Note 176 — IV. THE LOYALISTS.

Jones, ii. 645–654. Wilmot, Historical View of the Commission for Enquiry into the Losses, etc., London, 1815. Ryerson, ii. 159–182. Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, ii. 435–437. Sabine, i. 86–90. In March, 1784, the number of persons who had preferred their petitions was 2,063, and the alleged losses £7,046,278, besides outstanding debts in America amounting to £2,354,135. “In 1788 Mr. Pitt submitted a plan for classifying the claimants, and of classifying and apportioning the nature and amount of consolation to be allotted to each; and to those whose losses had been caused principally by the deprivation of official or professional incomes, he proposed a system of pensions. By the 5th of April, this year (1790), the Commissioners in England had heard and determined 1,680 claims, and had liquidated the same at the sum of £1,887,548. It appeared, finally, that the number of applicants from England, and from the Canadian provinces, attained to the aggregate of 5,072, of which 954 either withdrew their applications or failed to press them, and the sum of the losses is stated to have been £8,026,045. Another return is made out by Mr. J. E. Wilmot, one of the Commissioners, wherein the amount of the claim is given as £10,358,413, and the amount of the claims allowed at £3,033,091. The subject was again raised in Parliament in 1821, but though there was much sympathy expressed for the sufferings of those who had trusted to their country to recompense their fidelity, the sympathy exhausted itself in words.” See also Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, iv. 268. Curwen, 367, 368.