Concluding Remarks

Whilst in other countries historical records are being diligently hunted up for the slightest new detail of ages long since gone by, here, on the contrary, as there has been crime its authors have tried to consign all memorials to oblivion by destroying every reminder of the past. Beausejour, Gaspereau, Grand Pre, Beaubassin, Port Royal, sweet-sounding names, so full of memories, so familiar a hundred and fifty years ago, exist no longer except for lovers of history and antiquarians. Patient research is needed to find the spot where stood the village of Grand Pr<i; soon nothing will be. left., and historians of the future wilt dispute about the location of these places as those of our own day arc wrangling over the site of Babylon, Troy and so many other cities of ancient heathendom. But it will be otherwise with the history of the Acadians. This lost chapter, destroyed by guilty hands, will revive; the history of it will be reconstructed with fragments that have escaped destruction. The. murderer does not always secure immunity from the penalty of his crime by not writing a description thereof, or by effacing whatever lie may, in an unguarded moment, have written about it, or by the fact that the deed was not done in the light of day. Justice, though sometimes slow, almost always ends by detecting the best laid plots and by visiting them with condign retribution. Thin retribution in the present case, in spite of contrary efforts, is under way, and me-thinks, is already at hand. The search is still going on; if circumstances allow, I will endeavor to contribute thereto; and I feel confident that new discoveries will soon completely rend the veil that still bides a portion of the truth.

Were we to indulge in mere sentiment, we could wish to see this little Acadian nation, dispersed but not annihilated, remain what it was of yore, with its simple taste with all those idiosyncrasies that make it so dear to our memories; but the law of progress is there, standing before it in its inexorable might, saying to it: March onward, or you will be left behind, perhaps stamped Out. This command must be obeyed, the pace must be quickened, the conflict faced, the conquest of progress achieved; find yet it is a painful conquest, which will hasten the merging of that beloved nation in the great homogeneous family of peoples foreshadowed by the future. To die of its own victory, such is the fate, remote, perchance, but inevitable, that awaits it!

The past teaches us a lesson we should do well to reflect upon and profit by. It applies not only to the Acadian people but also to the clergy, whose mission it was to guide them in the spiritual way, and who had the power to lead them likewise along the paths- of intellectual progress. To have made of them, or at least helped to make them the sober, hard-working, moral people we know, was certainty to deserve high praise; but we cannot forget that education is essential to the future of a people; it was so then and is till more So now. That artless simplicity of theirs, due in a measure to blissful ignorance, gave a handle to the nefarious projects formed against them and left them an easy prey to men as full of ambition as they were devoid of conscience. Mo such successful trap can be laid for an entire people, if they are enlightened and nerved for conflict by a suitable course of mental training, which lets them discern the motives of their aggressors and enables them vigorously to uphold their rights. What was true in those days is doubly true to-day. We must develop more and more that, manly and practical education which gives self-reliance, initiative, conscious power, strong individuality. Thus, when the solemn occasion arrives, when the hour of danger strikes, we shall have men fashioned for the stern struggle of life, who know how to meet difficulties and baffle the perverse designs of their foes. Si vis pacern, para helium. Inure the mind to robustness as you would the body, train the intellect in every kind of mental tilt, accustom it to find within itself the leverage it needs; and we shall march onward and upward, we, shall grow to the full stature of militant manhood, and then we shall be respected. It is a truism to say that modern progressive nations owe their development, their greatness, their wealth, their influence to the efforts they have made to promote education. Ours is it, then, to choose whether we shall enter more resolutely into the general forward movement and take our share of the riches, consideration and influence it carries with it, or dance attendance upon others, condemning ourselves to be the hand that toils and drudges, when we might t>e the head that commands. In return for the wasting of our muscular energy we shall get nothing hut the crumbs that fall from the tables while brain work will seat itself at the banquet. We have to choose between being masters or servants it is the quantity and more especially the quality of our education that will make that choice possible.

