ople of the American
colonies were all but unanimous in their armed opposition
to the British government.

Within recent years, however, there has been a change.
American historians of a new school have revised the
history of the Revolution, and a tardy reparation has
been made to the memory of the Tories of that day. Tyler,
Van Tyne, Flick, and other writers have all made the
_amende honorable_ on behalf of their countrymen. Indeed,
some of these writers, in their anxiety to stand straight,
have leaned backwards; and by no one perhaps will the
ultra-Tory view of the Revolution be found so clearly
expressed as by them. At the same time the history of
the Revolution has been rewritten by some English
historians; and we have a writer like Lecky declaring
that the American Revolution 'was the work of an energetic
minority, who succeeded in committing an undecided and
fluctuating majority to courses for which they had little
love, and leading them step by step to a position from
which it was impossible to recede.'

Thus, in the United States and in England, the pendulum
has swung from one extreme to the other. In Canada it
has remained stationary. There, in the country where they
settled, the United Empire Loyalists are still regarded
with an uncritical veneration which has in it something
of the spirit of primitive ancestor-worship. The interest
which Canadians have taken in the Loyalists has been
either patriotic or genealogical; and few attempts have
been made to tell their story in the cold light of
impartial history, or to estimate the results which have
flowed from their migration. Yet such an attempt is worth
while making--an attempt to do the United Empire Loyalists
the honour of painting them as they were, and of describing
the profound and far-reaching influences which they
exerted on the history of both Canada and the United
States.

In the history of the United States the exodus of the
Loyalists is an event comparable only to the expulsion
of the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. The Loyalists, whatever their social
status (and they were not all aristocrats), represented
the conservative and moderate element in the revolting
states; and their removal, whether by banishment or
disfranchisement, meant the elimination of a very wholesome
element in the body politic. To this were due in part no
doubt many of the early errors of the republic in finance,
diplomacy, and poli