Comments on Lawrence’s letter to the Governors—On Parkman's insinuations anent the separation of families—More on Parkman's ways.

Chapter XXXI. of this work closes with the departure of the flotilla carrying' the Acadians into exile: I now come hack to the main part of my narrative.

Lawrence had confided to all the captains of the vessels employed in the deportation a circular addressed to the governors of the provinces where the exiles were to be landed. Here are some extracts from this letter:

“The successes we have gained over the French at Beausejour have put us in a position to exact from the Acadians either an unqualified oath or that they should quit the country. They have always stipulated for a restriction to the effect that they were not to bear arms against the French; Governor Philipps consented to grant it to them, but he was blamed for this by His Majesty. They have taken advantage of this neutrality to give information and provisions to the French and the Indians, and, at the evacuation of Beausejour, 300 of them were found armed.

“Notwithstanding this bad conduct, I offered to leave those who dwelt m the Peninsula in peaceable occupation of their lands, if they consented to take an unqualified oath. This offer was audaciously refused by the entire population.

“Under these circumstances, after consultation with Vice-Admiral Boscawen, my council came to the decision to deport them. We foresaw that their expulsion, with the privilege of going where they willed, would have considerably strengthened France: as, moreover, the latter country had no cleared lands to offer them, those who were able to bear arms would have been employed in harassing us; I have therefore deemed that the most effectual and expeditious means of getting rid of them, without inconvenience, was to distribute them throughout the colonies, so that they might not come together again. As this measure wan absolutely indispensable to the safety of this colony, we hope you will have no hesitation to receive them, and that you will dispose of them in such a way as to meet our view which is to prevent them from coining together again."

Always the same general accusations; only one specific fact, repeated on every occasion, the three hundred men taken armed at Beausejour. Lawrence, here also, is careful not to add that they were pardoned by the articles of the capitulation because they had taken arms under pain of death. Where, then, was the guilt of the only Acadians against whom lie has been able to formulate a precise charge ? Does he not admit himself that Philipps had granted them the restriction they then wanted and which they have always demanded? This condition being withdrawn, had they not the right to quit the country, as they had done ? By that very fact were they not become French subjects, as Cornwallis himself admitted, and as the most ignorant common sense would show? Did not the conduct of those living near Fort Beausejour who refused to light the English, and the conduct of the 300 inside the fort, who yielded only to the most terrible threats, deserve the thanks and sympathy of the English? There is ample proof that it was the pressure brought to bear on the French commandant by these 300 men that led him to surrender without resistance.

Lawrence adds that His Majesty disapproved the restriction granted by Philipps. What really happened was that the Lords of Trade expressed doubts as to the meaning of a word in the French copy of the oath; Philipps maintained his interpretation, and his reply ended the discussion; but nowhere is it said that the Lords of Trade, still less the King, disapproved the neutrality clause. Moreover, if there .was any such disapproval, it could not affect the Acadians unless they were formally notified of it, and we see, from the documents I have quoted with regard to Cornwallis’s administration, that, up to that period, no mention had been made of this disapproval.

The way Lawrence repeats his charge about the 300 proves that he had no other definite charges to make. At any rate the case of the Peninsular Acadians, who had remained peaceably on their lands, at a great distance from the French settlements, ought to be considered separately. Besides, had they been inclined to rebel, what would have been the use of an unrestricted oath, since the one they had already taken bound them to fidelity as much as any other? In fact, it was called the oath of fidelity. Why this- insistence on any oath at all, if they were faithless to the one they had taken? The importance attached to a special form of oath implies that they set great store by such engagements, and therefore were not rebels. Parkman says they refused the oatli “in full view of the consequences.” Evidently Parkman means the consequences that actually followed, viz., the deportation. Now, between this and the alternative they accepted, viz., to quit the country and go where they pleased, there yawns a bridgeless chasm, of which Parkman was quite aware.

When Lawrence avers that he does not send the Acadians to Canada because there were no cleared lands to receive them, he gives a reason that would be amusing, were not the subject so overwhelmingly sad and his fraud so transparent. Pray, what had he prepared for then at Boston, in Connecticut, in New York, at Philadelphia, in Georgia and North Carolina? His circular to the Governors was the first intimation they received of the expulsion; some of them even refused a landing and the exiles were left, for weeks, horribly crowded in their vessels, decimated by disease.

