These Loyalists Were
Generally Known By The Name Of "Tories," To Distinguish Them From
The Republicans, And Forming The Great Mass Of The Population.
Any
one who called himself a reformer was regarded with distrust and
suspicion, as a concealed republican or rebel.
It must not, however,
be supposed that these loyalists were really tories in their
political principles. Their notions on such subjects were generally
crude and undefined, and living in a country where the whole
construction of society and habits of feeling were decidedly
republican, the term tory, when adopted by them, was certainly a
misnomer. However, hated by, and hating as cordially, the republican
party in the United States, they by no means unreasonably considered
that their losses and their attachment to British institutions, gave
them an almost exclusive claim to the favour of the local government
in Canada. Thus the name of U.E. (United Empire) Loyalist or Tory
came to be considered an indispensable qualification for every
office in the colony.
This was all well enough so long as there was no other party in the
country. But gradually a number of other American settlers flowed
into Canada from the United States, who had no claim to the title
of tories or loyalists, but who in their feelings and habits were
probably not much more republican than their predecessors. These
were of course regarded with peculiar jealousy by the older or
loyalist settlers from the same country. It seemed to them as if
a swarm of locusts had come to devour their patrimony.
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