The Loyalists

Year
1886
Month
5
Day
18
Article Title
The Loyalists
Author
-----
Page Number
1
Article Type
Language
Article Contents
THE LOYALISTS. To-day is the one hundred and third anniversary of the landing of the Loyalists in St. John. There was no special demonstration to mark the event. The privations which the Loyalists suffered, the energies which they displayed, the public and private virtues which they exhibited, will ever keep their memories [illegible word] in the hearts of the people who succeed them as citizens and residents here. The Loyalist movement, from a political or national point of view, must be regarded as a failure. The House government fostered it for many years and gave to leading and prominent Loyalists office, pay, patronage and support, with the idea that a power could be created on this continent which would counterbalance the power of the young republic, the rebellious child of a then mistaken parent. But the parent long since abandoned that idea. She found that the colonies which were left, the very children whom she had fed with a silver spoon, when their interests were concerned preferred those interests to her's; and she found that the young republic made such rapid strides that her true course was to forget old differences, to heal as far as possible old sores, and instead of attempting to repress, to help forward the development of American nationality. England, therefore, long since abandoned any idea, not only as hopeless of itself, but as unwise, of endeavoring to create in Canada a counterbalancing power to that of the United States. Then again, the Loyalist movement in its beginning was in a measure strengthened by the bitter and hostile feeling of many of the American communities against the Loyalists. Men who stood by the royal cause were so persecuted for their opinions, and so ill-treated for their acts, that the needs of the hour drove them out of the homes in which they lived. They came here and they went to other places throughout Canada animated by a strong and justifiable feeling of bitterness against their persecutors. That feeling intensified their loyal feelings of warm attachment to the mother land. But resentment is not after all a strong feeling of the human heart. Time rapidly wears it out. Some of the early Loyalists, as opportunity offered and as the feeling against them in the United States died away, returned to their early homes; the descendants of others went back, or are daily going back to the homes of their ancestors. Those who remain have almost entirely forgotten the wrong that was done them, or at least cherish so resentful feelings on account of it. There is a constant mingling and intermingling of the two people. The last census of the United States showed that over 715,000 persons of Canadian birth, equal to one-sixth of our population by the census of 1881, were living in the United States. To-day the number is little short of a million. Our last census showed that there were living in Canada 78,000 persons of United States origin. Thus it is clear that the people of both countries in large numbers find no difficulty in exchanging the one land of the one flag for the other, and that they can live peaceably and happily under either - forgetting entirely old feuds and quarrels, and happily striving for success in all those great undertakings which exhibit the progress, and are for the benefit, of humanity.