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Indiana University 
1774 the idea was that Canada would become an English 
colony, with certain modifications of government to check 
the tendency towards independent action on the part of the 
colony. Between 1774 and 1791 the policy of the British 
government was, as Sir Guy Carleton’s policy had been for 
some years before that time, to make Quebec British by pre- 
venting it from becoming English. In the meantime, how- 
ever, other important factors had entered into the situation 
as a result of the American Revolution, and the principles of 
the Quebec Act instead of solving the problem greatly aggra- 
vated the situation. 
Because of the migration of Loyalists from the revolting 
British colonies to Canada, the American Revolution had far- 
reaching consequences in Canadian as well as in American 
history. Except for that event coming when it did the 
maritime provinces of Canada would doubtless have developed 
along much the same lines as did the New England colonies. 
New Englanders were already going into Nova Scotia before 
1775, and the natural trade routes were, and are today, be- 
tween these maritime provinces and New England. During the 
American Revolution, the British fleet prevented whatever 
tendency there might otherwise have been for that part of the 
population of Nova Scotia which had migrated from New 
England making common cause with the revolting colonies, 
and there was something of a tendency in that direction. 
During and after the Revolutionary War the migration of 
Loyalists changed the character of the population of Nova 
Scotia and swamped the older New England influence. 
With respect to the Loyalists, as in the case of the Quebec 
Act, there has been a change of interpretation by American 
historians, and here again it is necessary to consider the 
Canadian angle of the problem. Some American historians 
may even have gone too far in their defense of the Loyalists 
to be entirely correct.^® The expulsion from the United States 
of the large number of Loyalists, who were conservative, had 
much to do with the radical tendencies of the period of the 
Confederation and with the ultimate triumph of democracy 
in the United States. Great as were the effects upon the 
United States, however, the effects upon the history of Canada 
‘ Indeed, some of these writers, in their anxiety to stand straight, have leaned 
backwards ; and by no one perhaps will the ultra-Tory view of the Revolution he found 
as clearly expressed as by them.” W. Stewart Wallace, The United Eminre Loyalists 
{Chronicles of Canada Series (Toronto, 1921), II). 
