The Loyalists

Year
1895
Month
5
Day
18
Article Title
The Loyalists
Author
-----
Page Number
2
Article Type
Language
Article Contents
THE LOYALISTS. Today is generally accepted as the anniversary of the landing of the Loyalists, who first reached our shores 112 years ago. There is, however, some dispute as to the precise day, because a reference to the calendar discloses the fact that the 18th May was Sunday, and it is hardly probable that a general landing would take place on that sacred day. The exact date is a matter of no great importance, for the 20 ships that composed the fleet which brought the Loyalists dropped in one by one between the 10th and the 18th May, and the actual landing must have taken place about that time. That the memory of the Loyalist founders of St John is entitled to respect by the people of this city is a proposition which should need no argument to support it, nor should the sneer that they fought for a lost cause influence their descendants to think lightly of their fathers. When the revolutionary troubles came they took what they regarded as the side of law and order, and when they were defeated and banished they went to work like men to build up a new state in which the institutions they loved might have free scope. That in this they have abundantly succeeded cannot be denied, for the Dominion of Canada with its 5,000,000 inhabitants is a living monument of the work of the Loyalists. It was the desire of the Loyalists to remain citizens of the British Empire, and although that was a lost cause in the 13 colonies that rebelled, no descendant of the Loyalists need be ashamed of the choice of his fathers. The British Empire in 1783 did not contain 50,000,000 inhabitants: now it has 350,000,000, and is still growing. The descendants of the Loyalists who live in Canada, are citizens of the greatest empire the world have ever seen, and enjoy the greatest amount of freedom of any under the sun.