them, and openly professed, all the partialities of
American citizens. By the Canadians and their descendants,
French and English, they were evidently looked upon with
an eye of distrust, for, independently of the fact of
their having been suffered to appropriate, during pleasure,
many valuable tracts of land, they had experienced no
inconsiderable partiality on the part of the Government.
Those who believe in the possibility of attaching a
renegade to the soil of his adoption and converting him
into a serviceable defender of that soil in a moment of
need, commit a great error in politics. The shrewd
Canadians knew them better. They complained with bitterness,
that at the first appearance of a war, they would hold
their oaths of fealty as naught, or that if they did
remain, it would only be with a view to embarrass the
province with their presence, and secretly to serve the
cause of their native country. The event proved that they
knew their men. Scarcely had the American declaration
of war gone forth, when numbers of these people, availing
themselves of their near contiguity, abandoned their
homes, and embarking in boats all their disposable
property, easily succeeded, under cover of the night, in
gaining the opposite coast. Not satisfied however with
their double treason, they, in the true spirit of the
dog in the manger, seemed resolved others should not
enjoy that which was no longer available to themselves,
and the dawn that succeeded the night of their departure,
more than once broke on scenes of spoliation of their
several possessions, which it required one to know these
desperate people well, to credit as being the work of