Doings of the French—The Abbe Le Loutre—His character-Parkrnan's opinion.

The entire summer of 1750 was devoted by the French to fortifying Fort Beausjour, which they had begun the previous autumn. It was in the most landward part of the Bay of Fundy, on a high hill north of the village of Beaubassin and of the little river Messa-gouetche, which tlie French considered as the frontier of Acadia, until the decision of the commission then sitting. This district of Beaubassin, or Chignecto, as it was sometimes called, had become very populous, and contained a vast extent of very fertile meadow land, of which a large portion was enclosed by strong dikes. Northward of this frontier were the settlements of Chipody, Petitcodiac, Memramcook, Jolicoeur, Aulac, la pree des Bourgs, la pree des Richards, Cocagne, etc. Southward were the village of Beaubassin, the Riviere des Heberts, Menoudy, etc. Thus half, or nearly half, of this district was on English territory, and the French naturally expected that the English would lose no time in occupying it, were it only to prevent the emigration of the Acadians.

In the mean time, the Abbe Le Loutre, who was a self-constituted agent of the French, made great but vain efforts to determine the Acadians that lived near this frontier to go over to the French side. Here it will be well to pause and consider this Abbe Le Loutre, who played so considerable a part in the events of this epoch. He. has brought upon himself much hatred, not less from the French officers and even from the Acadians than from the English.

For about ten years he was a missionary among the Micmac Indians of the river Shubenecadie, between Cobequid and Chibouctou (Truro and Halifax). We hardly ever hear of him till the war of 1744. In 1745 he accompanied the Indians of his mission and others in an expedition against Annapolis, after which he withdrew to Bay Verte (on French territory or claimed as such by France) with his Indians. Shortly after, he went to France, whence he returned in 1747, when the war was drawing to a close. Thenceforward, until 1755 he resided at Beausjour.

The foundation of Halifax alarmed the French; they had always hoped that some day or other a treaty or the chances of war would restore to them Acadia, which the English did not seem to value very highly, as they had done nothing to consolidate their conquest. The foundation of Halifax dashed these hopes; it foreshadowed a colonizing policy, which, in a few years, was to endear this province to England by its sacrifices and its population. Honor showed France what her duty was; but honor in America was, between the two historic rivals, an evanescent quantity which frequently went no deeper than the surface of things. To save appearances was the main point, and these appearances were screened by the Indian allies of either nation. In the west, England had her savage allies, whom she occasionally used to defeat French plans; there France also had hers, so that neither the one nor the other could move without difficulty. But in the east all the Indians were friendly to France and sworn enemies of England, which, exasperated by their continued attacks, had fought them with a barbarity that frequently surpassed that of the savages themselves. These Indians had many wrongs to avenge, and so intense was their hatred of the English that it was always easy to urge them to hostile acts.

It was dread of these Indians that, for half a century, prevented England from colonizing Nova Scotia. The French imagined that, by harassing the new colonists and spreading terror through skilfully managed hostilities, they would disgust them with the country and frustrate England’s projects. It was an inhuman and insane policy, which could only end in embittering England and in increasing her efforts to dislodge a rival whose presence would ever be an obstacle to her commerce and to her expansion.

The influence of the French on the Indians of these regions was artfully disguised; but we know enough about it to visit it with unqualified reprobation. The instrument employed by the governors of Canada to-carry out this wicked and fatal policy was that Abbe Le Loutre whom I have just mentioned. His blind zeal, his efforts urging the Indians to worry the colonists introduced by Cornwallis, his unjustifiable methods for forcing the Acadians against their will to cross the frontier, deserve to be condemned by every one and especially by the Acadians.

Before proceeding, it is well to explain an important point which has never yet been cleared up. All historians speak of the Abbes Le Loutre, Germain, Maillard, Le Guerne, as if they had been missionaries to the Acadians on English territory. On this supposition, their efforts to subserve the interests of France are interpreted as shameful. Now to obviate the confusion introduced by these writers, let it be well understood, once for all, that not one of these priests ever was, as far as I know, a missionary to the Acadians in the peninsula. Mail-lard, until the dispersion, was never employed as a missionary elsewhere than in the island of Cape Breton, which belonged to France; Germain ministered to the Male cite Indians in the upper waters of the St. John River; Le Guerne was missionary among the Indians of the north shore of the Bay of Fundy, and also attended to the few Acadians living on these coasts. Le Loutre was long a missionary to the Micmacs of the Shubenecadie River; but during all that time he never caused any trouble; when he decided upon another line of conduct, he withdrew with his Indians to Bay Verte on the French territory. Consequently, all of these priests were on the territory claimed and occupied by France; hence their patriotism, ardent though it was, was justifiable, if not deserving of credit. If their actions were not honorable, let them be condemned. Because Le Loutre’s conduct is condemnable, I stigmatize it as it deserves. But it is a sovereign injustice toward these men to leave the public under an impression that blames what is honorable, and brands with infamy what is merely blamable.

