f democratic government,
and it was not to be expected that they would quietly
reconcile themselves in their new home to the arbitrary
system of the Quebec Act. The French Canadians, on the
other hand, had not been accustomed to representative
institutions, and did not desire them. But when Upper
Canada was granted an assembly, it was impossible not to
grant an assembly to Lower Canada too; and so Canada was
started on that road of constitutional development which
has brought her to her present position as a self-governing
unit in the British Empire.

CHAPTER II

LOYALISM IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES

It was a remark of John Fiske that the American Revolution
was merely a phase of English party politics in the
eighteenth century. In this view there is undoubtedly an
element of truth. The Revolution was a struggle within
the British Empire, in which were aligned on one side
the American Whigs supported by the English Whigs, and
on the other side the English Tories supported by the
American Tories. The leaders of the Whig party in England,
Charles James Fox, Edmund Burke, Colonel Barre, the great
Chatham himself, all championed the cause of the American
revolutionists in the English parliament. There were many
cases of Whig officers in the English army who refused
to serve against the rebels in America. General Richard
Montgomery, who led the revolutionists in their attack
on Quebec in 1775-76, furnishes the case of an English
officer who, having resigned his commission, came to
America and, on the outbreak of the rebellion, took
service in the rebel forces. On the other hand there were
thousands of American Tories who took service under the
king's banner; and some of the severest defeats which
the rebel forces suffered were encountered at their hands.

It would be a mistake, however, to identify too closely
the parties in England with the parties in America. The
old Tory party in England was very different from the
so-called Tory party in America. The term Tory in America
was, as a matter of fact, an epithet of derision applied
by the revolutionists to all who opposed them. The
opponents of the revolutionists called themselves not
Tories, but Loyalists or 'friends of government.'

There were, it is true, among the Loyalists not a few
who held language that smacked of Toryism. Among the
Loyalist pamphleteers there were those who preached the
doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance. Thus
the Rev. J