that this delay of justice has produced the most melancholy and
shocking events. A number of sufferers have been driven into insanity
and become their own destroyers, leaving behind them their helpless
widows and orphans to subsist upon the cold charity of strangers. Others
have been sent to cultivate the wilderness for their subsistence,
without having the means, and compelled through want to throw themselves
on the mercy of the American States, and the charity of former friends,
to support the life which might have been made comfortable by the money
long since due by the British Government; and many others with their
families are barely subsisting upon a