Here was the home chosen for the men who had incurred the hatred of their neighbours by seeking to perpetuate English rule over the American colonies. The English Government honestly desired to requite those unfortunate supporters. It desired also to plant them far away from the colonists who were of French origin and sentiment. For England mistrusted now her own children who lived within range of American influences, and it was her aim to preserve unimpaired the submissive loyalty of her French subjects. Therefore she chose that while the Frenchmen prospered and increased in the lower valley of the St. Lawrence, those Englishmen who were fleeing from triumphant republicanism, but who had probably not altogether escaped its taint, should open their new career on the shores of Lake Ontario. They came in such numbers, that within a year there were ten thousand settlers in the new colony. They came so miserably poor, that for a time England required to feed and clothe them. But they bore stout hearts, and hands not unaccustomed to wield the axe and guide the plough. The country was one vast forest, and the labour of clearing was great. Every man received, free of charge, a grant of two hundred acres; and for each child of those who had borne arms a like endowment was reserved. The settlers worked with good-will. In a short time each man’s lands were ready for the plough, and the landscape was lighted up with corn-fields and the dwellings of man. During the course of peaceful years which she now enjoyed Canada increased steadily. Emigrants were drawn from England by the inducement of free lands in the western province; in the east there were constant additions both to the French and to the English section of the population. Shortly after the close of the American War it was found that in the whole colony there were not fewer than one hundred and fifty thousand souls. Canada had doubled her population in the twenty years which had elapsed since she became an English possession.