Situation of the Acadians at Beausejour—Venality of Vergor and the French officers—Le Loutre.

The time has now come to review briefly the principal events that bail occurred within the last few years at Beausejour on French territory. I have already spoken of the efforts Le Loutre had made to force the Beaubassin Acadians to cross the frontier. He then had a promise from the Governor of Canada that those who should emigrate from English territory would receive compensation for their losses. A line of dikes was to be constructed that would provide for the majority of them excellent farms ready for tillage. Unfortunately Le Loutre’s efforts seem to have been;-for a long time, frustrated by the extortions and venality of the French officers. France was then traversing one of the most shameful epochs of her history. She was taking all available roads to ruin. Every incentive to great movements and noble undertakings, whatever had hitherto commanded respect and provoked enthusiasm was fast disappearing under the polished irony of gentlemanly scamps whose wit amused France and stood to her instead of glory- There was pulling down without building up. All that had been the strength of Franco was wasting away before this destructive blast, and nothing remained but the wilderness it created. Pleasure was the standard of all things. The example was set by the throne and imitated in the higher classes of society. In this madcap race after sensual delights the treasury, carelessly guarded, became a prey to favorites and venal hangers-on.

In Canada Intendant Bigot was the vampire which, sucking the life-blood of France, was rapidly hurrying her to ruin and dishonor. Not content with his personal delinquencies, lie incited his friends to similar peculations. Thus he wrote to Vergor, commandant at Beausejour: “Make the best of your position, my dear Vergor; shear and pare to your heart’s content, so as to join me one day in France and buy yourself a mansion near mine.” As might well be supposed this invitation to pillage was sure to find a response in that venal wretch, and so the promise of assistance to the emigrated Acadians was made void. In the face of all these obstacles Le Loutre went to France for the help he so much needed. A sum of fifty thousand francs was confided to him, and on his return dike-building was vigorously pushed. To protect himself against the venality of middlemen, he personally procured the necessary provisions and distributed them to the Acadian workers. This is, I believe, what afforded a pretext for the charge that Le Loutre was engaging in commercial transactions on his own account. The officers, whom he was thus balking in their attempts to defraud the treasury, were naturally very jealous of his great influence. They must have dreaded and hated him. This being the case, one understands Pichon’s saying: “He had so ingratiated himself with the Marquis de la Galissionniere that it became a crime to write against him.”

Oddly enough, Parkman has failed to give publicity to this charge of unpriestly traffic. Perhaps he was not aware of it, for Pichon, I think, does not mention it. Or perhaps Parkman’s silence may be due to the fact that he had found means to implicate him in a murder, compared to which the peddling of wares by a priest became a mere peccadillo.

The funds did not arrive till the autumn of 1753, too late to begin operations that year. So far, little had been done to allay the distress of the emigrated Acadians. They led a rather miserable existence, working sometimes for the French of Beausejour, sometimes for the English of Fort Lawrence, in full view of the fields they had watered with their sweat and where they had spent happy years in plenty and peace. Their lot would have been more endurable had there been any prospect of stability in the future; but the part of the country offered them was disputed territory. The Commission appointed to settle the frontier line was then sitting; it might decide that their new lands belonged to England; in which case they would have either to go into exile once more and face its concomitant tribulations and distress or to accept conditions they had just refused at the cost of the greatest sacrifices. The circumstances of their departure, their forced expatriation after the destruction of their dwellings, were so many overwhelming memories. The storm which Cornwallis had raised about the oath had long since been lulled. Their relatives, their brothers, their friends of Grand Pro, Pigiguit aud Annapolis were no longer molested. They dwelt in tranquillity and abundance as in the happy days before the foundation of Halifax. They were once more beginning to hope that the question of the oath would never again be raised. To Cornwallis, himself considerably humanized during the last two years of his administration, had succeeded a kindly and sympathetic man, the praise of whose intentions and actions was in every mouth. The combined result of all their surroundings was an increase of fear on the one hand and of regret on the other. Many crossed over with their families and their cattle to lie Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island). There at least, if they took up land, they ran no risk of relapsing into the state of affairs which had brought about their departure; for the island was incontestably French soil and not disputed. But there also they would have a precarious and dangerous situation. This island, being long and narrow, left them ever exposed, in case of war, to the depredations of corsairs and to the horrors of an invasion. However no choice was left to them, and so most of them preferred this alternative.

