Note 129 — PART II.

The principle thus laid down was neither just, nor true, nor generous. The claimants had not asked for charity, but for compensation, and that not as a favour, but upon the principles of "right and of strict justice." The British Ministry and Parliament alone originated and were responsible for the policy and measures which had led to the calamities so ruinous to the Loyalists, who now claimed compensation. The claimants had had nothing to do with passing the Stamp Act; with imposing duties on tea and other articles imported into the colonies; with making naval officers collectors of customs; with erecting courts of admiralty, and depriving the trading colonists of trial by jury, and of rendering the officers of the admiralty courts, and the complainants before them, the recipients of the first confiscations imposed by such events; with the acts to close the Port of Boston, and supersede the chartered constitution of Massachusetts, all of which, separately and collectively, with other like measures, roused and united the colonists to resistance, from Maine to Georgia, and in consequence of which a majority of the General Congress of the colonists seized the opportunity to renounce their allegiance to the British Throne, and to declare their separation from the mother country. And even after the character of the contest became thus changed from one for British constitutional rights to one for Republican independence, the Loyalists had nothing to do with the selection of British generals, or with their incapacity, their want of tact and energy, their mistakes and rapacity, together with that of their officers and soldiers, from all which the Loyalists grievously suffered. In the camp, on the march, and in the field of battle, the Loyalists were always on the alert, and performed the severest and most perilous services. No class of men had stronger claims on the nation, upon the principles of right and strict justice, than the Loyalist claimants before Parliament. This was acknowledged by all the speakers on both sides, and in both Houses of Parliament, and even by Mr. Pitt himself, and the objectionable and offensive principle which he laid down at the outset was contravened by the whole tenor and spirit of his speech.