Chapter 12: Imperial Realignment PDF

# Chapter 12: Imperial Realignment ## 1. Reform and Reaction At the height of the Seven Years' War when matters were going badly for France, its chief minister, the Duc de Choiseul, ventured a prophecy. The loss of Canada, he predicted, would remove a salutary check to American colonial ambitions...

# Chapter 12: Imperial Realignment ## 1. Reform and Reaction At the height of the Seven Years' War when matters were going badly for France, its chief minister, the Duc de Choiseul, ventured a prophecy. The loss of Canada, he predicted, would remove a salutary check to American colonial ambitions and within a generation they would have revolted against Britain and secured their independence. France would be revenged on her inveterate enemy. The events of the next two decades were to prove Choiseul essentially right, though the dynamics of their development were infinitely more complex than he could have known. Over the years a great variety of explanations have been brought forward to explain why the colonies rebelled. During the high-minded nineteenth century, the standard approach was to place the struggle on the lofty level of abstract constitutionalism. The British government, so the argument goes, in the years after the Peace of Paris, passed a series of laws that flew in the face of the accepted British maxim "No taxation without representation." In 1764 the Sugar Act raised the duty on that commodity. Duties had previously existed; indeed, that on sugar had been five shillings per hundredweight. The increase, to 27 shillings, represented something new, however, for the preamble to the Act made it plain that what was being attempted was not a duty to regulate trade in a mercantilist empire from which any income would be purely incidental, but rather a duty to raise a revenue. The former, colonists were prepared to concede, was proper, since for the empire as a whole the authority of Westminster was valid; the latter, on the other hand, was an illegal imposition, for no colonial assembly had given its approval. A year after the Stamp Act, the constitutional case continues, the Stamp Act seemed to threaten British liberties in America even more seriously. That Act extended to the colonies the longstanding British requirement that official and legal papers pay tax in the form of stamps. This went a stage beyond the Sugar Act, which had still been an external tax, and in theory colonists not wishing to pay it could simply have refused to import sugar. The Stamp Act applied within the colony, to transactions that were not avoidable in the same sense; as such it was a matter that clearly ought to have come before a colonial legislature. Since it had not, the cry "No Taxation without representation" was properly raised. Indeed, the novelty was so pernicious that freedom-loving Americans rose up in justified anger and destroyed the stamps, drove out the tax officials, and went on to organize a boycott of British goods to show Westminster that they meant business. In this they were successful, and the Act was repealed. Yet the British had not learned their lesson. The repeal was accompanied by a Declaratory Act that proclaimed the legality of the Stamp Act and reserved the right to impose similar legislation in the future. In 1767 Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer, brought in the duties named after him, taxes on paper, glass, paint, and tea. Once again a storm of protest arose. Once again the duties were removed - all except the tea tax. The agitation against this exception was kept up and finally, in 1773, British modifications to the tea trade provided the spark for the Boston Tea Party. A group of patriotic citizens "disguised" as Indians boarded an East India Company ship and dumped its cargo of tea into Massachusetts Bay. The oppressive British government responded with unnecessary severity. Four acts, known as the "Intolerable Acts," were passed to punish Massachusetts. The harbour was closed, destroying trade; the colonial council was abolished and replaced by one nominated by the Crown; the billeting of soldiers on citizens was arranged, so that the town might be bullied; and power was given to have trials removed to England if necessary. ## Pre-Confederation Canada Such in outline is the constitutional case, a litany of illegal or unjustifiable acts by the imperial authority that provoked the proper resistance of the colonies. A more cynical twentieth century has seen the struggle rather differently. Some, while not necessarily denying the power of such episodes to produce disaffection, have concentrated upon the economic factors. They have stressed that by the mid-eighteenth century the American colonies had reached a critical stage in their economic development. They had built up an extensive overseas trade, and intensive trading links among themselves into the bargain. They were outgrowing the mercantilist framework that kept them in subjection to Britain, and were ready to move beyond staple production to industrialization. At the same time, their population growth was continuing at a