As we have seen, those who remained at Beausejour had addressed a petition to Governor Hopson, expressing their desire to return to their farms, provided they were exempt from bearing arms. This proposal had been rejected. In the first months of his administration. when Lawrence had not as yet conceived his sinister design, he had made overtures to them through the commandant of Fort Lawrence. He had authorized him to declare that he had no intention, at present, of obliging them to bear arms. His guarantees were deemed insufficient.

In making a report to the Lords of Trade of these negotiations, Lawrence said: “It was privately informed that at their return, they were in a very ill humor with Le Loutre and with the French commandant; and that they represented to them the hardships they labored under in not being suffered to accept the proposals of the English in a remonstrance that I am told was very-little short of a mutiny.” This information was furnished by Pichon.

Some months later, when Abbe Daudin was arrested, Pichon, writing to Captain Scott, told him “ that the affair of Abbe Daudin was making a great stir at Beau-s^jour; that Le Loutre had preached a very violent sermon, in which he abused the English, and showed the Acadians what they could expect from a treacherous nation which thus expelled a holy priest; that the same fate was in store for the other priests, and that, if they recrossed the frontier, they would perish miserably, deprived of the sacraments and of the helps of their religion.” He requested them—this is the substance of Pichon’s further statements—to meet at the Commandant’s after Mass, saying that he had to read to them a letter from the Governor of Canada. But the refugees did not come. M. de Vergor twice sent a sergeant to notify them. Only about twenty came. As they seemed loath to enter the house, the Commandant got angry and ordered them to enter under pain of being put in irons. The letter of the Governor of Canada, which Pichon said was a forgery, was then read to them. It promised various kinds of assistance. “You must know,” continues Pichon, “that, last month, eighty-three of the Acadian refugees sent two of their number with a petition to the Governor of Canada, in which they requested to be allowed to return to their farms, seeing that we could not give them suitable ones, those which we offered them being claimed by the English Government. They further said that they did not deem themselves released from the obligations of their oath of fidelity to the King of Great Britain, and that they were threatened with the punishment of rebels should they be taken among the French.”

It is impossible for me either to contradict or to confirm these assertions of Pichon. I quote him because what he relates is not unlikely; on the contrary, his story is quite in keeping with the idea I have formed of the situation and of Le Lon tie’s motives. There is this contrast between Pichon's accusations anent the Howe murder and his present testimony that he is now oil the spot at Beausejour, and therefore able to be thoroughly well-informed. In this case he seems to have had no motive for lying.

After the excitement caused by Cornwallis’s conduct on his landing at Halifax, Le Loutre had considerably cooled down, most probably because the danger he had foreseen had, for the time being, disappeared. But when he saw that Hopson was not coming back, and that Lawrence, whom he had had occasion to know, became titular governor and was already yielding to his cruel instincts, he once more took alarm. And when his colleague Daudin was dragged to Halifax and condemned to quit the country, no doubt his impetuous zeal found in this incident all that was needed to set it aflame. From his point of view, and I am inclined to think it was the right one, Daudin was a victim of persecution. This was, as Pichon makes him say, the beginning of a regime which would soon deprive the Acadians of their priests and of the free exercise of their religion. Was he mistaken? Certainly not, and this certainty increases in the light of subsequent events. He knew enough of Lawrence’s character to suppose him capable of any crime. Of course Le Loutre’s impulsiveness, his religious enthusiasm—some would say, his fanaticism—might cloud his better judgment and make him see intentions that did not exist, or at least exaggerate them; but I am convinced that, Cassandra-like, he saw clearly the woes that were to whelm the Acadian people, if the French were dislodged from their hold on the Bay of Fundy. Abbe Le Guerne, who was also a missionary near Beausejour on the French side, without sharing Le Loutre’s ardor and vehemence, thoroughly shared his fears. He himself tells us that Le Loutre, after the taking of Beausejour, and on leaving the country, strongly urged the Acadians to be submissive towards the English, in order, if possible, to avert the misfortunes which he saw threatening them.