“Our view,” says he, "in thus scattering them, is to prevent them from coming together again.” We are justified in paraphrasing this sentence somewhat after this fashion: “I have thought that, were we to deport the inhabitants of one parish to the same place, leaving the members of each family together, they might conspire to return and take possession of their lands once more. Effectually to obviate this possible 'contingency, I have given orders to scatter the people of one parish in widely distant places, and 1 have striven, as far as I could, to do the same thing for the members of each family; so that father, mother and. children will, for a long time, have no other concern than how to find each other. Meanwhile, bodily privations and grief will kill them off in great numbers.” This is the only satisfactory explanation of the special pains which Lawrence, who was too artful not to have a motive for everything, took to separate parish and family groups.

“In spite of Winslow’s care,” says Parkman, “some cases of separation of families occurred; but they were not numerous.” Proofs of this assertion lie gives none for obvious reasons. True, Winslow had declared to the delegates imprisoned in the church of Grand Pre that he would see to keeping families together; hut a promise is no proof that the thing was done. Winslow may have been more humane than the others; but we must not forget that Lawrence’s orders were to seize the men and ship them off first, and to attend to the women and children afterwards. If these orders were not executed to the letter, it was because the provisions and the convoys for the transports arrived only at the last moment, after almost all the people had been for weeks on board the ships, and because Winslow and the other commanding officers had not the power or the inhumanity to prevent the reunion of a certain number of families. In other words, opportunity was wanting for the execution of the barbarous order in all its severity. When I say that a certain number of families were reunited on the same vessel, I mean—and I am weighing my words carefully—that these families were the exception. I affirm, therefore, the exact contradictory of Parkman’s affirmation: he says “cases of separation were not numerous; ”I say canea of non separation were, not numerous. Of course Parkman could not know what I have learned byword of mouth in Acadian homes. It would be a serious mistake to suppose that the memory of these events has long been lost among the Acadians. I know it is fast disappearing now; but, as late as thirty-five years ago, each' family could relate the story of the departure, the embarkation and the many migrations that ensued. The strivings after reunion lasted until 1786, and then the number of families that remained incomplete was considerable.

However, let us first examine the public proofs, which Parkman had access to as well as arty one else. We have seen that Lawrence had imprisoned on St. George's Island, at Halifax, the ©rand Pro and Pigiguit delegates who had refused oath. They were fifteen in number. We have also seen how, directly aftei, he ordered the inhabitants of Annapolis, Grand Pro and Pigiguit to send him delegates, whom he also imprisoned. They were a hundred, seventy from the two last-named places and thirty from Annapolis - in all (with the 15 just mentioned) 115 of the principal citizens, probably all heads of families. Their guilt was in no way different from that of the rest of the population; they had refused the oath, that was all. What became of them? The following order will tell us:

“Sailing orders and instructions to Samuel Barron, master of the Transport Sloop ‘Providence.’

“Halifax, 3d Oct. 1753.

“Sir,

“You are to receive on board your sloop from George Island, a number of French inhabitants, a list whereof you will receive from the commanding officer there, and you are to proceed therewith to the Province of North Carolina, etc., etc.,

"Lawrence "

I have been able to ascertain that the number of men sent away on this occasion was only 50. Were the 65 others sent off earlier or later, or did they join their families before the deportation? I cannot say fox-certain; but I have reason to think that they were sent to Grand Pr6 and Annapolis later on, in order to complete the quota of the vessels that carried off the rest of the population. Seven days after these 50 Acadians left Halifax, another vessel, the Hopson^ destined also to North Carolina, set sail from Halifax on October 10(h to take or complete its shipment at Annapolis. We may reasonably suppose that some, if not all, of the 65 other prisoners were on board this vessel. Did they meet at Annapolis some members of their respective families? Possibly; but, as many of them hailed from Grand Pie and Pigiguit, those who were reunited to their families at Annapolis must have been few. Consequently, we have, in this single instance, probably from 100 to 115 husbands separated from their wives and children ; and, with an average of five children, besides the parents, for each family, a modest estimate for Acadians, we can already count from 700 to 800 persons suffering from the dismemberment of their families. The fact that Lawrence kept these heads of families at Halifax, while he was transporting the rest of the population, proves evidently that his intention was to disunite the families.

