[130] The number of claims examined by the Commissioners in Nova Scotia and Canada was 1,272; the amount of claims was £975,310; the losses allowed were £336,753.
[131] What remained for consideration, and which was afterwards granted by Parliament, consisted of seven Articles, and was as follows:
| "1. | Additional claims liquidated since 1788, to the amount of | £224,406 |
| "2. | The proprietary claims of Messrs. Pennes | £500,000 |
| "3. | Do. Do. Trustees under the will of Lord Granville, North Carolina | 60,000 |
| "4. | The proprietary claims of Robert Lord Fairfax, proprietor of Virginia | 60,000 |
| "5. | Claims of subjects, settled inhabitants of the United States, many of which were cases of great merit and peculiar hardship | 32,462 |
| "6. | Claims of persons who appeared to have relief under the Treaty of Peace | 14,000 |
| "7. | Claims of creditors on ceded lands in Georgia | 45,885 |
[132] The case of such merchants was peculiarly distressing. In the "Historical Review of the Commission," the Commissioners state:
"The claims for debts due from subjects of the United States, as well from the magnitude of their amount as the peculiar hardship and injustice under which the claimants labour respecting them, form a subject which appears strongly to press for the attention and interposition of Government. The Treaty of Peace having provided that 'Creditors on either side should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value of their debts in sterling money,' losses of this nature have not been considered as within the inquiry directed by the Act, because we cannot consider any right or property as lost to the party where the Government of the country has expressly provided and stipulated for a remedy by a public treaty. We think it, however, incumbent upon us to represent that the claimants uniformly state to us the insuperable difficulties they find themselves under, as individuals, in seeking the recovery of their debts according to the provision of the treaty, whilst themselves are the objects of prosecution in courts of justice here for debts due to the subjects of the United States. Under such circumstances, the situation of this class of sufferers appears to be singularly distressing—disabled on the one hand by the laws or practice of the several States from recovering the debts due them, yet compellable on the other to pay all demands against them; and though the stipulation in the treaty in their favour has proved of no avail to procure them the redress it holds out in one country, yet they find themselves excluded by it from all claims to relief in the other."
[133] It is certain that but a small proportion of the American Loyalists presented claims before the Parliamentary Commissioners in England for compensation for services or loss of property; and many of those who presented claims did not prosecute them. The Commissioners give the following explanation on this point:
"It may, perhaps, appear singular that so many claims presented, viz., 448, have been withdrawn; but it may be owing, in the first place, to the circumstance of many of these claimants having recovered possession of their estates, and, in the next place, to the uncertainty, at the commencement of the inquiry, as to the nature of the Commission, and the species of loss which was the object of it, and perhaps to the consciousness of others that they were not able to establish the claims they had presented."
CHAPTER XXXIX.
The Loyalists Driven from the United States to the British Provinces.