So the first period of Canadian history went down amid the deepest
gloom, and many years passed away before the country saw the gleam of a
brighter day. On one side of the English Channel, the King of France
soon forgot his mortification at the loss of an unprofitable 'region of
frost and snow;' on the other side, the English Government looked with
indifference, now that the victory was won, on the acquisition of an
alien people who were likely to be a source of trouble and expense. Then
occurred the War of American Independence, which aroused the English
Ministry from their indifference and forced into the country many
thousands of resolute, intelligent men, who gave up everything in their
devotion to one absorbing principle of loyalty. The history of these men
is still to be written as respects their real influence on the political
and social life of the Canadian Provinces. A very superficial review,
however, of the characteristics of these pioneers will show that they
were men of strong opinions and great force of character--valuable
qualities in the formation of a new community. If, in their Toryism,
they and their descendants were slow to change their opinions and to
yield to the force of those progressive ideas necessary to the political
and mental development of a new country, yet, perhaps, these were not
dangerous characteristics at a time when republicanism had not a few
adherents among those who saw the greater progress and prosperity of the
people to the south of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. These men
were not ordinary immigrants, drawn from the ignorant, poverty-stricken
classes of an Old World; they were men of a time which had produced
Otis, Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Washington--men of remarkable energy
and intellectual power. Not a few of these men formed in the Canadian
colony little centres from which radiated more or less of intellectual
light to brighten the prevailing darkness of those rough times of
Canadian settlement. The exertions of these men, combined with the