spectacular rate, and that too had reached a critical level. The pent-up population was ready to cascade over the Appalachian barrier and flood across the Midwest, but imperial policy, as announced in the royal proclamation of 1763, flatly opposed this development. However, the destiny of such a lusty child was not to be thwarted by parental prohibitions, and if Britain persisted in standing in the way of natural growth the inhibiting ties would have to be severed with violence if necessary. Yet others have explored the social dimensions. Rather than focus on the activities of the elite, whether politicians or merchants, they trace the hopes and aspirations of the ordinary man. They claim to have found a ferment of social revolution, a wish to throw off the old restraints on holding office, on political participation, on inheritance, on landholding, and so forth. This ferment was so powerful that it could not be contained within the existing imperial-centred framework, so heavily marked by the conservative, not to say reactionary outlook of old Europe. Therefore, an independent course of development became necessary. These variants have been argued over, dismissed, resurrected with qualifications and ever-increasing sophistication, and combined for many years now. The understanding of the rebellion as it presently exists is complex indeed. But a history of Canada does not have to probe that understanding in any detail. Those seeking to understand Canadian history are interested in the War of Independence not so much for its own sake as because it impacted upon the emerging country in two ways. In the first place, the War of Independence produced a sizable body of pro-British diehards, the Loyalists, who preferred exile from America to acceptance of the new republic. Many of them chose British North America, and were a vital founding element in their adoptive home. Second, the very success of the American system, right on Canada's doorstep, continually posed fundamental questions to Canadians about their own identity; now that the British heritage had split into two strains, towards which should the Canadians gravitate? These two questions direct examination not so much towards the ostensible causes of the breach as to the underlying mentalities that enabled the two sides to evaluate a given action, say the Stamp Act, in such very different lights. For this is the striking fact that has to be grasped. British opinion felt that the Stamp Act was perfectly valid, not onerous, and a statesman-like approach to paying off a crushing national debt largely incurred on behalf of the Americans and towards which they ought to contribute. The Americans equally sincerely felt that it was an intolerable imposition. The British were appalled and disgusted by the mob violence which greeted the tax. The Americans rejoiced in the valiant response of their citizens to attempts to enslave them. How was it that British attempts to give their empire the overhaul that it so obviously needed after the Seven Years' War led to such protests? How did reform produce such a reaction? The starting point for the Americans was the very British one that, since humans were naturally avaricious after power, and that since there was a constant danger of despotism entrenched behind corruption, the proper system of political society was that of checks and balances. It was a theory that did not correspond to practice, but it was still deeply cherished because it marked Britain off from the absolutist French. It was a theory that received classic expression in 1765 in Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England: And herein indeed consists the true excellence of the English government, that all parts of it form a mutual check upon each other. In the legislature the people were a check upon the nobility, and the nobility a check upon the people; by the mutual privileges of rejecting what the other has resolved: While the King is a check upon both, which preserves the executive power from encroachments. And this very executive power is again checked and kept within bounds by the two Houses, through the privilege they have of inquiring into, impeaching and punishing the conduct not indeed of the King, which would destroy his constitutional independence, but which is more beneficial to the public, of his evil and pernicious counsellors. Thus every branch of our civil polity supports and is supported, regulates and is regulated, by the rest: for the two Houses naturally drawing in two directions of opposite interest, and the prerogative in another still different from them both, they mutually keep each other from exceeding their proper limits. In Britain, as in America, there were those who feared that the balance was slipping, that the executive was becoming too powerful, a fear that surfaced dramatically in 1780 when John Dunning proposed and carried the motion at Westminster "that the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished." However, what is significant about the American treatment of this theme is the lengths to which they were prepared to go in opposing executive