Since Parkman seems bent on exonerating Winslow, I am about to show that the latter probably deserves no such palliation. With the exception, perhaps, of Joseph Le Blanc, Nicolas Gauthier, Louis Allain and Lueien de la Tour, the most important personage among the Acadians was Ivend Le Blanc, the notary of Grand Pie. Though having a right to enjoy the benefits of neutrality, lie had eschewed them to serve the British Government so zealously that lie was made prisoner by the Indians and kept in captivity during four years. In a petition to the King (produced in full at the end of this volume) the Acadian exiles at Philadelphia thus describe their misfortunes:

“We were transported into the English Colonies, and this was done wit-li so much haste, and with so little regard to our necessities and the tenderest ties of nature, that from the most social enjoyments and affluent circumstances, many found themselves destitute of the necessaries of life. Parents were separated from children and husbands front, wives, some of whom have not to this day met again ; and we were so crowded in the Transport vessels, that we had not room even for all our bodies to lay down at once. . . And even those amongst us who had suffered deeply from Your Majesty’s enemies, on account of their attachment to Your Majesty's Government, were equally involved in the common calamit3% of which Rene Le Blanc, the Notary Public, is an instance. He was seized, confined, and brought away among the rest of the people, and his family, consisting of twenty children and about one hundred and fifty grand-children, were scattered in different colonies, so that he was put on shore at New York, with only his wife and two youngest children, in an infirm state of health, from whence he joined three more of his children at Philadelphia, where he died,” etc., etc., etc.,

Parkman must have seen this petition, which is found in Haliburton and elsewhere. Now, if such was the treatment indicted on the leading citizen of Grand Pre, on a man who had suffered a long captivity .u the service of the English Government, what must have been the fate of the other exiles?

With regard to Grand Pro, I will now adduce an instance with which I am personally connected. Honors Robert, the grandfather of my grandmother Richard, had three brothers whose ages ranged from 10 to 20 at the time of the deportation. Each of the four brothers was deported to a different place, and it was not till ten years later that they were able to meet again in the parish of Saint-Gregoire. The story is related by Casgrain in his “Pelerinage an pays l'Evangeline” not as if it were an exceptional case, but because the family became relatively more prominent than others.

“Of this number was a young man of eighteen named Etieune Hubert, carried off from the parish of Grand Pre, where he dwelt in the valley of Petit Ruisseau, in the concession of the Huberts. Separated from his brothers, who had been deported one to Massachusetts, another to Maryland, and the third to another place, while he himself, put ashore at Philadelphia, had entered the service of an army officer, he gave himself no rest until he could find his brothers whom he believed to have gone to Canada. Disappointed in this hope, but not discouraged, he secured a grant of land at Saint-Gregoire in the seigniory of Becancourt, and started for the South in winter on snowshoes. After a long search, he had the joy of bringing all three of them back; one was at Worcester, another at Baltimore, and the third somewhere else. The four brothers settled down close to one another at Saint-Gregoire, where they soon prospered.” Casgrain adds that Etienne Hebert, having learnt later that his Grand Pr6 betrothed, Josephte Babin, was at Quebec, went to meet her there and married her.

We have seen that at Grand Pre—and the same thing must have happened in the other Acadian parishes, since such were Lawrence’s orders—some of the men and boys were put on board ships one month before the sailing of the flotilla. Haliburton supposed that they had been deported at once; Parkman rightly corrected this mistake; but from the above account it appears evident that these men and boys were nevertheless deported separately; else it were hard to explain how these four brothers were separated.

Mrs. Williams, the author of “French Neutrals,” a countrywoman of Parkman’s, who wrote long before him at a time, when the memory of these events was still fresh, says, in reference to Winslow’s promise to the Acadians that he would not separate families: “A promise which, whatever may have been the intentions of Winslow in making it, was most shamefully and inhumanly broken. I5y what sophisms Winslow reconciled this deception, not to say abominable falsehood, to his conscience, history does not tell.”

