, the balance
of power had been little affected by the war. France had one West Indian
island more, Holland one Indian settlement less. Spain had recovered
Minorca and the Floridas. But she was irrevocably shut out from one
great object of her ambition, the eastern half of the Mississippi
Basin.

SETTLEMENT OF AMERICAN LOYALISTS IN CANADA[30]

A.D. 1783

SIR JOHN G. BOURINOT

In the American Revolutionary War there were many in the
then new-born Republic who either refrained from
participating or took the loyalist side in the conflict.
These were called "United Empire Loyalists," for they clung
to the unity of the empire and refused to ally themselves
with their fellow-colonists in revolt. When the war was
over, those who took up arms on the loyal side found
themselves in a hopeless minority, loaded with obloquy, and
subjected to indignity at the hands of the victorious
republicans. Rather than live under these humiliating
conditions, some of the Loyalists returned to England; but
most of them, preferring voluntary expatriation in Western
wilds to living in a country that had become independent
through rebellion, sought new homes for themselves in Acadia
and Canada.

Their act was not lost upon the home Government, for the
latter sent instructions to Canada to make provision for
their reception and settlement, and for the mitigation, in
some measure, of their trials and privations. This provision
consisted of seed, farm implements, tools for building
purposes, and food and clothing for a year or two after
settling in the country. To make good in part their losses
the British Government also voted about three millions
sterling to be divided among the incoming settlers, and gave
them munificent grants of land, chiefly in the western
portion of the country, the then virgin Province of Upper
Canada. There, as well as in desirable locations in Nova
Scotia and New Brunswick, streamed in the Loyalists and
their families, to begin their sad experience of exile in
the wilderness. By their coming, Western Canada--chiefly on
the banks of the St. Lawrence, on the Bay of Quinte, in the
Niagara district, and round the shores of Lake
Ontario--received that contribution of brawn and muscle so
essential to the carving out of a new province and the