tyranny. What was in Dunning's case a nine-days' wonder was in the colonies a rooted maxim for the regular conduct of politics. In this respect the Americans would justify Murray's epithet "fanaticks." The judgment that the times were corrupt pervaded the colonies. Not only was the mother country, in their view, sunk in decadence, so too were the Americans themselves. The feeling that liberty was in danger of being lost was intensified by the great religious revival that had worked its way through colonial society during the previous generation and more, a shattering experience that had riven the broad Calvinist tradition and given rise to "New Light" churches that channelled powerful impulses to find evil everywhere at work. This resurgent Puritanism was hostile to any suggestion of hierarchy. They looked upon Anglican efforts to have a North American bishop with horror as part of the imperial plan to subjugate free colonists: in 1765 it was claimed that "the stamping and episcopizing [of] our colonies were only different branches of the same plan of power." That Quebec had been allowed a Catholic bishop filled them with fury. The old slogan "No Popery, no wooden shoes" rang again in this setting. Not surprisingly, that the Quebec Act appeared at the same time as the Boston Port Bill was taken as proof of a settled plan to subvert Protestant freedom, and that act was included among the Intolerable Acts. The violence and the unreasonableness of this response draws attention to another characteristic of the American colonists, the tendency to political paranoia. The colonists believed that the actions of the British government were part of a vast conscious conspiracy to enslave them, but the reasons for the various taxing acts appeared acceptable to others. The British national debt was staggering and taxation was unbearably high; the Americans derived substantial benefits from membership in the world's then largest trading system, and ought to have paid something towards the operating costs; the existing system was run in so lax a fashion that while the average annual yield of the American customs was 2000 pounds the expense of collecting that sum was 8000 pounds; a second Pontiac's rising was to be avoided, so white settlers were to have been kept from crossing the Appalachians, and imperial troops were to police the region. To the Americans, however, none of this was acceptable: the taxes were, they believed, to establish a precedent that in time would crush the Americans. The troops were there to impose martial law. For far too many, everything Britain did was further evidence of a plot hatched against them. Thomas Jefferson summed up the prevailing opinion: "Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day [but] a series of oppressions begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers too plainly prove a deliberate and systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." John Adams added the date of the "distinguished period": "the conspiracy was first regularly formed and begun to be executed in 1763 or 4." Accompanying this paranoia was the belief that in such a desperate situation intolerance was a virtue and violence a necessity. At an early stage of protest, Patrick Henry ("Give me Liberty or give me death") proposed to the Virginia legislature that anyone who maintained that Westminster had the right to tax should be considered an enemy. That the suggestion was not adopted was irrelevant; Henry's sentiment was widely circulated and accepted. In 1772 the revenue cutter Gaspee ran aground; a Rhode Island mob attacked the vessel, cast the captain adrift in a small boat, looted and then burned the ship. The Boston Tea Party itself was not an isolated incident - there were other similar acts of violence. Paradoxically, this almost totalitarian solidarity and herd-like suppression of dissent was accompanied by an individualism that could border on the anarchic. The colonies had a long tradition of allowing a person to do as he liked. Property was his to sell or to waste. His views were his to express with all the outspoken onesidedness that that might entail. This tradition led to the inclusion in the Declaration of Independence that man had a natural right to the "pursuit of happiness," a most extreme statement of individualism since no man could decide for another what constituted happiness. The tradition also led, after the war, to the invention of the constitutional convention. If society was to be properly constituted, it could only be after the people through their representatives, specifically chosen for this one purpose, had discussed the matter and drafted a constitution that was then approved by the free vote of all the citizens. Such, then, was the American style. It was against such presumptions that Loyalism fought, and against which British North America reacted. ## 2. Revolution Rejected When John Adams in the mid-1760s became aware that the real revolution, that of mentality, had taken place, he was sufficiently honest to admit that Quebec and Nova Scotia were unlikely to be part of that "Union," aroused by the