account of the Loyalists, must have amounted to not less
than 6,000,000 pounds, exclusive of the value of the
lands assigned.

With the object possibly of assuaging the grievances of
which the Loyalists complained in connection with the
proceedings of the royal commission, Lord Dorchester (as
Sir Guy Carleton was by that time styled) proposed in
1789 'to put a Marke of Honor upon the families who had
adhered to the unity of the empire, and joined the Royal
Standard in America before the Treaty of Separation in
the year 1783.' It was therefore resolved that all
Loyalists of that description were 'to be distinguished
by the letters U. E. affixed to their names, alluding to
their great principle, the unity of the empire.' The land
boards were ordered to preserve a registry of all such
persons, 'to the end that their posterity may be
discriminated from future settlers,' and that their sons
and daughters, on coming of age, might receive grants of
two hundred acre lots. Unfortunately, the land boards
carried out these instructions in a very half-hearted
manner, and when Colonel John Graves Simcoe became
lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, he found the regulation
a dead letter. He therefore revived it in a proclamation
issued at York (now Toronto), on April 6, 1796, which
directed the magistrates to ascertain under oath and to
register the names of all those who by reason of their
loyalty to the Empire were entitled to special distinction
and grants of land. A list was compiled from the land
board registers, from the provision lists and muster
lists, and from the registrations made upon oath, which
was known as the 'Old U. E. List'; and it is a fact often
forgotten that no one, the names of some of whose ancestors
are not inscribed in that list, has the right to describe
himself as a United Empire Loyalist.

CHAPTER XII

THE AMERICAN MIGRATION

From the first the problem of governing the settlements
above Montreal perplexed the authorities. It was very
early proposed to erect them into a separate province,
as New Brunswick had been erected into a separate province.
But Lord Dorchester was opposed to any such arrangement.
'It appears to me,' he wrote to Lord Sydney, 'that the
western settlements are as yet unprepared for any
organization superior to that of a county.' In 1787,
therefore, the country west of Montreal was divided into
four districts, for a time named Lunenburg, Mecklenburg,
Nassau, and Hesse.