Note 174 — IV. THE LOYALISTS.

Parliamentary History, vol. xxiii. 411, 412, 430, 481. The following extracts may be added to those given in the text; Mr. Burke said: “Better to have left the whole to future negotiation, and to have been totally silent upon the subject in the treaty, than to have consented to have set our hands to a gross libel on the national character, and in our flagitious article plunged the dagger into the hearts of the loyalists, and manifested our own impotency, ingratitude and disgrace” (p. 468). In the same debate Mr. Lee said: “Europe, Asia, Africa and America beheld the dismembership and diminution of the British Empire. But this, alarming and calamitous as it was, was nothing when put in competition with another of the crimes of the present peace, the cession of men into the hands of their enemies, and delivering over to confiscation, tyranny, resentment and oppression the unhappy men who trusted to our fair promises and deceitful words. This was the great ground of his objection: and he called it a disgraceful, wicked and treacherous peace; inadequate to its object, and such as no man could vote to be honorable without delivering his character over to damnation for ever” (p. 492).