Stamp Act, that "was never known before in America." "I pity my unhappy fellow subjects in Quebeck and Hallifax" he owned, noting that "Quebec consists chiefly of French men." In the case of Nova Scotia he ventured an explanation of their distinctiveness: "Halifax consists of a sett of Fugatives and Vagabonds . kept in fear by a Fleet and an Army." In this he was quite right. Halifax had been built as an answer to Louisbourg, and when that fortress passed to Britain, Halifax was free to overawe the surrounding area. At the same time the government contracts that inevitably went with such a presence naturally tied civilian fortunes to the imperial cause. Nevertheless, correct though he was, Adams did not see far enough. The evolution of Nova Scotia in this period was particularly complex; its distinctive roots went back to the effective foundation of the colony after the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. Nova Scotia rather than Quebec first furnished Americans with a foretaste of the new British attitude to imperial management. As a colony it differed significantly from Massachusetts, the dominant society of the region. Whereas Massachusetts had a long history of independent initiative, Nova Scotia had none. The former had been peopled by settlers who owed almost nothing to Britain other than their habits of mind; their work of clearing the land, subduing the Indians, and building their civilization in the wilderness had been overwhelmingly their own unaided effort. Their institutions fittingly mirrored their independence: local officials at the township level were elected by the citizens; the legislature of the colony was to a great extent free of imperial control; the council was elected. How different were arrangements in Nova Scotia! Its origin lay in a decision of Westminster to counter the French military threat; its early growth was at the hands of the Board of Trade; its officials were selected and closely overseen by imperial authorities. Although it had enjoyed an assembly since 1758, that body had none of the independence that marked that of Massachusetts, and the council was nominated. With such beginnings it was difficult for Nova Scotia to experience that evolution in thinking that took place to the south between 1765 and 1775. Immigration from New England slowed, and by the mid-1760s the flow was if anything the other way, back to the future United States. British immigrants began to feature more and more in the makeup of the colony, so much so that by the outbreak of the war less than 50 percent of Nova Scotians were of New England origin. A colonial mentality permeated the province, which became plain when hostilities broke out. The inhabitants of Barrington admitted in a petition they wre sympathetic to the revolution, "having Fathers, brothers, and children living [in Massachusetts]," yet when referring to the war they revealingly wrote of the fighting that "you" and not "we" were engaged in. The pro-American rebels of Maugerville acknowledged that it was "our Minds and Desire to submit ourselves to the government of Massachusetts' Bay," which has often been taken to show a revolutionary fervour; however, another interpretation is that even those opposed to Britain realized the impossibility of the colony's rebelling in its own right. The most that could be hoped for was a change of imperialisms. War threw the raw, scattered, heterogenous population of Nova Scotia into confusion. Neither imperial loyalities nor rebel visions could provide that society with a sense of direction, a sense of self that would see it through the uncertainty. What did serve as a focus about which an identity could be formed was religion: on the very outbreak of war there arose in Nova Scotia a preacher of charismatic power that the times demanded. From 1775 until his death in 1784, Henry Alline dominated the colony and in so doing shaped it profoundly. The religious milieu into which the newly converted Alline plunged was no less confused than the rest of society. The New Englanders who made up such a large portion of the colony had brought with them Congregationalism in the main, a church that was split into Old Light and New Light groupings as a result of the revival in America since the 1740s. In addition, New England settlers had brought Baptist, Quaker, and Presbyterian churches. From Britain came the Methodists and, as a sign of the greater imperial hold on this province, an Anglicanism that was always influential. It was a religious hodgepodge that prevented any one body imposing itself, and one in which an untutored preacher like Alline could move with effect. The test was vibrant preaching and dramatic conversion, a common factor to which the predominant Dissenting churches could all respond. By all accounts Alline triumphed. He had his enemies, and there were regions, notably the garrison and administrative capital of Halifax, where he was not popular, but these were minor exceptions. He visited most of the colony, and was a success. People came by the boatload to the centres he was known to be visiting, and even after his departure