The Americans Should Always Be Considered Aliens

There had been considerable concern about the loyalty of the American settlers in the colony from the very beginning; and after the war it was frequently wondered if any American could be trusted. Surely "the Americans should always be considered Aliens," Rev. John Strachan stated. They "should be declared incapable of holding landed property or of having any share in government." The security and well-being of the colony demanded, as far as men like John Strachan were concerned, that it be freed "of the depravity of the American character" and from "the contamination of the United States."

--Jane Errington, The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994), 166.