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A BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY.
Organized society here dates from 18th May, 1783, the day upon which the Loyalists landed, and the foundations of our present institutions began. There was a time when the 18th of May was observed in St. John with much spirit. A military display at noon, fireworks in the evening, the meeting of friends to talk over old times, a kind of general holiday for everybody, were marked features of the return of the anniversary. As time removes us further and further from the event, as the generations of men intervene between that day and this, there is less of interest. Even the effort made to keep the memory of the day alive by making it a school holiday fails, and the holiday is made subservient to other purposes. Every attempt to raise a monument to the memory of the Loyalists has failed, and even the effort to form their descendants into a society meets with but a half-hearted support. No doubt something will be done at some distant time to express appropriately appreciation of the work of those who laid the foundations of this city, but it will result rather from the effort to give this city a reputable ancestry than from direct sympathy with the Loyalist memory, and it seems unlikely that it will be done by those who have inherited the Loyalist names. Failure to honor the Loyalist cause is due to the fact that that cause itself is a failure. To give those who in America took up the cause of the king the fullest need of praise for the attitude they assumed it is only necessary to say that they were attached to the royalist cause because they espoused that side from the highest sense of patriotism. But they were defeated by their kinsmen, who were equally patriotic, if stubbornly anti-royalist. Many were driven out of their homes, many left from fear; and the prevailing idea among them was that the young nation which they tried to strangle in its birth would soon perish. But if it were to live its democratic thought and feeling and practice would be a menace to the motherland, and the only way to counteract this would be to build up in the remaining British territory a power, thoroughly British, monarchial and royalist, which would be a check upon the wild democracy of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and their associates. But the young democracy has grown to be a great giant, while the power that was to check it is comparatively a tender child, unable yet to govern itself, to make its own treaties or to interpret its own laws. The motherland has grown to be almost as democratic as the western giant, and the family tie is stronger than ever it was, despite the old, but now, happily, nearly forgotten, quarrel. Incidentally many of the leading Loyalists who came to this part of the world after the war was over had their own motives, but the common and general idea which influenced them in the concrete was to strangle the democratic ideas then making such headway among the people. Many of those who came with them in a subordinate capacity were soldiers of fortune, caring little whether democracy won or lost so long as they could escape the wrath of those with whom they had fought. Those of the latter class had little in common with the high ideas and ideals of their leaders. They had to struggle hard for a living in comparatively poor soil and in a trying climate, and they soon got to sympathize more strongly with democratic ideas than with the aristocratic tendencies of the family compact which gave to a few favored persons the corn, wine and oil of the new settlements, and left to the majority little more than the husks of the corn. The industry, energy, perseverance and pluck of the early settlers never failed to produce good results, but the plans of those who sought to use these for other purposes have entirely failed. Among the nations of the earth, honored and respected, the American Republic has taken her place. There is no one to-day seriously endeavoring to maintain the divine rights of kings or (except the Emperor of Germany or the Russian Czar) assailing the undoubted right of the people to make their own laws and to resent taxation without representation. But the work of the Loyalists - leaders and led - so far as that work has been along lines calculated to develop what is best in the people, to frame good laws, to promote civilization, to help education, has produced good results. Old ideas die slowly. During the time of the slaveholders’ rebellion there were here many people who really believed that the American Republic would fall to pieces, and they looked for the occurrence of that event at any moment. They proclaimed it as a certainty, and maintained that the result would be beneficial to us as to England. In this was a survival of the original idea of the Loyalists. But the past thirty years have brought to the front men who think more clearly and act more wisely. Hostility to the American nation now satisfies itself with absurd fishing regulations, a high tariff and smart criticisms. In the meantime the people steadily get closer together and recognize their own virtues and express their willingness for a better understanding each of the other. When all hostility open or designed shall have ceased, all foolish strife ended, there will be little trouble in doing proper honor to what was best in the Loyalist character.