interest would remain high. Thus at Liverpool, at the house of a disciple, "a large Concourse of People. near 150 attended, which till of Late is a very Strange thing in this Place, Such a Meeting having scarcely been Known in the Place Since the Settlement of it, till Since Mr. Alline was here." Even those who opposed him were obliged to take note of his message. Whether for him or against him Nova Scotian society was being drawn together and unified. For the greater portion of that society, the lasting message of the Alline revival was a new sense of identity as "a People highly favoured of God." Revivalist religion is sectarian, an impulse that emphasizes the cohesiveness of the true believers who feel impelled to withdraw from a wicked society. In the future United States this impulse had, in the withdrawal from the British empire, gone on to swell into its own nationalism. In Nova Scotia on the other hand the sense of withdrawal was maintained in a purer form. If Britain was decadent, so too was New England. Evil and backsliding were to be found in both. Nova Scotia was a remnant, a migration from a migration, the quintessence of Puritanism. Alline described the movement that had brought himself as a boy from Rhode Island, together with so many of his listeners, as providential: "Your being called away from the approaching storm that was hanging over your native land, and sheltered here from the calamities of the sweeping deluge" was a true sign of election. Secure in the knowledge that they were a chosen people, Nova Scotians could rise above the battle. This was the great gift of Alline to his people; he had offered to "lend you an annicient eye or discover to your view a map of the disordered world." They had accepted that offer, and the view of themselves as "a People highly favoured of God" proved very congenial to them. John Adams had been right about Quebec, too. That province quite failed to protest the Stamp Act, the very touchstone of Americanism. The elliptical reason he gave for this distinctiveness was that in addition to being cowed by an army, the population was overwhelmingly that of "French Men." The implication was that such a people were not called to the defence of liberty, and events seemed to bear out this prediction. In 1774 the Americans issued a pro forma invitation to Quebec to join in the rebellion and send delegates to the continental congress. Massachusetts even dispatched an agent to coordinate agitation and hasten a declaration. However, a blunt statement was soon sent back by this agent that "there is no prospect of Canada sending delegates to the Continental Congress." Yet if Canada was not natural revolutionary material, it did not follow that the province could be ignored. If an invitation to join was not accepted, then conquest would be necessary: Canada, commanding the St. Lawrence route to the interior, was too valuable a strategic prize to be left to the British. In their hands it was destined to be the major jumping-off place from which to launch the invasion of the States. Thus, while Nova Scotia was largely ignored and invasion there amounted to little more than Jonathan Eddy and his ridiculous band of 28, no fewer than two armies, mustering at departure some 2000 men, determined on the conquest of Canada in 1775. In part it was a traditional exercise. One force under Richard Montgomery, who as a member of Amherst's army had got to know the region 15 years before, invaded by the Lake Champlain route. A second, under Benedict Arnold, used the Kennebec and Chaudière rivers and suffered abominably. Montreal not being defendable, Carleton abandoned it and withdrew to prepare Quebec for a siege. Thus at the end of 1775 the remains of the two invasion armies began a forlorn attempt to take the citadel with insufficient supplies, cannon, and men (there were more within the walls than without). In desperation an assault under cover of darkness was mounted on the last day of the year, but there were many casualties, many more were taken prisoner, and Montgomery himself was killed. Despite these setbacks, the Americans hung on until the arrival in the spring of 10 000 British troops threatened to trap the invaders, whereupon they retreated precipitately. This was the end of serious invasion scares on the St. Lawrence. A constant war of raiding was kept up, and the British recruited not only Loyalist companies from among the Americans but also used their traditional Indian allies. Prominent among these last was the Mohawk chieftain Joseph Brant. Nevertheless, a return to more formal manoeuvres on the pattern of 1775 was never attempted, although the Americans considered it, after 1777, when a British army from Quebec under Bourgoyne, invading through the Hudson Valley, had been forced to surrender at Saratoga, and especially after 1780, when the war seemed to be won. France, however, by then the all-important ally, vetoed the plan. The French implicitly accepted the dictum of Choiseul that a partitioned North America would prevent too great a show of independence; just as before 1763 American fears of French Canadians