CANADIAN METHODISM

the blinding influence of religious antipathy. Even to-day the caricatures and slanders of the early part of the last century are repeated, and if Dr. Ryerson were living still, he might find a respectable authority amongst his old antagonists, gravely charging him with the absurd doctrine that genuine conversions and convulsions go regularly and properly together. Such being the case, some men might say that it is vain to contend against religious prejudice for it can not be eradicated, but others would reply as would Dr. Ryerson, that we must not cease to contend against noxious weeds and venomous creatures, though we may scarcely hope to see them utterly eradicated and destroyed.

In the same volume of essays the whole story of the clergy reserves controversy is told from Dr. Ryerson's point of view. There are also five essays on the divisions amongst the Methodists in Canada. These essays are written by the Rev. John Ryerson, a brother of Dr. Ryerson and a highly respected authority on the history and usages of Canadian Methodists. There are also several essays on the relations of the Canadian Methodists to the British conference. Happily all the misunderstandings and divisions recorded in these essays have given way to union at home and the most cordial relations with the mother churches in England and the United States, and the essays may ere long be of interest to none but historians and antiquarians and book collectors,

The most considerable of Dr. Ryerson's literary works and the only one remaining for consideration in this volume is his "Loyalists of America and their Times." It is in two octavo volumes and contains over a thousand pages. For some twenty years the author had this work in mind, and as he could find time from his official duties he prepared for its publication. But long before he had any thought of authorship, and indeed from his earliest youth, he was himself in course of preparation for the task. Remote as the subject may seem to this generation, it was the great subject of family history and table talk in the home of young Egerton Ryerson. His father, Col. Joseph Ryerson, when only fifteen years of age, joined the royal army on the breaking out of the American Revolution in 1775. About eighteen months later he received an ensign's commission as a reward for distinguished service. And soon after that his skill and energy and daring secured the further promotion to a lieutenancy in the Prince of Wales Regiment. Throughout the war he fought under the royal standard and at the close of the war in 1783, when Great Britain acknowledged the independence of the United States, Joseph Ryerson and his brother Samuel left the young republic to seek new homes under the old flag in that true North that had remained loyal to the empire. The brothers went first to New Brunswick, and afterwards removed to Ontario, or Upper Canada,

LOYALISTS OF AMERICA

as it was then called, where they settled on lands awarded to them by the government in consideration of their services and sacrifices in the cause of a united empire. Then came the experiences of pioneer settlers in the Canadian wilderness, the journeyings and toils and privations, the enterprise and success, the simple life, the neighbourly helpfulness and generous hospitality of the good old times. These all were familiar to Egerton Ryerson, as they came to him fresh from the fountains of household talk, or as they were matters of personal experience.

The manner in which Dr. Ryerson tells the story of the United Empire Loyalists and their times, is strongly suggestive of the manner in which he became familiar with the facts. His work is not history, such as we think of it from the examples of our great historians. The scenes and events are seen at short distance, and the reader is left to supply proportion and perspective to the narrative. But if the enchantment that distance lends is wanting, we find ourselves carried away by a new enchantment back into the closest contact with the persons and events described. We seem to listen to the story as it falls in the twilight from the lips of the sturdy old United Empire Loyalists and their brave wives and children. We catch the tones of strife, and pain, and pathos, and humour, and we lend ourselves to this new enchantment with no less pleasure than we do to that of the grand

panorama of Gibbon and the brilliant pictures of Macaulay.

There is, however, a distinct historic value in this work of Dr. Ryerson's in that it has helped to qualify and correct an opinion that has obtained too widely even amongst Canadians and Englishmen-the opinion that the English people were all wrong in the unhappy struggle of the American revolution, and the colonists all right. In his attempt to change what was to many of his readers a fixed opinion, Dr. Ryerson thought it necessary to produce copious documentary evidence to prove that the prevailing impressions were seriously at fault. The following is his apology for this method a method that is to some readers tedious enough:"The United Empire Loyalists were the losing party; their history has been written by their adversaries and strangely misrepresented. In the vindication of their character I have not offered assertion against assertion; but in correction of unjust and untrue assertions I have offered the records and documents of the actors themselves, and in their own words. To do this has rendered my history to a large extent documentary, instead of being a mere popular narrative. The many fictions of American writers will be found corrected and exposed in the following volumes, by authorities and facts which cannot be successfully denied. In thus availing myself so largely of the proclamations, messages, addresses, letters and records of

THE LOYALISTS VINDICATED

the times when they occurred, I have only followed the example of some of the best historians and biographers."

It is pleasing to note that the latest and best of the American historians themselves have come round to views substantially the same as those of Dr. Ryerson on some of the important issues in the history of the American revolution. And especially do they, in just and generous spirit, maintain that the men who staked all and lost all for the integrity of the empire were in numbers far more considerable than had long been supposed, and that they were in standing and character of the very best in the colonies. Dr. Ryerson does not undertake any defence of the conduct of the English government. On the contrary he condemns it in strong terms. He maintains, however, that the bad policy of compulsion was not that of the English people but of the king and of a court party whose overthrow was desired by the mass of the English people and whose success would have been as great a disaster to England as it would have been to the colonies. The true thought of England found expression in the words of Chatham and Burke and not in the message of the king and his ministers. Neither does Dr. Ryerson blame the colonists for resisting the attempt to subvert their liberties. He rather commends them for it, even to the length of taking up arms as a last resort. But he does blame them for their secession from the empire when further patience