1	               September 1993
     2	
     3	      The War of 1812 and the Rise of Canadian Nationalism
     4	
     5	                         ....edited by Marijan Salopek
     6	
     7	                 ===============================
     8	
     9	Extract from the work of John Beverley Robinson, former Attorney-
    10	General of Upper Canada.
    11	
    12	     Again, if we admit, as I think we must, that the
    13	circumstance of the older colonies having severed the connexion
    14	at so early a date, has been in fact the means of saving the
    15	present British provinces to the mother-country, it is scarcely
    16	less certain that the war of 1812, which was engaged in by the
    17	United States, mainly for the purpose of subjugating the Canadas,
    18	has had the effect of binding them, as well as Nova Scotia and
    19	New Brunswick, much more strongly to the crown.  Before that war
    20	the United were scarcely looked upon by the subjects of the
    21	British Empire as a foreign country;  the probability of
    22	hostilities was not anticipated, and of course not guarded
    23	against;  the citizens of the republic came in numbers to settle,
    24	especially in Upper Canada, and, but for the war, in a few years
    25	thousands of those fertile acres, which have since afforded a
    26	home to loyal and grateful emigrants from England, Ireland, and
    27	Scotland, would have been occupied in a manner much less
    28	conducive to the maintenance of British connexion.
    29	     The war was happily undertaken at a time when the adjoining
    30	states of America were but thinly inhabited, and when the
    31	invasion of Canada was, in consequence, attended with many
    32	difficulties which time has removed.  It has had the effect of
    33	calling the attention of England to the danger which Lord
    34	Selkirk, in his very able book on emigration, pointed out to the
    35	government so early as the year 1805; it has produced in the
    36	British colonists a national character and feeling, and has
    37	taught both countries to appreciate their position more
    38	correctly.
    39	
    40	Source:  Robinson, J. B. . London:
    41	1840, p. 15.