It will be noted that, though the case of the Loyalists was made a text for denouncing the terms of the Peace, the Government was defeated avowedly not so much on the ground of dishonourable conduct to the friends of England as on that of having made unnecessary concessions. The case of the Opposition was strong, and the case of the Government was weak, because sentiment was backed by common sense. The Loyalists had been shabbily treated, without any adequate reason either for sacrificing them or for making various other concessions. That was the verdict of the House of Commons then, and it is the verdict of history now. England had become relatively not weaker but stronger since the disaster at Yorktown, and the United States were at least as much in need of peace as was the mother country. The Americans had done more by bluff than by force, and the wholesale cession of territory, the timorous abandonment of men and places, was an unnecessary price of peace. The case of the Opposition was overwhelming, and it carried conviction in spite of the antecedents of many of those who spoke for it. North and Sackville, who declaimed against the terms which had been conceded, were the men who had mismanaged the war. Fox was to the front in attacking the Peace, and with reason, for he had been the chief opponent in the Rockingham cabinet of Shelburne and his emissary Oswald, but Fox beyond all men had lent his energies to supporting the Americans against his own country in the time of her trial. [Sidenote: Excuses made for the policy of the British Government with regard to the Loyalists.] [Sidenote: Persecution of the Loyalists in the various states.] What the Government pleaded in defence of the articles which related to the Loyalists was first, that they could not secure peace on any other terms; secondly, that the Americans would carry out the terms honourably and in good faith; and thirdly that, if the terms were not carried out, England would compensate her friends. The first plea, as we have seen, was rejected. The second plea events proved to be ill founded. Congress made the recommendation to the state legislatures which the fifth article prescribed, but no attention was paid to it. ‘Confiscation still went on actively, governors of the states were urged to exchange lists of the proscribed persons, that no Tory might find a resting-place in the United States, and in nearly every state they were disfranchized’.[167] The Acts against the Loyalists were not repealed, and in some cases were supplemented. In some states life was not safe any more than property, and the revolution closed with a reign of terror. South Carolina stood almost alone in passing, in March, 1784, an Act for restitution of property and permitting Loyalists to return to the state. In Pennsylvania Tories were still disfranchized as late as 1801.