4IO Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [Vol. VII. 



institutions. Only the English criminal law was retained, since it would 

 afford, it was thought, a better hold upon the people, it being much 

 more severe than the French criminal law.^ 



This reactionary attitude on the part of the British Government, 

 which was responsible for the loss of the American colonies, requires 

 special attention in connection with the subject before us, since it serves 

 to account for the peculiar attitude of the colonial governors towards the 

 self-governing aspirations of the loyalists and others who afterwards 

 settled in the western districts. 



The more intelligent loyalists and early settlers, while refusing, from 

 circumstances or conviction, to break with the Home Government, were 

 not by any means prepared to endorse its views with reference to the 

 entire subordination of the colonies to the wishes of the mother country. 

 No sooner, therefore, were the loyalists settled in the newer districts of 

 Canada, than the Government began to be bombarded with their claims 

 for British rights and British institutions.- 



Haldimand, Dorchester and Simcoe, the governors who first had to 

 deal with them, all complain of the independent spirit which they 

 manifested. While it cannot be denied that the governors had much 

 cause for resentment at the turbulent arrogance of many of the loyalist 

 troops and some of their officers, when disbanded, yet they showed no 

 little suspicion as to the real loyalty of the best of them.^ Both Haldi- 

 mand and Dorchester strongly favoured the retention of the whole col- 

 ony, including the loyalist settlements, under the French-Canadian laws 

 and institutions established by the Quebec Act. They professed to fear 

 another revolution as the natural and inevitable consequence of granting 

 them British freedom ; and in this they were probably not far astray, 

 assuming that their views of what a colony should be were correct. 

 Dorchester's experience, however, at length compelled the reluctant 

 admission that, owing to the temper of the people, together with the 

 example before them of the late colonies now enjoying their British 

 institutions in independence, it would be impossible to retain the 

 loyalists and others under the French-Canadian system.^ 



1 See the correspondence of Governors Carleton and Cramahe with the Home Government. Canadian 

 Archives, Vols. Q. 5 to Q. 11. Also the Debates on the Quebec Act, from the notes of Sir Henry Caven- 

 dish, London, 1839. 



2 Numerous references to this subject are scattered throughout the state papers of the period. See 

 more particularly, Canadian Archives, Vols. Q. 24, 25, 27. 



3 Among many official papers in the Canadian Archives bearing- on this subject, see the collections of 

 despatches relating to the settling of the loyalists, in the Haldimand papers. Vols. B. 63 and 64. 



4 See various despatches in Canadian Archives, as in Vols. Q. 39 and 42. 



