British flag. Few men could realize at the moment that out of
these scattered fragments a new nation and a second empire would
arise. Not only were the seceding colonies given a share in the
fishing grounds of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, which was
unfortunately to prove a constant source of friction, but the
boundary line was drawn with no thought of the need of broad and
easy communication between Nova Scotia and Canada, much less
between Canada and the far West. Vague definitions of the
boundaries, naturally incident to the prevailing lack of
geographical knowledge of the vast continent, held further seeds
of trouble. These contentions, however, were far in the future.
At the moment another defect of the treaty proved to be Canada's
gain. The failure of Lord Shelburne's Ministry to insist upon
effective safeguards for the fair treatment of those who had
taken the King's side in the old colonies, condemned as it was
not only by North and the Tories but by Fox and Sheridan and
Burke, led to that Loyalist migration which changed the racial
complexion of Canada.

The Treaty of 1783 provided that Congress would "earnestly
recommend" to the various States that the Loyalists be granted
amnesty and restitution. This pious resolution proved not worth
the paper on which it was written. In State after State the
property of the Loyalists was withheld or confiscated anew. Yet
this ungenerous treatment of the defeated by the victors is not
hard to understand. The struggle had been waged with all the
bitterness of civil war. The smallness of the field of combat had
intensified personal ill-will. Both sides had practiced cruelties
in guerrilla warfare; but the Patriots forgot Marion's raids,
Simsbury mines, and the drumhead hangings, and remembered only