[CRUIKSHANK] A STUDY OF DISAFFECTION IN UPPER CANADA 19 
A majority of the residents of the Eastern and Johnstown districts 
were loyalists or emigrants from the highlands of Scotland, many of 
them having served in disbanded regiments. Recent settlers from the 
United States were most numerous in all the others except Niagara 
where there were many loyalists. A large number of the inhabitants of 
the Western district were of French descent, most of whom had come in 
from Michigan when the military post at Detroit had been surrendered 
to the Americans. Two-thirds of the members of the Legislative 
Assembly and a third of the magistrates had been born south of the 
boundary; but a good many of these were pronounced loyalists. As the 
juries were selected in rotation from the assessment rolls it frequently 
happened that a majority were recent settlers from the United States. 
Every person born in the former British colonies before the conclusion 
of the treaty of Versailles was indubitably a British subject by birth 
and consequently eligible for election or appointment to office. 
In a letter to Lord Liverpool, dated March 23, 1812, referring to 
the recent session of the Legislature, Brock wrote:— 
“My observations convinced me of the expediency of every militia- 
man taking an oath abjuring every foreign power. The many settlers 
from the United States who openly profess a determination of not 
acting against their countrymen, made some test highly necessary. 
The number of aliens emigrating from the United States, who have 
acquired property and consequently votes for the Assembly, alarmed 
at the novelty of an oath of abjuration, exerted their utmost efforts 
and ultimately succeeded (so extensive is the influence of these people 
that it even masters the Legislature), in preventing by the casting vote 
oi the chairman, the adoption of this. A bill for the suspension of the 
Habeas Corpus was also defeated by their influence. Liable to the 
constant inroads of the most abandoned characters who seek impunity 
in this province from crimes of high enormity committed in the States 
and surrounded by a population, a great part of which.profess strong 
American feelings and attachments, it will not, I hope, be deemed 
unreasonable at a time like the present, if I should be desirous to be 
clothed, in conjunction with His Majesty’s Executive Council, with the 
means so well calculated to maintain public transquility.” 
Smith roundly asserts that had the Habeas Corpus Act been sus- 
pended at that time, an insurrection would have ensued. 
Still a large number of the young men liable for militia service 
readily volunteered for training in the flank companies authorized by 
the recent act in spite of determined efforts on the part of some of their 
disloyal neighbours to dissuade them. There were, however, some 
notable exceptions. Colonel Ralfe Clench, commanding the First 
Lincoln Regiment, when reporting that a large number of his men had 
Sec. II., 1912. 2. 
