Note 180 — IV. THE LOYALISTS.

No. Am. Rev., lix. 262 (Sabine). Lecky’s tribute to the loyalists may be added: “There were brave and honest men in America who were proud of the great and free empire to which they belonged, who had no desire to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who remembered with gratitude the English blood that had been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who, with nothing to hope for from the crown, were prepared to face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives of a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended their days in poverty and exile, and as the supporters of a beaten cause history has paid but a scanty tribute to their memory, but they comprised some of the best and ablest men America has ever produced, and they were contending for an ideal which was at least as worthy as that for which Washington fought. The maintenance of one free, industrial and pacific empire, comprising the whole English race, may have been a dream, but it was at least a noble one.” History of England in the Eighteenth Century, iii. 418. For historical notices of the loyalists in Canada, the following are also useful: Settlement of Upper Canada (1872), by William Canniff; Toronto of Old (1873), by Dr. H. Scadding; Centennial of the Settlement of Upper Canada by the United Empire Loyalists, 1784–1884; The Celebrations at Adolphustown, Toronto, and Niagara, Toronto, 1885.