"The return of the Loyalists to their former places of residence was as much disrelished by the Whig citizens of America as the proposal for reimbursing their confiscated property. In sundry places Committees were formed, who, in an arbitrary manner, opposed their peaceable residence. The sober and dispassionate citizens exerted themselves in checking these irregular measures; but such was the violence of party spirit, and so relaxed were the sinews of government, that, in opposition to legal authority and the private interference of the judicious and moderate, many indecent outrages were committed on the persons and property of the returning Loyalists.

"Nor were these all the sufferings of those Americans who had attached themselves to the royal cause. Being compelled to depart from their native country, many of them were obliged to take up their abodes in the inhospitable wilds of Nova Scotia, or on the barren shores of the Bahama Islands. Parliamentary relief was extended to them; but this was obtained with difficulty, and distributed with a partial hand. Some, who invented plausible tales of loyalty and distress, received much more than they ever possessed; while others, less artful, were not half reimbursed for their actual losses."[64]

Mr. Hildreth remarks, under date of September, 1783, "that at New York a general release of prisoners had taken place on both sides; but the necessity of finding transports for the numerous Loyalists assembled there protracted the evacuation of New York. In consequence of laws still in force against them, several thousand American Loyalists found it necessary to abandon their country. A considerable portion of these exiles belonged to the wealthier classes; they had been officials, merchants, large landholders, conspicuous members of the colonial aristocracy. Those from the North settled principally in Nova Scotia or Canada, provinces the politics of which their descendants continued to control until quite recently. Those from the South found refuge in the Bahamas and other West India islands. Still objects of great popular odium, the Loyalists had little to expect from the stipulated recommendations of Congress in their favour. Some of the States, whose territory had been longest and most recently occupied by the enemy, were even inclined to enact new confiscations."[65]

In each and all of these historical statements it is clearly admitted that the claim of the Loyalists to compensation for loss of property was founded in equity, as well as in national policy. This is sanctioned by the admission of the American Commissioners and the recommendation of Congress. The want of power in Congress to do what is admitted to be an act of justice to the Loyalists is the plea for not restoring them the property which had gone into the hands of their opponents, who were proportionally enriched thereby. It was left to local avarice and local resentment to deal with the property of banished exiles.

What was claimed by and in behalf of the Loyalists accorded with the practice of even modern nations, as well as with the sentiments of humanity. When the Dutch provinces asserted their independence of Spain, and after a long and bloody war obtained the recognition of it, they cordially agreed to an act of oblivion, and even restored to those who had adhered to the cause of Spain, their property of every denomination that had been confiscated, or the full value of it. Even Spain herself had twice thus acted towards the province of Catalonia—first, on its revolting from that Crown, and calling in the assistance of France; and secondly, on its refusing to acknowledge the Bourbon family, at the beginning of the last century. Though the inhabitants had forfeited life and property, yet, on their return to obedience, life, possessions, laws and immunities remained inviolate. England had conducted herself in the same spirit towards that party in Ireland which had taken up arms in support of James the Second. No proscriptions took place, and every man, on submitting to Government, was admitted to the undisturbed enjoyment of his property. Had this spirit actuated, and these examples, with many others of like character, influenced the Americans, how much more honourable to them, and more consistent with sound policy, to efface at once all remembrance of internal discords, than to pursue, in the execrable spirit of revenge and avarice, those of their countrymen who differed from them in opinion in the late contest, and sided with Great Britain.[66] That the plea that Congress had no power in granting amnesty and compensation to the Loyalists was a mere pretext, is manifest from the fact that the Commissioners agreed that there should be no more confiscations or proscriptions against the Loyalists; for if the laws under which these prosecutions were instituted and confiscations made were State laws, with which Congress had no power to interfere, how could the Congress Commissioners stipulate that there should be no more confiscations or proscriptions?

Dr. Franklin, the most experienced and ablest of the American diplomatists, was the most crafty and overbearing against England. At the beginning of the negotiations for peace, he demurely proposed, and half converted Mr. Oswald to his proposition, to concede Canada (which at that time meant all British North America) to the United States, though his commission related simply to the independency of the thirteen colonies; and when the British Cabinet vetoed this extra-official and extravagant proposition, Dr. Franklin and his colleagues overreached the ignorance and weakness of the British diplomatists by carefully constructed maps for the purpose of making the boundary lines between the proposed possessions of Great Britain and the United States on their northern and north-western frontiers. These lines were so ingeniously drawn as to take from Great Britain and include in the United States the immense and valuable territories, back settlements, and the whole country between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi, and which have since become the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, etc.—to not one foot of which the thirteen American colonies had the slightest claim—territories ample to compensate Loyalists for their losses and banishment, but whose interests, together with these most valuable possessions, were lost to Great Britain by the subserviency of the British Commissioner, Oswald (a London and American merchant), who looked to his own interests, and was the subservient tool and echo of Dr. Franklin. The above territories were a part of the domain of Congress, irrespective of any State, and therefore at the absolute disposal of Congress. Yet, with these immense accessions of resources, the American Commissioners professed that the Congress had no power or means to compensate the United Empire Loyalists for the confiscation and destruction of their property! One knows not at which most to marvel—the boldness, skill, and success of the American Commissioners, or the cowardice, ignorance, and recklessness of the British diplomatists.

The result of these negotiations was, that the adherents to Great Britain during the civil war were deprived of the amnesty and restoration of property upon any ground of right, as had been granted at the termination of civil strife by all civilized nations—to the restoration of what had been taken from them during the war—and turned over as suppliant culprits to the several States by whose laws their property had been confiscated, and themselves declared guilty of treason, and condemned to the death of traitors. Dr. Franklin, in the beginning of his negotiations, had proposed to give all that now constitutes British North America to the United States, and thus leave to the British Loyalists not an inch of ground on which to place their feet; but all that was now left to them, as far as America was concerned, was to prostrate themselves as suppliants before the Legislatures of the several States, each of which was for the most part a seething cauldron of passion and resentment against them.[67]

FOOTNOTES:

[58] The new Cabinet was composed as follows: The Marquis of Rockingham, First Commissioner of the Treasury; the Earl of Shelburne and Mr. Fox, Secretaries of State; Lord Camden, President of the Council; Duke of Grafton, Privy Seal; Lord John Cavendish, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Admiral Keppel, raised to be a Viscount, First Commissioner of the Admiralty; General Conway, Commander of the Forces; Duke of Richmond, Master General of the Ordnance. Lord Thurlow was continued in the office of Lord High Chancellor, and Mr. Dunning raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Ashburton, as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Mr. Burke was not made a member of the Cabinet, but was appointed to the lucrative office of Paymaster of the Forces, and was further gratified by the appointment of his son to a small office.

About six months after the formation of the new Cabinet the Marquis of Rockingham died, and the Earl of Shelburne was appointed to succeed him, when the Duke of Richmond, Mr. Fox, and Lord John Cavendish seceded from the Cabinet, and were succeeded by Mr. Thomas Townsend and Lord Graham as Secretaries of State, while the place of Lord John Cavendish, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was more than filled by Mr. Pitt.