This important distinction ought not, in fairness, to have escaped the attention of these writers, still less that of Parkman, who lays especial stress on the doings of this Abbe Le Loutre. Yet he seems to have done his best to increase the confusion. Thus, when he tells us that Le Loutre was Vicar-General of Acadia; that the Indians to whom he ministered lived a day’s march from Halifax on the banks of the Shubenecadie River, which implies that that was his residence, he is knowingly guilty of a twofold deception, because Le Loutre was not then Vicar-General, and because both he and his Indians had long since left the Shubenecadie River, and then lived at Bay Verte on the territory claimed and occupied by France. I might add that the deception is threefold, because Le Loutre was named, four years later, Vicar-General, not for Acadia or the peninsula, but for the northern part of the Bay of Fundy, then called French Acadia to distinguish it from Canada and from the peninsula which the French called English Acadia.

I should be glad to be able to say that Paikman merely blundered; but I cannot: I have studied too closely his methods, I am too fully aware of his constant efforts at disguising the truth, not to recognize, here as elsewhere, the elaborate system of deceit that underlies every page he has written on Acadia.

I have sought to penetrate the character of this Abbe Le Loutre who has heaped well-deserved hatred on his own devoted head. The undertaking was far from easy; however, I think I have had a large measure of success. Parkman, who “rushes in where angels fear to tread.” soon measures and weighs him. In a few words, with the laconism of Caesar describing his conquest in Gaul—“veni, vidi, vici,” he says oracularly: “Le Loutre was a man of boundless egotism, a violent spirit of domination, an intense hatred of the English, and a fanaticism that stopped at nothing.” Sir Oracle “ opes his mouth; let no dog l>ark.” As a literary effect it is startling; the common herd likes to be thus whirled at a gallop through the obscurities of history; nothing is so popular and catchy as this semblance of devouring activity which pierces to the quick, cuts out and fashions, as by magic, a something that looks surprisingly like a brand-new bright and polished gem. Serious writers, however, disdain this claptrap. Seldom, if ever, can a striking portrait of the inner depths of a man’s character be drawn by a few strokes of the pen. Caricatures can; and, as a caricature, Parkman's portrait of Le Loutre may bear a distant resemblance to the original. Macaulay also seeks conciseness and rapid movement; but he does not seem to have discovered Parkman's secret; on the contrary, like the great masters, he limns his portraits with the greatest care, the result being that they are generally good likenesses, thanks to the after-touches of pen and brush, to the delicacy of shades and tints, to the painstaking patience of the artist.

With some corrections I might admit, as a background, one or two of the four pen-strokes of Parkman; but I refuse to subscribe to the “boundless egotism” of Le Loutre. I see no proof of this assertion and much proof of the exact opposite. To arrive at a fair estimate of Le Loutre, one must enter into the feelings and thoughts that generally actuate a Catholic missionary. Clearly, this was difficult, not to say impossible for Parkman, even if he had been gifted with that rectitude which, to my mind, he lacks, and with that penetration iu which, though to a less degree, he is deficient.

Moreover, this character must be viewed in the light of the ideas of the time and of the special circumstances of the place. Great was national fanaticism, but greater still was religious fanaticism. Prejudices had struck deep roots. Persecution was only beginning to relax its revolting rigor; but intolerance still subsisted in all its strength. Not long before, France had expelled the Huguenots; Ireland was gasping under England’s lieel; everywhere minorities were oppressed. What crimes were committed in the name of religion ! What acts of cruelty done in the name of a good and merciful God! Was this a fruit of Christianity or of human interests and passions? Was this a permanent result, or merely a transient phase, a bad dream that would wear itself out and indirectly serve the cause of Christianity and civilization? This last question must have been in many people’s minds; two answers were to be given to it: unbelief, fruit of a spurious and merciless Christianity; and a return movement to the pure Christian spirit, all impregnated with charity, love, and mercy. Man moves and God directs. In the life of religions as in that of commonwealths nothing happens without an aftermath which no one had suspected. Small events added together produce great events; fact is linked to fact by invisible bonds, as thread to thread in the weaver’s loom.

Though the true fibre of Christianity was warped, faith was strong ; in other words, motives were excellent, methods often deplorable ; this double aspect of things should be borne in mind when judging Abbe Le Loutre. It is no easy matter for us, men living in the world, to realize the faith that animates those who consecrate their lives to Christian education, especially to the irksome catechetical labors of a Catholic missionary Struggling as we are with one another for the necessaries or the comforts of existence, absorbed and, as it were, overwhelmed by the thousand and one details of ways and means for needs and pleasures, we easily lose sight of the motives that actuate and the spirit that animates the missionary. That ‘boundless egotism’ which Park-man attributes to Le Loutre, applicable, as it very often is, to ourselves, can hardly be applied to the missionary. He who, like Le Loutre, had forsaken fortune, pleasure, kindred, friends and fatherland, to spend his life in the heart of the forest with coarse and cruel savages, he who, in order to evangelize these savages, had voluntarily embraced privations of all sorts, from which the most devoted of men would recoil in disgust and horror, could not be, what Parkman fancies him, ‘a man of boundless egotism.’