kept them dependent upon Britain, so now in the 1780s their fears of British North America would keep them dependent on France. The war proved no danger for Canada in the long run. There had been anxious moments, but little more. What had been shocking, however, was the way in which the war years had overturned almost all expectations of the behaviour of Quebec society. In particular, Carleton's estimations were shown to be grossly mistaken. In view of the governor's attitudes, and in view of the just-passed Quebec Act, it might have been supposed that the trading element would have been extremely hostile to the imperial connection and receptive to the Americans, but it was not so. A few merchants did declare for the rebels, of course. The vast majority, however, did not. They were terrified of what the colonial non-importation agreements would do to their fortunes, and they were too dependent on London to want to break that link. The fur traders especially recognized the way the St. Lawrence system did not fit into the one that would probably emerge from a victorious War of Independence. Carleton himself was forced to admit that his former estimate of their class was in need of revision. By the same token, but with even more emphasis, he had to change his judgment of the seigneurs and the habitants. The former, rewarded with a power and recognition that dwarfed anything they had enjoyed under the French régime, responded with an arrogance and contempt towards the habitants that fell far short of Carleton's notion of noblesse oblige. For their part the habitants were deeply resentful of the way in which their traditional independence, grown all the greater in the years between the Conquest and the Quebec Act, was being curtailed. Therefore, when hostilities threatened, Carleton was forced to admit that care would need to be taken "to recall [them] to their ancient habits of obedience and discipline." As time went on, the situation grew worse. The militia frequently refused to muster. Too many were passive in the face of invasion, and some even gave aid to the Americans Arnold's corps would not have survived had not habitants succoured them. The post-invasion inquests revealed a disturbing story. It was difficult to find militia officers who had done their duty to the fullest, and in 50 parishes not fewer than 37 officers had to be cashiered. Two things saved the colony. The invaders behaved with arrogant stupidity: their prohibition on western trade alienated what little support they attracted from the merchant group; more seriously their Puritan contempt for the habitants, their Church, and their ways shocked the mass of the population. When Montgomery's successor wrote in a letter later captured and made public that the Canadians "were only one remove from the savages," and when it was reported that he had prohibited Christmas Eve mass, unflattering comparisons with British behaviour in 1760 began to be made. Second, as time ran on and hard cash ran out, the attempts to pay for goods in paper money completed the disillusionment. The Church was true to form. Briand and his clergy cooperated with the civil authorities in ways that fully justified the reliance placed upon them by the Quebec Act. Mandements were issued enjoining loyalty to the British régime, and sermons were preached on the duty of obeying duly constituted authority. After the invasion, priests were used to establish the facts of what happened in the parishes, and ecclesiastical penalties (such as the withholding of the sacraments) were employed to ensure submission to the steps taken by the state; in one case an entire parish was laid under interdict. This is not to claim, of course, that Church commands always brought instant compliance, but in most cases they did, and without such backing the colony would have found it much harder to resist conquest by the Americans. Had the Church given even tacit support to the rebels the colony must surely have been lost. Carleton and Quebec survived. He had done enough to justify public recognition and the award of honours. The British cabinet, however, remarked that "some parts of his conduct were doubtful"; his misrepresentation of the state of the colony, and his halfhearted measures against the rebels, particularly when they withdrew in the spring of 1776, were black marks against him. In 1777 his offer to resign was accepted in a manner tantamount to dismissal. A year later his place was taken by the Swiss mercenary, Frederick Haldimand. In the diary entry of 1766 mentioned earlier, John Adams had gone on to discuss revolutionary sentiments in the Caribbean. No mention, however, was made of Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton, or of Newfoundland. Adams had every justification in ignoring them. Prince Edward Island was a tiny settlement of less than a thousand people; only in 1769 was it separated from Nova Scotia, and only in 1773 did it receive an assembly; it was being peopled by Highlanders, and was in no way attracted by the possibility of independence. Cape Breton was even more backward in its development and remained