In the history of the United States the exodus of the Loyalists is an event comparable only to the expulsion of the Huguenots from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.  The Loyalists, whatever their social status (and they were not all aristocrats), represented the conservative and moderate element in the revolting states; and their removal, whether by banishment or disfranchisement, meant the elimination of a very wholesome element in the body politic.  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.  What rendered it void was the unexpected influx of the refugees of the Revolution.  The effect of this immigration was to create two new English-speaking provinces, New Brunswick and Upper Canada, and to strengthen the English element in two other provinces, Lower Canada and Nova Scotia, so that ultimately the French population in Canada was outnumbered by the English population surrounding it.  Nor should the character of this English immigration escape notice.  It was not only English; but it was also filled with a passionate loyalty to the British crown.  This fact serves to explain a great deal in later Canadian history.  Before 1783 the continuance of Canada in the British Empire was by no means assured:  after 1783 the Imperial tie was well-knit.