No one who studies the history of the American Revolution can fail to be convinced that the persecution of the Loyalists had for its final result the severance of the North American continent into two nations. The people who inhabited Nova Scotia prior to the Revolution were largely New England settlers, who dispossessed the Acadians, and who for the most part sympathized with the revolutionary movement. But for the banishment of the Loyalists, Nova Scotia would have long continued with but a very sparse population, and certainly could never have hoped to obtain so enterprising, active, and energetic a set of inhabitants as those who were supplied to it by the acts of the several states hostile to the Loyalists. The same can also be said of Upper Canada. The hold of the British government upon the British provinces of North America which remained to the crown, would have been slight indeed, but for the active hostility of the Loyalists to their former fellow-countrymen. They created the state of affairs which consolidated British power on this continent, and built it up into the Dominion of Canada, which in another century will probably contain one hundred million inhabitants. The treaty of peace with Great Britain, like other documents of its kind, contained provisions of give and take. After signature by the commissioners in Paris it was ratified with due consideration by the Continental Congress. The advantages which it secured were not merely of a sentimental nature, but material. It was justly regarded by enlightened citizens of the states as a triumph of diplomacy. The credit of Britain in the bargain was more of the heart than of the head. She was willing to concede substantial and important benefits in order to secure the lives and property of the Loyalists who had clung to her and had sustained her arms. Looking at the matter now, in a cool light, she blundered into sacrifices that were altogether needless, even with this aim in view, and knowledge of the knavery that was to follow. The game was played, and she had lost. North America, in the eyes of her statesmen, was a strip of eastern seaboard; the great lakes were but dimly understood; the continent beyond the Mississippi was ignored. She gave much more than she needed to have given both in east and west, to attain her honorable end, and what was more immediately distressing, she received little or no value in return for her liberal concession.