part of Nova Scotia. Newfoundland had over 10 000 inhabitants, but imperial theory still saw the island as a mere adjunct to the fishing industry; the people had little sense of community, lacked even the rudiments of civil government, and were oriented entirely towards Britain. All three islands were too dependent on Britain and the North Atlantic even to consider the possibility of joining the Americans. ## 3. The Loyalists: Friends of Government The Loyalism of provinces was not the only kind. In every part of the Thirteen Colonies were individual Loyalists, men and women who for one reason or another could not go along with the majority. The depth of their Loyalism varied widely, from those who by keeping their views quiet were suffered to stay on in the eventual republic to those willing to speak out and risk tar-and-feathering, imprisonment, exile, and even lynching. Because of the wide range of commitment it is difficult to arrive at any precise estimate of their numbers, but the most thorough statistical account (by Wallace Brown) puts them at between 8 and 18 percent of the white population. A further difficulty arises from the fact that the incidence of Loyalism was extremely spotty: few areas were homogenous. Even New York, Loyalism's area of greatest significance, exhibited a bewildering checkerboard of allegiances. Thus, making sense of the reasons for Loyalism has not been an easy task. Efforts to find a philosophic basis have not been successful, although it is possible to find individuals who espoused a political view at odds with the prevailing colonial mentality, men who were genuinely Tory in their opposition to the Whigs of the revolution. Charles Inglis, a leading Anglican from New York who later became Britain's first colonial bishop (in Nova Scotia) was prepared to reach back to the medieval tradition. Such men were, nevertheless, exceptions: when the Loyalists are examined as a whole, one finds as many Whigs as Tories. The attempt to find a social denominator was no more successful. Again it must be admitted that there were high-status, rich individuals in the Loyalist ranks, but equally clearly there were plenty of the middling sort, and even of the poor. In 1778 Massachusetts passed an act banishing Loyalists, some 300 being listed by name. Their occupations were given, and these divide into three equal groups: a) merchants, professionals, and gentlemen; b) farmers; c) artisans, labourers, and small shopkeepers. No more luck attended the attempt to make religion the basis of choice. Anglicans were well represented, it is true, but not disproportionately, and it must be remembered that the biggest bloc of signers of the Declaration of Independence were Anglicans. All denominations, in fact, were to be found among the Loyalists in too scattered a fashion for any pattern to be discovered. However, one explanation has managed to fit this very diversity of response into a satisfying analysis. It has been pointed out that "all that the Tory regions, the mountain and the maritime frontiers, had in common was that both suffered or were threatened with economic or political subjugation by richer adjoining areas. The geographical concentration of the Tories was in peripheral areas, regions already in decline, or not yet risen to importance." It is stated further that "the Tories more commonly drew their recruits from the non-English than from the English parts of the community," and that "adherents of religious groups that were in a local minority were everywhere inclined towards Loyalism." Summing up, William Nelson, the author of this analysis, remarks that "taking all the groups and factions, sects, classes, and inhabitants of regions that seem to have been Tory, they have but one thing in common: they represented conscious minorities, people who felt weak and threatened." Such an analysis points to what may be the best clue to the Loyalist phenomenon. Having rejected philosophical, social, and religious explanations of why some opted for Loyalism - that is, conscious motives - it would be well to consider the unconscious factors at work, to explore the temperament of those who rejected Whiggery. Members of minorities could not embrace the fanaticism that the Americans so enthusiastically practised; they sensed the threat to their distinctiveness. One Loyalist in exile in Britain observed, "the doctrine of toleration, if not better understood, is, thank God, better practised here than in America." Peter Van Schaack, a Whig who had his doubts and went Loyalist before rejoining the Republic, made his first switch in allegiance because he realized the totalitarian implications of New England Patriot behaviour. My difficulty arises from this, that taking the whole of the acts complained of together [the Sugar Act through the Intolerable Acts], they do not, I think, manifest a system of slavery, but may be fairly imputed to human frailty, and the difficulty of the subject. In short, I think those acts may have been passed without a preconcerted plan of enslaving us. Here was an openness of mind shocking to the true Patriot; if he, thought Peter