COMPENSATION AND HONOUR
Throughout the war the British government had constantly granted relief
and compensation to Loyalists who had fled to England. In the autumn
of 1782 the treasury was paying out to them, on account of losses or
services, an annual amount of £40,280 over and above occasional payments
of a particular or extraordinary nature amounting to £17,000 or £18,000
annually. When peace had been concluded, and it became clear that the
Americans had no intention of making restitution to the Loyalists, the
British government determined to put the payments for their compensation
on a more satisfactory basis.
For this purpose the Coalition Government of Fox and North appointed in
July 1783 a royal commission ‘to inquire into the losses and services
of all such persons who have suffered in their rights, properties,
and professions during the late unhappy dissensions in America, in
consequence of their loyalty to His Majesty and attachment to the British
Government.’ A full account of the proceedings of the commission is to
be found in the _Historical View of the Commission for Inquiry into the
Losses, Services, and Claims of the American Loyalists_, published in
London in 1815 by one of the commissioners, John Eardley Wilmot. The
commission was originally appointed to sit for only two years; but the
task which confronted it was so great that it was found necessary several
times to renew the act under which it was appointed; and not until
1790 was the long inquiry brought to an end. It was intended at first
that the claims of the men in the Loyalist regiments should be sent in
through their officers; and Sir John Johnson, for instance, was asked to
transmit the claims of the Loyalists settled in Canada. But it was found
that this method did not provide sufficient guarantee against fraudulent
and exorbitant claims; and eventually members of the commission were
compelled to go in person to New York, Nova Scotia, and Canada.
The delay in concluding the work of the commission caused great
indignation. A tract which appeared in London in 1788 entitled
_The Claim of, the American Loyalists Reviewed and Maintained upon
Incontrovertible Principles of Law and Justice_ drew a black picture of
the results of the delay:
It is well known that this delay of justice has produced the
most melancholy and shocking events. A number of sufferers have
been driven into insanity and become their own destroyers,
leaving behind them their helpless widows and orphans to
subsist upon the cold charity of strangers. Others have been
sent to cultivate the wilderness for their subsistence,
without having the means, and compelled through want to throw
themselves on the mercy of the American States, and the charity
of former friends, to support the life which might have been
made comfortable by the money long since due by the British
Government; and many others with their families are barely
subsisting upon a temporary allowance from Government, a mere
pittance when compared with the sum due them.
Complaints were also made about the methods of the inquiry. The claimant
was taken into a room alone with the commissioners, was asked to submit
a written and sworn statement as to his losses and services, and was
then cross-examined both with regard to his own losses and those of his
fellow claimants. This cross-questioning was freely denounced as an
‘inquisition.’
Grave inconvenience was doubtless caused in many cases by the delay of
the commissioners in making their awards. But on the other hand it should
be remembered that the commissioners had before them a portentous task.
They had to examine between four thousand and five thousand claims. In
most of these the amount of detail to be gone through was considerable,
and the danger of fraud was great. There was the difficulty also of
determining just what losses should be compensated. The rule which was
followed was that claims should be allowed only for losses of property
through loyalty, for loss of offices held before the war, and for loss
of actual professional income. No account was taken of lands bought or
improved during the war, of uncultivated lands, of property mortgaged
to its full value or with defective titles, of damage done by British
troops, or of forage taken by them. Losses due to the fall in the value
of the provincial paper money were thrown out, as were also expenses
incurred while in prison or while living in New York city. Even losses
in trade and labour were discarded. It will be seen that to apply these
rules to thousands of detailed claims, all of which had to be verified,
was not the work of a few days, or even months.
It must be remembered, too, that during the years from 1783 to 1790 the
British government was doing a great deal for the Loyalists in other
ways. Many of the better class received offices under the crown. Sir John
Johnson was appointed superintendent of the Loyalists in Canada, and
then superintendent of Indian Affairs; Colonel Edmund Fanning was made
lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia; Ward Chipman became solicitor-general
of New Brunswick. The officers of the Loyalist regiments were put on
half-pay; and there is evidence that many were allowed thus to rank as
half-pay officers who had no real claim to the title. ‘Many,’ said the
Rev. William Smart of Brockville, ‘were placed on the list of officers,
not because they had seen service, but as the most certain way of
compensating them for losses sustained in the Rebellion’; and Haldimand
himself complained that ‘there is no end to it if every man that comes
in is to be considered and paid as an officer.’ Then every Loyalist who
wished to do so received a grant of land. The rule was that each field
officer should receive 5000 acres, each captain 3000, each subaltern
2000, and each non-commissioned officer and private 200 acres. This rule
was not uniformly observed, and there was great irregularity in the
size of the grants. Major Van Alstine, for instance, received only 1200
acres. But in what was afterwards Upper Canada, 3,200,000 acres were
granted out to Loyalists before 1787. And in addition to all this, the
British government clothed and fed and housed the Loyalists until they
were able to provide for themselves. There were those in Nova Scotia
who were receiving rations as late as 1792. What all this must have
cost the government during the years following 1783 it is difficult to
compute. Including the cost of surveys, official salaries, the building
of saw-mills and grist-mills, and such things, the figures must have run
up to several millions of pounds.
When it is remembered that all this had been already done, it will be
admitted to be a proof of the generosity of the British government that
the total of the claims allowed by the royal commission amounted to
£3,112,455. The grants varied in size from £10, the compensation paid
to a common soldier, to £44,500, the amount paid to Sir John Johnson.
The total outlay on the part of Great Britain, both during and after the
war, on account of the Loyalists, must have amounted to not less than
£6,000,000, exclusive of the value of the lands assigned.
With the object possibly of assuaging the grievances of which the
Loyalists complained in connection with the proceedings of the royal
commission, Lord Dorchester (as Sir Guy Carleton was by that time
styled) proposed in 1789 ‘to put a Marke of Honor upon the families who
had adhered to the unity of the empire, and joined the Royal Standard
in America before the Treaty of Separation in the year 1783.’ It was
therefore resolved that all Loyalists of that description were ‘to be
distinguished by the letters U.E. affixed to their names, alluding to
their great principle, the unity of the empire.’ The land boards were
ordered to preserve a registry of all such persons, ‘to the end that
their posterity may be discriminated from future settlers,’ and that
their sons and daughters, on coming of age, might receive grants of
two hundred acre lots. Unfortunately, the land boards carried out
these instructions in a very half-hearted manner, and when Colonel John
Graves Simcoe became lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, he found the
regulation a dead letter. He therefore revived it in a proclamation
issued at York (now Toronto), on April 6, 1796, which directed the
magistrates to ascertain under oath and to register the names of all
those who by reason of their loyalty to the Empire were entitled to
special distinction and grants of land. A list was compiled from the land
board registers, from the provision lists and muster lists, and from the
registrations made upon oath, which was known as the ‘Old U. E. List’;
and it is a fact often forgotten that no one, the names of some of whose
ancestors are not inscribed in that list, has the right to describe
himself as a United Empire Loyalist.