way the wind was blowing.

In the negotiations leading up to the Peace of Versailles
there were no clauses so long and bitterly discussed as
those relating to the Loyalists. The British commissioners
stood out at first for the principle of complete amnesty
to them and restitution of all they had lost; and it is
noteworthy that the French minister added his plea to
theirs. But Benjamin Franklin and his colleagues refused
to agree to this formula. They took the ground that they,
as the representatives merely of the Continental Congress,
had not the right to bind the individual states in such
a matter. The argument was a quibble. Their real reason
was that they were well aware that public opinion in
America would not support them in such a concession. A
few enlightened men in America, such as John Adams,
favoured a policy of compensation to the Loyalists, 'how
little soever they deserve it, nay, how much soever they
deserve the contrary'; but the attitude of the great
majority of the Americans had been clearly demonstrated
by a resolution passed in the legislature of Virginia on
December 17, 1782, to the effect that all demands for
the restitution of confiscated property were wholly
inadmissible. Even some of the Loyalists had begun to
realize that a revolution which had touched property was
bound to be permanent, and that the American commissioners
could no more give back to them their confiscated lands
than Charles II was able to give back to his father's
cavaliers the estates they had lost in the Civil War.