SECTION II., 1900. [ 49 ] Trans. R. S. C. 
TIL.—Rogers, Ranger and Loyalist. 
By WALTER ROGERS, Esquire, Barrister of the Inner Temple, 
London, England. 
(Read May 29th, 1900.) 
The somewhat tardy justice which has been done to the memory 
of the Loyalists of the American Revolution, although not perhaps 
directly attributable to the spirit of imperialism now afoot, has, in point 
of time, coincided not inappropriately with that movement. 
In his monumental work on the history of England in the eigh- 
teenth century, Mr. Lecky’s estimate of the character and position of the 
so-called Tories in the revolted colonies, has found a sufficiently un- 
grudging echo in the pages of not a few recent historical writers on this 
continent. 
In truth, Mr. Lecky’s contention, that “the Loyalists to a great ex- 
tent sprang from and represented the old gentry of the country,” could, 
in the light of modern research, hardly be denied. 
American scholars of the type of Professor Hosmer of Washington, 
and Professor Tyler of Cornell, have amply, indeed generously, recog- 
nised this fact. It is to be regretted that the results of a century of 
* misrepresentation concerning the Loyalists are still reflected in the tone 
of the more popular works on history disseminated in the United States. 
It was perhaps to be expected that the representatives of a beaten 
cause could hardly look for panegyric at the hands of the owners of the 
confiscated property and their immediate descendants. 
The great migration which ensued upon the rebellion, has been 
more than once compared, both in the magnitude of its scale and the 
pathos of its circumstances, with the Huguenot exodus from France a 
century earlier. 
The efforts of this and of other kindred societies in the Dominion, 
should do much towards supplying material for future students of the 
inner history of the Loyalist migration. 
A few facts, drawn, in so far as they are new, from documentary 
sources in the British Museum,’ and from the War Office correspondence* 
now preserved at the Record Office in London, may possibly prove not 
1 Brit. Mus. : Add. Mss.—21,820. Haldimand Papers, Correspondence with Col. 
Rogers and Major Rogers. 
2 War Office: Original Correspondence. No. 5. Rogers’s King’s Rangers— 
Field Officers Papers—1779-1784. 
R Sec. IL., 1900. 4. 