Oliver, had told his "deluded Followers that an Army of 30 000 Men were crossing the Atlantic in Egg shells, with a Design to roast the Inhabitants alive and eat them afterwards, the People would have first stared, and swallowed down the Tale whole." Safely cocooned in their common sense, the Loyalists lacked that dynamic that drove their fanatical opponents on. It is significant that Loyalists were always weakly organized. The leaders were out of touch with each other, and often indeed did not know who they were; frequently it was only in exile that they became aware of their fellows. At bottom they believed that the froth of their enemies was an aberration, a temporary breakdown in the proper ordering of society, something that would soon blow over. It was the same attitude that made Carleton so dilatory in dealing with opposition in Quebec; decisive measures were not necessary, for the misguided would soon see the error of their ways. This illusory optimism was rooted in an instinctive belief that change could only be for the worse. They may not have been philosophical Tories, but they were conservative in temperament. They feared change with a profound and unthinking fear, which was why cultural minorities were so receptive to Loyalism. Nelson's observation that Huguenots and Dutch Reformed who had become English-speaking were Patriots whereas those who retained their French or Dutch languages went Loyalist is extremely telling. In a slightly different context, but making essentially the same point, Nelson writes, "it was not oligarchs as such who became Loyalists, but only the weakest or least practical oligarchs." Such was the Loyalist mentality. Of their number perhaps as many as 100 000 went into exile. Many, if they could afford to, made for Britain, others chose the Caribbean, but many elected to stay in North America. Over 25 000 made their way to Nova Scotia, and some 10 000 to Quebec. They took with them their temperamental presuppositions and in exile erected them into a more conscious philosophy. A major strand of this philosophy was a function of exile itself. The Loyalists were in danger of succumbing to an identity crisis. They had been persecuted, they had been uprooted, but for what? Those who went to Britain soon found themselves uncomfortable when confronted by a genuine Toryism, a genuine aristocratic society, and longed to return across the Atlantic. They realized that in repudiating the United States they could not have been repudiating America. Rather, they told themselves, they had been repudiating republicanism. What they favoured was British America, the British connection. By making a parade of their loyalty to the symbols of the British constitution, they could assure themselves that their sacrifice had not been in vain. Moreover, to cling was congenial to a people fearful of change. To be dependent was no badge of shame, but a guarantee of continuing purity. It is worthwhile underlining that future Tories had been as upset over the Stamp Act as had future rebel Whigs, but whereas the latter were prepared to go on and challenge Britain root and branch, the former drew back, believing in the ultimate good sense of the mother country. The other main strand of the Loyalist philosophy was only partly a result of the exile experience; it was more the lesson of the rebellion itself. Their fear of change, their experience of the fickle nature of popular clamour, their treatment at the hands of the mob, heightened their belief that the many had to be kept in their place. As two leading Loyalists put it, "the larger bodies of men are, the more false importance they reflect on each other," and "mankind have seldom been assembled in great numbers for any useful purpose." The late catastrophe had been caused, they believed, by giving the mob, or even the democratic element, too great a leeway. Devices were needed to restore that balance that eighteenth-century man took for granted. A strong state-church an established Anglicanism would be useful. To stress the aristocratic element in society could only be beneficial, as would be the strengthening of the executive as against the legislature. In the reordering of British North America after 1788 there was ample opportunity for putting such thinking into operation. ## 4. Redrawn Boundaries, Remade Constitutions To accommodate the irruption of so many newcomers Britain was prepared for a new beginning in British North America, but first it was necessary to decide just how much should belong to the republic. This task occupied the peace commissioners from 1782 until the Treaty of Versailles was concluded in 1783. The British negotiations were carried on by governments in which Lord Shelburne's was the leading voice. His thinking was that of the advanced theorist, Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations had appeared in 1776 and who in attacking mercantilism had argued for laissez-faire. For this reason Shelburne was not particularly interested in hanging on to territory, for in the new age it would matter not a jot who controlled the land but who could produce and sell for