In Dr. Brown’s notes are to be found memoranda by a Mr. Fraser of Miramichi, whom Brown had asked to collect information from the Acadians who had settled there. I extract therefrom the following passage: “Michel Le Basque (Bastarache), his brother Pierre and twelve others, travelled through the woods from Carolina to the head of the river St. Lawrence, and from there came all the way in a canoe to Shediac ( in New Brunswick) to meet their wives and families. The greatest injustice that the Acadians seem to think the English were guilty of is, that those who were removed from Beaubassin and Grand Pre had it not in their option to go wherever they pleased, and that the wives and children of several were not permitted to embark on board the same vessel w ith the husband and parents, but were put on board other ships bound to different colonies, by which means many families were separated and have not met to this day (1790).” Brown adds: “Mr. Fraser has not the active curiosity of J. Gray, the acute sensibility of Moses de Les Derniers, or the dignified benevolence of Brook Watson, but he is a man of shrewd understanding, calm passions, with nothing of the romantic in his nature.”

Hutchinson, the historian of Massachusetts, mentions several cases of separation that came to his know ledge. The New York Mercury of that period protests against these outrages. “Their wives and children,” it says, “were not permitted with them, but were shipped on board other vessels.”

A letter from Abbe Le Guerne says that, among 250 families who were at River St. John after the dispersion, there were not less than 60 women whose husbands had been deported.

So numerous, indeed, are the witnesses to this dismemberment of families that the only difficulty is to make a proper selection. Perhaps the most striking of these testimonies is the collective petition to the French Government of a crowd of exiles landed at St. Malo, who begged to be transported to Boston, thus exposing themselves to fresh persecutions in “the hope,” as their petition expressed it, “of being reunited to their children whom the English had carried thither.”

The Reverend Louis Richard, President of Three Rivers College, in answer to a request for precise information on the beginnings of the Acadian colony of Saint Gregoire and of the Three Rivers District, writes to me on November 2d, 1892:

“......You were not mistaken; for more than twenty years I have been collecting, here and there, all that concerns the Acadian families and their settlement in the District of Three Rivers. I have made extracts of all the registers of the parishes of Saint-Gregoire, Nicolet, Lecancour, etc.; I have questioned old people; I have made a voyage to Acadia; at Halifax 1 took copies of the old registers of Port Royal, and to-day I possess all the data necessary to recompose in a great measure the genealogy of the families in this District.

I knew in a general way from fireside recitals that there had been much separation of families; but I was far from suspecting that it was so general. The first refugees arrived in 1759; they were almost all from the neighborhood of Beausejour, and had come by the St. John River. Starting in the spring, without provisions or ammunition, their advance was necessarily slow, as they could provide for their sustenance only by fishing and the rare game they sometimes caught in snares. At length, however, at the beginning of winter, they came out upon the St. Lawrence at Cacouna. There was probably not one complete family in this first group. My ancestor, Joseph Richard, and yours, Michel Richard, were of the party; mine was with some of his wife’s relatives, the Cormiers; yours, then 15 years old, had with him only his sister, Folicito, 10 years of age, and his aged grandfather, Rend Richard.2 The names of Joseph Richard and his wife, Madeleine Le Blanc, father and mother of your great-grandfather Michel Richard, appear nowhere in tlie registers, whether it be that they were dead before the deportation or died in the English colonies before the peace of 1763. Nor do I find that he was rejoined at Saint-Gr£goire by any of his brothers or sisters.

“All those who settled in Canada between 1759 and 1763 belong to the group that escaped the deportation. After the treaty of peace others came continually from many different places till 1786, when the last contingent came from France. Even then, the complete families were very rare; in many cases this was probably due to the very great mortality produced by want and suffering for those who had escaped the deportation, and by disease for those who were deported to hot climates.

“These researches produced on me the most painful impression, because I found at every step proofs of the unprecedented dismemberment of families. All those that land on our shores are but wretched remnants. We constantly meet with none but widowers, widows and orphans; there are many more widowers than widows , it looks as if the women had been less able to withstand grief and want; you can judge of this yourself by the accompanying lists.” . . .

