To this were due in part no
doubt many of the early errors of the republic in finance,
diplomacy, and politics. At the same time it was a
circumstance which must have hastened by many years the
triumph of democracy. In the tenure of land, for example,
the emigration produced a revolution. The confiscated
estates of the great Tory landowners were in most cases
cut up into small lots and sold to the common people;
and thus the process of levelling and making more democratic
the whole social structure was accelerated.
On the Canadian body politic the impress of the Loyalist
migration is so deep that it would be difficult to
overestimate it. It is no exaggeration to say that the
United Empire Loyalists changed the course of the current
of Canadian history. Before 1783 the clearest observers
saw no future before Canada but that of a French colony
under the British crown. 'Barring a catastrophe shocking
to think of,' wrote Sir Guy Carleton in 1767, 'this
country must, to the end of time, be peopled by the
Canadian race, who have already taken such firm root,
and got to so great a height, that any new stock
transplanted will be totally hid, except in the towns of
Quebec and Montreal.' Just how discerning this prophecy
was may be judged from the fact that even to-day it holds
true with regard to the districts that were settled at
the time it was written.
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