history and made a long step forward to becoming a nation. [Sidenote: The United Empire Loyalists.] The British Government and the nation on the whole did their duty by the Loyalists in Canada. They gave money, they gave lands, they gave food and clothing, and they gave them a title of honour. At a council meeting held at Quebec on the 9th of November, 1789, Lord Dorchester said that it was his wish to put a mark of honour 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; and it was ordered that the land boards should keep a registry of them ‘to the end that their posterity may be discriminated from future settlers’. From that time they were known as the United Empire Loyalists; and when in the year 1884 the centenary of their arrival in Canada was kept, the celebration showed that the memory of their sufferings and of their loyalty was still cherished, that their descendants still rightfully claimed distinction as bearing the names and inheriting the traditions of those who through good and evil report remained true to the British cause. [Sidenote: American persecution of the Loyalists a political mistake.] In the debate in the House of Commons on the terms of the Peace, Lord North, speaking of the attitude of the Americans toward the Loyalists, said, ‘I term it impolitic, for it will establish their character as a vindictive people. It would have become the interests as well as the character of a newly-created people to have shown their propensity to compassion’. The record of the treatment of the Loyalists by their compatriots in the United States is not the brightest page in American history. The terrible memory of the border war was not calculated to make the victorious party lean to the side of compassion when the fighting was over, but when all allowance has been made for the bitterness which was the inevitable result of the long drawn out struggle, the Americans cannot be said to have shown much good faith or generosity in their dealings with the Loyalists or much political wisdom. There were exceptions among them. Men like Jay and Alexander Hamilton and the partisan leader in the south, General Marion, gave their influence for justice and mercy; but on the whole justice and mercy were sadly wanting. The newly-created people, as Lord North styled the Americans, did not show themselves wise in their generation. Their policy towards the Loyalists was not that of men confident in the strength and the righteousness of their cause; nor, if they wished to drive the English out of America and, as Franklin tried in his dealings with Oswald, to secure Canada for the United States, did they take the right course to achieve their end. This point is forcibly put by the American writer Sabine, whose book published in 1847 is not wanting in strong patriotic bias. He shows how British colonization in Canada and Nova Scotia was the