There is extant a very interesting letter, written at New York in 1780 by the Rev. Wm. Walter to his friend, the Rev. Jacob Bailey, then in Nova Scotia, which shows that the project was seriously discussed in America as well as in England. Mr. Walter writes:
“If you have not already heard it permit me to acquaint you that there is a plan in considerable forwardness to erect the Province of Maine into a Province by itself, to extend from Saco to St. Johns river, making Falmouth [now Portland] the capital;[109] to secure this new Province by strong Forts and Garrisons; to invite the Refugees from the other Provinces in rebellion to settle in this, and by liberality of its constitution to show to the other Provinces the great advantages of being a portion of the Empire and living under the protection of British Government. Sir William Pepperrell is talked of as Governor. The large tracts of land belonging to companies and individuals, which are not forfeited, will be purchased and the whole distributed in farms of 200 acres to every settler. These distributions and appointments are to be in the management and recommendaton of a respectable Board of Refugees [Loyalists] which is now forming under the auspices of Government in this city [New York].”
It is a curious fact that a little after the close of the Revolutionary war an attempt was made of a very different character to erect this territory into the “Free and Independent State of New Ireland.” A constitution and frame of government were prepared by a committee for the consideration of a convention of delegates. In the preamble of their report the Loyalists are termed “the Sons of Slavery and Dregs of the human species in America.” The committee evidently entered upon 292 their work of constitution making with great gusto as will appear from the following:
“Agreeable to the trust reposed in us by the good People of New Ireland, We, anticipating the glorious morning of American Freedom, which will shortly shine upon them with a lustre superior to any other spot on the terraqueous Globe, after consluting with the sagest Politicians of the Age, and carefully examining the several frames of Government already erected in this new Empire, and particularly all the advantages which Divine Revelation affords; have drawn up the following Frame of Government for New Ireland, which, from the knowledge we have of the dispositions of our Constituents we have ground to believe will be very acceptable to them, and calculated to render them and their posterity the happiest People on the earth.”
Among the provisions of the Constitution were several that may be mentioned for their oddity. Not only were all tavern keepers debarred from holding office “lest spirituous liquors should influence the choice,” but the legal fraternity were viewed with suspicion and it was ordained that “Practising Lawyers or Attornies shall not be eligible for any office of profit or trust in the State whilst they continue such.”
In order still further to keep the morals of the people pure and uncorrupted, and for the encouragement of piety and virtue and the suppression of vice and immorality, it was provided that “no Stage Plays, Horse-racing, Cock-fighting, Balls and Assemblies, Profane swearing and cursing, Sabbath-breaking, Drunkenness, nocturnal revelling, whoredom, Cards, Dice, and all other games whatsoever, commonly called Games of Chance (Lotteries ordered by the Legislature to raise money for public uses excepted) shall be permitted.”
The would-be founders of New Ireland close their report by expressing their hope that Europeans, panting after the sweets of Liberty and Independence will flock thither. “Here,” say they, “are no griping and racking Landlords to oppress you; no avaricious Priests to extort from you the Tenth of all your increase and labors and whom you must pay for the liberty to come into the world, of being married, of having children and likewise of leaving the world. * * * Send here the frugal and industrious; no half Gentlemen with long pedigrees from Nimrod and Cain, nor any who expect to make their fortunes by any other methods than the plain beaten paths of honest industry, for idle indolent people, unwilling to work, ought not to eat but to live in all places miserable.”
But to return from this digression; it is clear that if the British forces had routed John Allan and his Indians out of Machias in 1779, as they might easily have done if a serious effort had been made, the American congress would then have had no foothold east of Saco, so that Portland and all the coast to the St. Croix would have been, at the close of the war, as firmly in the possession of the English as any part of Nova Scotia. The American writer Kidder, in his interesting account of the military operations in eastern Maine and Nova Scotia during the Revolution, says: “It is now generally conceded that our present boundary was fixed mainly on the ground of occupation, and had we not been able to hold our eastern outpost at Machias, we cannot say what river in Maine would now divide us from a British province.”