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WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY of a venerable appraisal, generally attributed to John Adams, that approximately one-third of the American population was loyal, one-third supported the Revolution, and one-third remained uncommitted or indifferent.2 Conditioned to such generalities, one is not surprised that even a comparatively recent loyalist estimate by an acknowledged authority should find refuge in a plausible generalization: among the "politically active population" the loyalists constituted "a third" and the revolutionists "two-thirds."3 In a similar manner, the same author's assessment of the distribution of the loyalists, which aspires to greater precision, necessarily remains comfortably vague: in New York the loyalists numbered "half the population," in the South "hardly... more than a fourth or a third," and in New England "scarcely a tenth."4 In short, one can yet only rarely find reliable statistics on the loyalists' strength in either individual states or the entire thirteen.5 And despite a comparative outburst of literature on the loyalists in recent years, we remain today nearly as far from the truth about the strength of the loyalists as we were a half-century ago. The obstacles to calculating the exact strength of the loyalists are formidable, indeed even insurmountable. Furthermore, no workable definition, applicable equally to persons from all colonies and to both the earlier and later years of the War for Independence, can be formulated to help reduce the task to manageable proportions. Too little attention, 2 The origin and spread of this estimate is a curious historical anomaly that reveals more about the readiness of historians to accept plausible information than about the strength of the loyalists. Adams did indeed once write that "nearly one third of the people of the colonies" were loyal in the sense that before I775 that many Americans were "seduced and deluded" by the British, a definition which would satisfy most Americans. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, X (Boston, i856), I93. But the more widely publicized statement that "full one third were averse to the Revolution.... An opposite third conceived a hatred of the English.. .. The middle third ... were rather lukewarm," probably owes its popularity to Sydney George Fisher's reproduction of an i8I5 Adams letter to James Lloyd that analyzed the division of opinion in the United States over the issue of the French rather than the American Revolution. Ibid., ii0; and Sydney George Fisher, The True History of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, I902), 233. 3 William H. Nelson, The American Tory (New York, i96i), 92. Actually Nelson's estimates and assessments are among the most usable and meaningful that I have seen. 4Ibid. 5 Undoubtedly the best available are those for Connecticut, which are based upon the returns of the I774 provincial elections. Oscar Zeichner, Connecticut's Years of Controversy, 1750-1776 (Chapel Hill, I949), 233-234. Zeichner concludes that Connecticut had about 2,500 loyalists who comprised abou...
Extreme rainfall variability, record droughts, floods and high temperatures have had a major impact on social wellbeing, economic productivity and environmental functionality of urban settings in Australia. Compounded by urban growth and ageing water and wastewater infrastructure, Australia's urban water arrangements have undergone major reforms to effectively manage the challenges of recent years. This paper is a synthesis of urban water reform in Australia during a decade of unforeseen natural extremes. It summarises the evolution of urban water policy, outcomes from recent government reforms and investment, and presents future challenges facing the sector. As governments at state and federal levels in Australia have moved to diversify supply options away from the traditional reliance on rainfall-dependent catchment storages, they have been confronted by issues relating to climate uncertainty, planning, regulation, pricing, institutional reforms, and community demands for sustainable supply solutions. Increases in water prices to pay for new water infrastructure are illustrative of further reform pressures in the urban water sector. In the past 10 years the Australian urban water sector has weathered new extremes in drought and flood and emerged far different to its predecessor. The provision of safe, secure, efficient and sustainable water and wastewater services remains the primary driver for urban water reform. However the challenges and opportunities to improve nationally significant social, economic and environmental outcomes from urban water have evolved considerably. The focus now is on creating the institutional, regulatory and market conditions favourable for the integration of urban water services with the objectives for productive and liveable cities. P. Smith (corresponding author) Water Industry and Sustainability,
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