agreed that the privilege should be granted to any person to go into
and remain twelve months in any part of the United States to regain
his property by law. The treaty provided further that Congress would
recommend to the States the restoration of all property to former
owners upon payment of the bona fide price which the present possessors
paid for it after confiscation. The treaty also implicitly promised
that there should be no more confiscations or prosecutions. The several
provisions for the alleviation of these Loyalists indicate slightly
the misfortunes into which their action brought them. Their treatment
both officially and by the mob has been described by some foreign
writers as the darkest page in American history. But they had choice
of sides in the issue. Granted that they supposed they were right in
upholding government against rebellion; yet the law of consequences
accepts no excuse for over-conservatism. He who fails to keep step
with the march of events falls behind and suffers the consequences.
The Loyalists were on the losing side and suffered the common fate of
the conquered.

War is abnormal. It undermines ideas of justice prevalent in time of
peace. Thus it came about that the treatment of the Loyalists reacted
unfortunately on the patriots. They had harried the royal sympathisers
out of the land. They had grown accustomed to using force and could
not readily return to law-abiding methods. They would not obey even
the provisions of a national treaty. The Articles of Confederation,
under which they were attempting to live in concord, kept a State from
laying a duty which would interfere with the proposed treaties with
France and Spain. Otherwise there was no compulsion aside from the
moral obligation attached to a treaty. However, John Jay, Secretary
of Foreign Affairs, acting in the capacity of an Attorney-General,
rendered an opinion that no State according to the Articles could