"Since 1782 at the latest, views like these are merely day-dreams of the past. In place of them, let us now indulge the hope and expectation that the American people may concur with ours in desiring that no further resentment may be nourished, no further strife be stirred, between the kindred nations; so that both, mindful of their common origin, and conscious of their growing greatness, may both alike discard, as unworthy of them, all mean and petty jealousies, and be ever henceforth what nature has designed them—friends."[123]
FOOTNOTES:
[123] Lord Mahon's History of England, etc., Vol. VI., Chap. liii., pp. 150-160.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Treatment of the Loyalists by the British Government and Parliament after the Revolution.
PART I.
PROCEEDINGS IN PARLIAMENT—REFUSAL OF THE STATES TO COMPENSATE THE LOYALISTS.
It has been seen, by the fact stated in the last preceding chapter, that the promised recommendations of Congress to the several States, as agreed upon by the English and American Commissioners of the peace negotiations at Paris, were, as had been expected and predicted by Dr. Franklin at the time, without any result, the State Legislatures passing Acts to proscribe rather than compensate the Loyalists. In justification of these Acts, the American writers of that period, and largely down to the present time, assailed the character of the Loyalists in the grossest language of calumny and abuse; but the most respectable American writers of the present age bear testimony to the intelligence, wealth, and respectability of the Loyalists; and the fact, no longer questionable, that they sacrificed wealth, liberty, country, and chose poverty and exile, in support of their principles, has fully vindicated their character and presented their conduct in advantageous contrast with that of those who deprived them of their liberty, and largely profited by the confiscation of their immense property, while they and their families were pining in exile and want.
The only resource of the exiled and impoverished Loyalists, under such circumstances, was the Government and Parliament of the mother country to which they had so faithfully adhered, and nothing could be more honourable than the testimony borne in the British Parliament to their character and merits, and the consideration given to their wants and claims. The fifth Article of the Treaty of Paris, leaving the Loyalists to the recommendation of the Congress to the Legislatures of the several States, was severely reprobated in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of Commons, Mr. Wilberforce said that "when he considered the case of the Loyalists, he confessed he felt himself conquered; there he saw his country humiliated; he saw her at the feet of America; still he was induced to believe that Congress would religiously comply with the Article, and that the Loyalists would obtain redress from America. Should they not, this country was bound to afford it them. They must be compensated; Ministers, he was persuaded, meant to keep the faith of the nation with them."