ates and of Congress as usurpation; those
enactments were now recognized as law by England herself, in the
acknowledgment of American Independence; and the Loyalists would have
been among the most obedient and law-abiding citizens had they been
allowed to remain in the land of their nativity and forefathers, and
would have largely added to its social advancement, literature, and
wealth, and would undoubtedly, before now, have led to the unity of the
Anglo-Saxon race under one free and progressive government. Historians
and statesmen have long since condemned this resentful and narrow-minded
policy of the States against the Loyalists after the close of the
revolutionary war, as do now even American historians.[134]

The Americans inaugurated their Declaration of Independence by enacting
that all adherents to connection with the mother country were rebels and
traitors; they followed the recognition of Independence by England by
exiling such adherents from their territories. But while this wretched
policy depleted the United States of some of their best blood, it laid
the foundation of the settlement and institutions of the then almost
unknown and wilderness provinces which have since become the
wide-spread, free and prosperous Dominion of Canada.

Until very recently, the early history of the Loyalists of America has
never been written, except to blacken their character and misrepresent
their actions; they were represented as a set of idle office-seekers--an
imputation which has been amply refuted by their braving the forests of
northern countries, and converting them into fruitful fields, developing
trade and commerce, and establishing civil, religious, and educational
institutions that are an honour to America itself. Yet, when exiled from
their native land, they were bereft of the materials of their true
history. A living American writer truly observes:

"Of the reasons which influenced, of the hopes and fears which agitated,
and of the miseries and rewards which awaited the Loyalists--or, as they
were called in the politics of the time, the Tories--of the American
Revolution, but little is known. The most intelligent, the best informed
among us, confess the deficiency of their knowledge. The reason is
obvious. Men who, like the Loyalists, separate themselves from their
friends and kindred, who are driven from their homes, who surrender the
hopes and expectations of life, and who become outlaws, wanderers, and
exiles