Here is what Casgrain says of another of my ancestors, Jean Prince (Le Prince) : “ The grandfather of Monseigneur Prince, the first bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe, was put ashore alone at Boston, where a charitable family received him; he found his parents only many years later (1772).”

I cannot conceive what Parkman’s authority was for saying that the families separated were “not numerous.” Setting aside any special sources of information, which were inaccessible to him, it seems to me he had enough witnesses from all quarters to convince him of the contrary. We have positive testimony that even at Grand Pr<S families were not allowed to unite. However, it may be that many of these separations were due to the ignorance in which the Acadians were maintained as to the place of their destination. In order to induce them to be more resigned to their fate, they must have been made to believe that they would all be disembarked at the same port; this being so, it mattered little whether or not the members of one family were on the same vessel ; they would all meet again on landing, which was the important point.

Besides, for so religious and modest a people as they were, it was not becoming that young men arid grown-up girls should be crowded together in the same ship. This is what Abbe Le Guerne very clearly hints at; "but Parkman, who quotes, without understanding him, attributes to his words a meaning that is quite absurd: Le Guerne, missionary priest in this neighborhood (Beausejour), gives a characteristic and affecting incident of the embarkation: ‘Many unhappy women, carried away by excessive attachment to their husbands, whom they had been allowed to see too often, and closing their ears to the voice of religion and their missionary, threw themselves blindly and despairingly into the English vessels. And now was seen the saddest of spectacles; for some of the women, solely from a religious motive, refused to take with them their grown-up sons and daughters.’” Parkman adds this sapient, and as he thought, sarcastic remark: “They would expose their own souls to perdition among heretics, but not those of their children.” What Le Guerne meant was this: It was unfortunate that, for a mere scruple of decency and propriety, these women refused to take with them in the same ship, their grownup sons and daughters. His expression, “from a religious motive,” used by a French Catholic priest, with whom to be modest and to be religious are practically synonymous terms, undoubtedly signifies “from a motive of decency.” The words, “grown-up sons and daughters,” explain Le Guerne’s meaning perfectly. Parkman’s interpretation is, moreover, contrary to fact. These young men, whom their mothers would not take with them and their grown-up daughters of different families, were, nevertheless, also deported, since they were in the power of the authorities, and therefore Parkman’s wretched joke about exposing them among heretics does not apply at all to them: but they were deported on other vessels and to other places; hence it is that Le Guerne deemed this a deplorable piece of scrupulosity in such circumstances, since its effect was to dismember families. I should not have taken the trouble to contradict Parkman in a matter of such slight importance, did I not see in this fact a possible explanation of a certain number of separations.

It is plain that the exiles were kept under the impression that the vessels they were sailing on were all destined to the same place. No other idea could enter their heads unless they supposed a refinement of cruelty that surpassed the wildest flights of their fancjr. Le Guerne, who enumerates the subterfuges employed to induce the fugitives to give themselves up, says expressly that the promise was made to bring back “each one to his old homestead ” after the war.

Bukeley, secretary of the Council, who tried so hard and unsuccessfully to make Brown admit his justification of the expulsion and its attendant incidents, says, “that, instead of taking with them their effects and money, they piled them up in chests and earthen vessels, which they buried in the earth or lowered to the bottom of wells; that, after their departure, these effects and considerable sums of money were found by the English.” Surely, the Acadians would not have left their valuables, especially their money, behind them, had they not relied on some such promises as Le Guerne mentions.

Whatever may have been the cause of the separation of families, whether it was due to a preconceived plan— which seems evident so far as Lawrence is concerned— or to the persuasion fostered among the Acadians that all the vessels were bound for the same port, or to other unavowable subterfuges, the result is the same, the crime is none the less. No more attention was paid to the feelings and comfort of these unfortunate beings than if they had been a cargo of cattle; in fact, cattle would be better treated by any one who had an interest in their healthy condition. “The whole colony was embarked pell-mell,” says one writer, “without regard to the reunion of families. A civilized nation renewed the ancient barbarities of the Gepidee and the Heruli.”

