No one can be more sensible than myself of the imperfect manner in which I have performed my task, which I commenced more than a quarter of a century since, but I have been prevented from completing it sooner by public duties--pursuing, as I have done from the beginning, an untrodden path of historical investigations. From the long delay, many supposed I would never complete the work, or that I had abandoned it. On its completion, therefore, I issued a circular, an extract from which I hereto subjoin, explaining the origin, design, and scope of the work:--
"I have pleasure in stating that I have at length completed the task which the newspaper press and public men of different parties urged upon me from 1855 to 1860. In submission to what seemed to be public opinion, I issued, in 1861, a circular addressed to the United Empire Loyalists and their descendants, of the British Provinces of America, stating the design and scope of my proposed work, and requesting them to transmit to me, at my expense, any letters or papers in their possession which would throw light upon the early history and settlement in these Provinces by our U.E. Loyalist forefathers. From all the British Provinces I received answers to my circular; and I have given, with little abridgment, in one chapter of my history, these intensely interesting letters and papers--to which I have been enabled to add considerably from two large quarto manuscript volumes of papers relating to the U.E. Loyalists in the Dominion Parliamentary Library at Ottawa, with the use of which I have been favoured by the learned and obliging librarian, Mr. Todd.
"In addition to all the works relating to the subject which I could collect in Europe and America, I spent, two years since, several months in the Library of the British Museum, employing the assistance of an amanuensis, in verifying quotations and making extracts from works not to be found elsewhere, in relation especially to unsettled questions involved in the earlier part of my history.
"I have entirely sympathized with the Colonists in their remonstrances, and even use of arms, in defence of British constitutional rights, from 1763 to 1776; but I have been compelled to view the proceedings of the Revolutionists and their treatment of the Loyalists in a very different light.