No doubt human nature is very complex, no doubt a man’s high calling does not destroy his natural bent; still, as a general rule, incompatible defects disappear or are dwarfed and replaced by other defects compatible with the new vocation. In the case of a missionary, egotism, having nothing to feed on, must be diminished or obliterated, though it may sometimes be replaced by other defects which are, so to speak, the human excrescences of the divine gift of a lively faith. From this view-point must we examine into the defects of Le Loutre.

In what he did where is the proof of that ‘boundless egotism?’ In that he harassed the English settlements? In that he tried hard to force the Acadians to emigrate and thus be deprived of their property? Other motives may explain these acts, but certainly not egotisin. No other motives at all commensurate with his selfless activity can be assigned but religion and par triotism, especially religion, to which he had sacrificed his life. He had spent twelve peaceful years among his Indians when Halifax was founded. From that moment, his activity, his zeal, his fanaticism rose to a high key ; he is no longer a mild and peaceable missionary; he is a dictator, an energumen frantically striving to snatch the Acadians from their country, as if he were struggling with a madman on the brink of a precipice. Unable to persuade even those who lived near the frontier to emigrate willingly, he gets the Indians to' burn down their houses in order to constrain them. What had happened to him? Whence this change? Evidently, something had filled his soul with anxiety, and that anxiety could be only the effect of some impending danger to religion. The change wrought in him can scarcely be explained otherwise.

This impending danger is easily found. Have we not seen that Shirley had entertained the project of Protestantizing the Acadians, of expelling their priests? that he had reaffirmed this project with extraordinary persistency? that, a vague rumor of it, having reached the Acadians, had given them great alarm? What wonder that Le Loutre should have been inexpressibly shocked at it and profoundly convinced that this project would soon be. realized? Since it had been conceived in time of war, when the neutrality of the Acadians was most needed, when these very Acadians were withstanding seductions and threats for the sake of fidelity to their oath, when Acadia was practically at their mercy, defended, as it was, by a mere handful of soldiers, had they not everything to fear now that Halifax was founded? Had not Cornwallis marked Lis arrival by a proclamation which annulled the agreement of 1730 and the recent engagements of the King through his Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle? Had not the deportation Itself been already thought of by a Secretary of State (Craggs)? Had not the same idea been entertained by Admiral Knowles and by Shirley himself, and in each case without any excuse ? Even though Le Loutre may not have known all these things, he surely knew enough to feel his soul stirred to its depths. I do not hesitate to say that his fears were not only justifiable but, to all appearances from what we now know, founded upon stubborn facts. Under such circumstances we need only consider the ardor of his faith and suppose that he was hot-tempered, to find a satisfactory explanation of his conduct, without drawing on our imagination for a fancy picture that has no solid foundation.

How far removed soever we may be from the ideas of a man we wish to judge, we must, in order to pass judgment on him with some degree of precision, put aside our own views and enter, as far as possible, into his, taking into account his beliefs, his education, his surroundings. Le Loutre had sacrificed everything to one single idea; he had sacrificed the enjoyments of this world for the joys of the next. To us, to the man of the world, this Abba's ideas seem very narrow; to him, perhaps, our struggles to acquire things frivolous and transitory must have appeared very mean ; we find him cruel to deprive the Acadians of their homes; for him the sacrifice was nothing compared to the loss of religion. The scientific theorist buried in meditation, and the astronomer soaring in thought through interstellar space, both strangers to this nether earth they tread, are also to the worldling very narrow-minded; yet we, in our feverish moving to and fro, appear to them, from their high vantage-ground, as so many little ants bustling around an ant-hill.

Le Loutre's faults, to my thinking, are attributable rather to his ill-balanced mind than to a disordered will. Like all men of one idea, he was ignorant of the world and unsuited to the governance of men. His letters to his superiors are impregnated with an ardent faith and the purest spirit of the gospel. In 1740 he wrote to his superior: “Remember that I am here only in obedience to your orders; I am here for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.” In 1747, when he had returned to France, his superiors, thinking that he had had his share of hardship, proposed that he should remain there. Deeming that he had not done enough for his salvation, he refused all such offers. We know that, on several occasions, he saved the lives of English officers ; that Captain Hamilton, who had witnessed his kindliness, esteemed him highly; that, after the deportation and his return to France, he became a ministering angel to the Acadian refugees, that he devoted his time and his money to the alleviation of their lot.

His friend, Abbe Maillard, who had initiated him into the Micmac language and the management of missions, was himself, though in a lesser degree, involved in the same condemnation. He spent the last years of his life at Halifax, in the midst of those who had been his enemies. Now, he conquered them all by the irresistible ascendency of his talent and virtue. There stood by his dying bed the Protestant minister whose friendship he had won and who read certain prayers to him at his own request; the elite of Halifax society, civil and military, the government and the council followed his remains to the tomb. Perhaps, under similar circumstances, Le Loutre would have received the same homage. What we know of him rests on so valueless an authority—Picton—that no historian, except Parkman, has consented to use it. More of this anon.