I am as much a friend of liberty as exists. We want the aid and assistance and protection of the arm of our Mother Country. Protection and allegiance are reciprocal duties. Can we lay claim to the money and protection of Great Britain upon any principles of honour and conscience? Can we wish to become aliens to the Mother State? We must come upon terms with Great Britain. Is it not necessary that the trade of the Empire should be regulated by some power or other? Can the Empire hold together without it? No. Who shall regulate it?
Galloway’s scheme was very nearly adopted. In the final trial it was lost by a vote of only six colonies to five. This rejection led Galloway to decline an election to the second Congress, and to appeal to the higher tribunal of public opinion. The Loyalists followed this lead, and the struggle went on for seven years, between those who fought for separation and independence and those who fought for the unity of the Empire.
The Revolution succeeded through the mismanagement of the British forces by the general in command, followed by the intervention of three great European nations, who were able to secure temporary command of the sea.
The United Empire Loyalists were driven out of the old colonies, and many found new homes in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada; some also went to England and the West Indies, carrying with them the cherished ideas of maintaining their allegiance to their Sovereign, of preserving their heritage as British subjects, and still endeavouring to realise the dream of a United British Empire.
For this cause they had made great sacrifices, and, despoiled of all their possessions, had been driven into exile, in what was then a wilderness. Men do not make such extraordinary sacrifices except under the influence of some overpowering sentiment, and in their case the moving sentiment was the Unity of the Empire. The greater the hardships they encountered, the greater the privations and sufferings they endured for the cause, the dearer it grew to their hearts, for men value those things most that have been obtained at the highest cost.
In the war of 1812-’14 the intense spirit of loyalty in the old exiles and their sons caused the Canadian Provinces to be retained under the British flag, and when afterwards, in 1837, rebellion broke out, fomented by strangers and new settlers, the United Empire Loyalist element put it down with a promptitude and vigour that forms one of the brightest pages in our history. In Nova Scotia the agitation for responsible government was headed by Joseph Howe, a son of one of the exiled Loyalists. Suggestions of rebellion to him were impossible of consideration, and he held his province true to the Empire, and succeeded by peaceful and loyal measures in securing all he wanted.
Then Great Britain repealed her corn laws instead of amending them, and introduced free trade instead of rearranging and reducing her tariff. She deprived Canada of a small advantage which her products up to that time enjoyed in the British markets, and which was rapidly assisting in the development of what was then a poor and weak colony. This act was a severe blow to Canada, because it meant that Great Britain had embarked on the unwise and dangerous policy of treating foreign and even hostile countries as favourably as her own peoples and her own possessions.
This caused a great deal of dissatisfaction in some quarters, and in the year 1849 some hundreds of the leading business men in Montreal signed a manifesto advocating annexation to the United States. This aroused strong opposition among the United Empire Loyalist element in Upper Canada; the feeling soon manifested itself in a way which proved that no pecuniary losses could shake the deep-seated loyalty of the Canadian people. The annexation movement withered at once.
Seeing how severely the action of the Mother Country had borne upon Canada, Lord Elgin, then Governor-General of Canada, was instructed to endeavour to arrange for a reciprocity treaty with the United States, or in other words to ask a foreign country to give Canada trade advantages which would recompense her for what Great Britain had taken away from her. The United States Government, either influenced by the blandishments of Lord Elgin, or by a politic desire of turning Canada’s trade in their own direction, and making her dependent for her business and the prosperity of her people upon a treaty which the United States would have the power of terminating in twelve years, consented to make the treaty.