ing
army was to encounter a resolute and united foe. Nor were the causes
of Canadian loyalty far to seek. The French population, by nature
loyal and content, were unwilling to sever the ties of noble
monarchical tradition binding them to the past, and embark upon the
troubled seas of American politics, there to be lost among loose and
powerful majorities out of sympathy with their conservative ideals,
their temperament, and those racial rights so fully acknowledged by
England after the Conquest. Also east and west, the Maritime Provinces
and Upper Canada contained an element already devotedly attached to
the Crown. The sacrifices of the United Empire loyalists made almost
sacred the soil of Upper Canada, now Ontario. Men who had already
braved the anger of their fellow-citizens in the American Colonies,
and abandoned their homes to witness to the ideal of a united empire,
were not likely at the last to throw away their crown of service and
stultify themselves before the world.

[Illustration: SIR GORDON DRUMMOND
(Lieut.-Governor of Upper Canada, December 1813 to April 1815)]

Upper Canada was already a flourishing colony, containing at the
outbreak of this American war about a quarter of the population of the
two provinces combined. To balance inferiority in point of numbers,
the peculiar circumstances of the English colonists--affinity of race
to the mother-country, a fertile territory, the memory of special
benefits received--combined to bring the zealous British sentiment of
the new province into special prominence at this crisis. Inspired by
the wise counsels of Sir Guy Carleton, the British Government had
there formerly pursued a generous policy now about to bear opportune
fruit; for when, at the end of the War of Independence, the loyalist
refugees were crowding to the appointed places of rendezvous along the
northern frontier, facing the future unprovided, the large sum of
L3,000,000 sterling had been granted to recompense their losses, in
addition to further help allowed more needy settlers. Under the four
years of Colonel Simcoe's sympathetic rule (1791-95), the province had
trebled its population, a vigorous immigration policy enticing crowds
of wavering loyalists or enterprising speculators from the south.
"Where," asks Brock in his proclamation at the opening of the war,
"where is to be found, in any part of the world, a growth so rapid in
prosperity and wealth as this colony exhibits?"

Yet the inhabita