“In one particular,” says Parkman, “the authors of the deportation were disappointed in its results. They had hoped to substitute a loyal population for a disaffected one ; but they failed for some time to find settlers for the vacated lands. The Massachusetts soldiers, to whom they were offered, would not stay in the Province; and it was not till five years later that families of British stock began to occupy the waste fields of the Acadians. This goes far to show that a longing to become their heirs had not, as has been alleged, any considerable part in the motives for their removal.”

I should prefer to be calm and indulgent, as I have been towards other writers, though often I thought myself justified in suspecting their motives; but I confess that 1 find it very difficult to restrain my indignation against Parkman. The amount of trickery and inaccuracy which he has crammed into his ninety pages exceeds all that the reader could imagine. The foregoing extract is on a par with the rest; his methods are always the same.

The way Parkman introduces his expression, “families of British stock” seems to show that he wanted to convey the impression that these lands were settled by old country people. He can stand well enough an imputation against these, but not against New England people.

No thoughtful writer has ever pretended that the motive of the expulsion was a desire on the part of New England colonists to get possession of the lands of the Acadians. This pretension may, indeed, have been put forward, but merely as an hypothesis and not by any writer of note. Few persons, even among historians, have studied thoroughly this “Lost Chapter.” The disappearance of the documents made it a question that both attracted and repelled the patient truth-seeker. The very mystery in which it was shrouded aroused suspicions; in the fragments that had escaped destruction there were clear vestiges of a crime. Not being able to discover the true cause, some have allowed their suspicions to rest on all imaginable points. Parkman, with his customary assurance, believed he could settle the whole question and get round the difficulty by defending what was not seriously attacked. Choosing out of the heap of suggested explanations one mere supposition, rarely hazarded, the least likely, the least respectable of all lifting it to the level of a strong argument, as if it were the rmly one, he overthrows it with a trenchant phrase, as if he were cutting the Gordian knot.

It may very well be that the American colonists longed to become the heirs of the Acadians; the murderer’s crime is sometimes profitable to others; but that profit does not enter into his calculations ; he is thinking of himself alone when he commits the crime. Lawrence was working for his own interests, and, if he had accomplices, they were near him at Halifax, and not on the coasts of New England, where the projects he was forming were most probably unknown to the public.

Had not Parkman intended merely to draw the public off the scent, in order to save the true culprits, this would have been an excellent opportunity for introducing into his work, without comment if he so preferred, some brief mention of the 20,000 acres each, which Lawrence's councillors granted themselves out of the lands of the Acadians. And, if he thought he could explain this grant in such a way as to exonerate the grantees, he would at least have had the merit of exhibiting his casuistic ability, without inventing a sham efiigy in order to have the glory of knocking it down.

Since Parkman here touches on the motives for the removal of the Acadians, his readers would have been interested in hearing of the charges made against Lawrence by the citizens of Halifax anent the cattle of the Acadians and other branches of the public service; of the letter of the Lords of Trade to Belcher, containing charges of the same kind and many more, which show what sort of a tyrant Lawrence was ; of Lawrence's instructions to Monekton, ordering him to seize the men. and ship them off first, and to see to the women afterwards. His readers would likewise have been interested in learning that the archives of this important period were despoiled of the documents they once contained; that the records of the Acadians were carried off by Lawrence’s orders and destroyed ; that Pichon. the traitor and spy, whose opinions furnish forth most of Parkman’s narrative, is not the only available authority, but that there exists at Halifax a manuscript compiled with care by a contemporary of the events, the Rev. Andrew Brown, who spent ten years in that city, and that this manuscript contains new and valuable documents and equally valuable opinions, very different from his. Finally, what would perhaps have interested the public above everything else was Sir Thomas Kobinson’s letter to Lawrence, condemning beforehand all expulsion, and thus proving to a demonstration that Lawrence was deceiving both the Acadians and the rest of the world when he said he was authorized to impose the oath under penalty of expulsion. Not one of this long list of facts has been explained or even touched by Parkman, although he knew of them all.

However, some one will say, Parkman's assertion that the Massachusetts soldiers, to whom the Acadian farms were offered, would not stay in the Province, and that the waste fields of the Acadians were not occupied by British families till live years later, must surely be true. Yes, there is just a wee grain of truth in it. It is true that the soldiers refused to remain in the Province, but the real motive of their refusal is nowhere given by Parkman. It is true that four or five years elapsed before English-speaking families settled there ; but these families were mostly not of “British stock,” and the true motive of the delay is not given by Parkman.

