Note 82 — Chapter III · THE WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

Chief Justice Hey saw what a strong position Canada held, from a military point of view, in regard to the other North American colonies. In his letter to the Lord Chancellor of August 28, 1775, he wrote, ‘It appears to me that while England has a firm hold of this country, which a good body of troops and nothing else will give her, her cause with the colonies can never be desperate, though she should not have an inch of ground in her possession in any one of them: from this country they are more accessible, I mean the New England people (paradoxical as it may seem), than even from Boston itself.’ Shortt and Doughty, p. 457.