The treaty of peace with Great Britain, like other documents of its kind, contained provisions of give and take. After signature by the commissioners in Paris it was ratified with due consideration by the Continental Congress. The advantages which it secured were not merely of a sentimental nature, but material. It was justly regarded by enlightened citizens of the states as a triumph of diplomacy. The credit of Britain in the bargain was more of the heart than of the head. She was willing to concede substantial and important benefits in order to secure the lives and property of the Loyalists who had clung to her and had sustained her arms. Looking at the matter now, in a cool light, she blundered into sacrifices that were altogether needless, even with this aim in view, and knowledge of the knavery that was to follow.
The game was played, and she had lost. North America, in the eyes of her statesmen, was a strip of eastern seaboard; the great lakes were but dimly understood; the continent beyond the Mississippi was ignored. She gave much more than she needed to have given both in east and west, to attain her honorable end, and what was more immediately distressing, she received little or no value in return for her liberal concession.
"That each party should hold what it possesses, is the first point from which nations set out in framing a treaty of peace. If one side gives up a part of its acquisitions, the other side renders an equivalent in some other way. What is the equivalent given to Great Britain for all the important concessions she has made? She has surrendered the capital of this state (New York) and its large dependencies. She is to surrender our immensely valuable posts on the frontier, and to yield to us a vast tract of western territory, with one-half of the lakes, by which we shall command almost the whole fur trade. She renounces to us her claim to the navigation of the Mississippi and admits us to share in the fisheries even on better terms than we formerly enjoyed. As she was in possession, by right of war, of all these objects, whatever may have been our original pretensions to them, they are, by the laws of nations, to be considered as so much given up on her part. And what do we give in return? We stipulate that there shall be no future injury to her adherents among us. How insignificant the equivalent in comparison with the acquisition! A man of sense would be ashamed to compare them, a man of honesty, not intoxicated with passion, would blush to lisp a question of the obligation to observe the stipulation on our part."[58] In return for these advantages which Hamilton informs us Great Britain gave to the States, Congress had most solemnly undertaken three things, and people, wearied by the sufferings of our eight years' war, would have gladly purchased the blessings of peace at a much higher price. The first of these conditions was that no obstacle or impediment should be put in the way of the recovery of debts due to British subjects from the citizens of the Republic; the second that no fresh prosecution or confiscation should be directed against Loyalists; the third, that Congress should sincerely recommend to the legislatures of the various states a repeal of the existing acts of confiscation, which affected the property of these unfortunate persons. On the last no stress could be laid, but the first and second were understood by every man, honest or dishonest, in the same sense as when peace was joyfully accepted. The American states took the benefits of peace which the efforts of Congress had secured to them, they accepted the advantages of the treaty which their representative had signed, they watched and waited until the troops of King George were embarked in transports at New York for England, and then proceeded to deny, in a variety of tones, all powers in the central government to bind them in the matter of the quid pro quo. It was not a great thing which Congress had undertaken to do, or one which could be of any material advantage to their late enemy. All their promises amounted to was that they would abstain from the degradation of a petty and personal revenge, and this promise they proceeded to break in every particular.
As Hamilton wisely and nobly urged, the breach was not only a despicable perfidy, but an impolitic act, since Loyalists might become good citizens and the state needed nothing more urgently than population. But no sooner was danger at a distance, embarked on transports, than the states assumed an attitude of defiance. The thirteen legislatures vied with one another in the ingenuity of measures for defeating the recovery of debts due to British creditors. They derided the recommendation to repeal oppressive acts, and to restore confiscated property, and proceeded, without regard either for honor or consequences, to pass new acts of wider oppression and to order confiscation on a grander scale. There was a practical unanimity in engaging in fresh persecutions of Loyalists, not merely by the enactment of oppressive civil laws, but by even denying them the protection afforded by a just enforcement of the criminal laws. In many districts these unfortunate persons were robbed, tortured, and even put to death with impunity, and over a hundred thousand driven into exile in Canada, Florida and the Bahamas.
Measures were passed amid popular rejoicing to obstruct the recovery of debts due to British merchants and to enable the fortunate Americans to revel unmolested in the pleasure of stolen fruits. It is remarkable how at this period public opinion was at once so childish and rotten, and one is at a loss whether to marvel most at its recklessness of credit or its unvarnished dishonesty; it was entirely favorable to the idea of private theft, and the interest of rogues was considered with compassion by the grave and respectable citizens who composed the legislatures of the various states. It was the same spirit which had violated the Burgoyne convention at Saratoga, the same which in later days preached the gospel of repudiation, greenbackism, silver currency, violated treaties with the Indians, that produced a "Century of Dishonor."
Meanwhile the policy of breach of faith was producing its natural crop of inconvenience. Dishonest methods were not the unmixed advantages which these adherents had supposed, when they engaged upon them in a spirit of light-hearted cunning. For in spite of all the ill-feeling, a large demand arose for British goods. For these, specie had to be paid down on the nail in all cases where wares or material were not taken in exchange, since no British merchant would now give one pennyworth of credit, out of respect to the measures of the various states for the obstruction of the payment of British debts. It was true that Britain was in no mood to embark upon a fresh war for the punishment of broken promises. She had surrendered the chief hostage when she evacuated her strategical position at New York, but she declined to hand over the eight important frontier posts which she held upon the American side of the line between Lake Michigan and Lake Champlain. These posts were much in themselves, and as a symbol of dominion to the Indian tribes. They were much also as a matter of pride, while their retention carried with it the whole of the valuable fur trade, which consequently, until 1795, when they were at last surrendered, brought considerable profits to British merchants.
To the short-sighted policy which banished the Loyalists may be traced nearly all the political troubles of this continent, in which Britain and the United States have been involved. "Dearly enough have the people of the United States paid for the crime of the violent Whigs of the Revolution, for to the Loyalists who were driven away, and to their descendants, we owe almost entirely the long and bitter controversy relative to our northeastern boundaries, and the dispute about our right to the fisheries in the colonial seas."