Lawrence wanted to retain these Massachusetts soldiers in his province in spite of their repugnance and of the expostulations of Winslow and Governor Shirley. These soldiers had enlisted for a year; their time was up; and yet Lawrence, conscienceless as he was, strove to lengthen out their service; but nowhere do we read that he offered them or that they refused the lands of the Acadians. I should, therefore, be justified in setting over against Parkman's mere assertion any firm conviction, based on experience of his usual methods, that helms simply invented this offer of lands. However, in presence of an affirmation the truth of which I am unable to verify, I am willing to admit this offer, unlikely though it is. Rut the motive of their refusal is no proof that they did not “long to become the heirs of the Acadians.” If they refused, it was because that offer of lands was valueless so long as Lawrence ruled Nova Scotia with his iron hand. Citizens of a province accustomed to self-government, they would not put Up with this Governor’s tyranny.

Directly after the deportation Lawrence had requested Shirley to send him colonists. It is probably this request that suggested Parkman’s assertion; but it seems clear, from Shirley’s answer, that Parkman distorts the fact when he applies this request to the Massachusetts soldiers under Winslow’s orders. Shirley, in the following reply, says nothing about soldiers and lays stress upon the danger of hostilities in a way that he would not if the settlers were soldiers.

“The settling of the vacated lands of the Acadians'' says the Governor of Massachusetts, “seems to me very difficult to be effected in the present state of hostilities in North America, exposed as would be the settlers from Indian and French hostilities. The present constitution of the Government in your Province will lie an obstacle to its being settled by good Protestant subjects from New England, as they are fond, not only of being-governed by General Assemblies, consisting of a Governor, Council and House of Representative, but likewise of Charters. To draw settlers from this Continent you would have also to make public the terms, etc., etc.”

This reply embodies all the motives for which Lawrence was unable during four years to plant colonists on the lands of the Acadians. Parkman, of course, knew of this letter, but said nothing about the explanation it affords of the long delay. Shirley was right in saying that the terms on which these lands would be held should lirst be made public. For practical men like those to whom Lawrence applied, this question was important. If Lawrence’s councillors had already voted themselves their land grants, it is to be presumed that they would not concede their property gratis.

But at least, it may be urged, was not Parkman historically correct when he said that the vacant lands were occupied, not by Americans, but “by families of British stock ”? No; he was not. It is true that, subsequently, there came colonists from England, Ireland and Scotland; but the great majority of the first successors of the Acadians, from 1759 to 1762, came from New England.

Lawrence, unable to offer the inducement of representative institutions which Shirley deemed necessary, did not seriously renew his efforts till October, 1758, when the Lords of Trade had forced him to grant a Legislative Chamber. Then he issued a proclamation specially inviting the inhabitants of New England to come and occupy these lands. He laid particular stress on the fact that the government of Nova Scotia was now altogether similar to those of Massachusetts, Connecticut and the other American colonies. From that moment, says Haliburton, “ emigration began to flow in a steady and constant stream from the colonies on the continent. From Boston there arrived six vessels carrying 200 settlers and from Rhode Island four schooners with 100 passengers.”

“The township of Cornwallis, which has been styled the garden of Nova Scotia, was settled at the same time with Horton (Grand Pro and Riviere aux Canards) and by persons who emigrated from the same colony, Connecticut. They sailed together in a fleet of twenty vessels, convoyed by a brick of war, mounting sixteen guns, commanded by Captain Pigott. They arrived on the 4th of June, 1760, and took possession of the lauds formerly occupied by the Acadians. They met a few straggling families of Acadians.....They had eaten no bread for five years.”

The wee grain of truth in Parkman’s assertion is contained in the arrival about this time (1700) of two hundred emigrants from the North of Ireland, who settled at Horton (Grand Pre).

No blame, as I have already pointed out, attaches to these colonists; they doubtless profited by the property and deportation of the Acadians, but in an altogether indirect way, without sharing in the guilt or even knowing of the crime to which they were indebted for the ownership of these lands.