This is not the time to linger over a bootless contemplation of a past that is gone never to return. The manners of one period do not suit another. By all means let us revere the past let us study it, but rather in order the. better to understand the present and the future. Whatever helps on our interests to-day will be so much laid up for tomorrow. Between past and present, between present and future the connection is not always easy to discern; it is quite invisible to him that loves the past alone and scorns the present. It is the perception of this connection that will wean us from the past by teaching us that, on the whole, the human race does not go backwards, and, above all, that no retrograde movement can be universal with education and a proper use of liberty. At all events, whatever be our view of what, has been and what is, it behooves us to submit to reality and face the inevitable.

Liberty and knowledge bear us onward with accelerated speed toward a future that is ever-changing; the absence of these two gifts has ever held mankind stationary and fixed in one spot. Now, as oppression and ignorance cannot be good, so liberty and knowledge cannot be in themselves evil. These latter may, of course, like all blessings, he abused, and must, therefore, be directed by the higher interests of morality : but he alone can thus direct them who understands and loves them and admires a, beneficent Providence gradually lifting humanity out of the sloughs of misery and abjectness. All the works of God are linked together. Natural science is a synthesis of the laws of nature, and the application of this knowledge constitutes material progress. These laws being from (rod. to repudiate progress would be to repudiate the work of God. Each generation marks a stage in the progress of the race; the onward thrust is irresistible, it carries with it the masses, while modifying and transforming into regenerative lessons the errors of a disappearing past. Science, belief, legislation, methods of action, all things are linked together in this world. With the development of knowledge and ideas, everything, save a small number of unchangeable truths definitely grasped, must progress in man’s environment. This movement is becoming more marked from day to day; it is resistless, because it is a law of our being. Whatever stands in the way of this transformation is flung aside like the garments we have outgrown, and is carried off by the rising flood. We must advance or be crushed, march on or be distanced, move with the tide or be engulfed in it.

For want of realizing the high moral tendency of material progress, certain minds see naught but confusion and decadence in what is going on around us; in their eyes mankind made constant progress until this or that epoch, hut from that time forth it entered on a path that is everywhere beset with threatening peril. How much more wise, rational and harmonious would it be to recognize a constant evolution, lifting up the barbarian and leading him gradually on towards an indefinite progress, which never halts or only halts long enough to let him, as he gropes about, study and understand the path lie must follow.

The gigantic strides of material progress in our day, while, whetting the appetite for pleasures that had heretofore fallen to the lot of the privileged few, may have made people lose sight, for a moment, of the moral progress that ought to be the motive and object of all material advancement. The suddenness of the transformation may have unhinged men’s minds and thrown them off their balance; they forgot that unmixed good is rarely met with, and that every evil has its antidote at hand. But for any one who takes the trouble to dive beneath the surface of events it will be easy to see that, in many respects, social and Christian progress has been already little, if at all, inferior to the triumphs of matter. The reign of persecution and cruelty is well-nigh ended; national and religious animosities are on the eve of extinction; the generality of men, instead of feasting on the sufferings of their fellows, show a marked tendency to become indulgent and tender-hearted. Slavery, which was the most articulate expression of barbarism, is no longer tolerated. These progressive steps in social morality, of incalculable value for the manners and religious development of men, are, without doubt, corollaries of scientific, educational and material progress. If social and Christian progress has not yet done itself full justice, it is, nevertheless, a mighty reality; it is an earnest that that harmony which ought to reign throughout the universe really exists between the different kinds of progress and especially between science and morality. A distinguished writer has said: “When the grapes, hung by the basketful, are pressed, what is the first result? A mess, a scum, a seething ferment. . .

Wait for the necessary period and you will have wine. So is it sometimes 'with material progress.

It has taken nearly twenty centuries of incubation and hidden labor for the civilized world to penetrate into the inner mind of Christianity and view the high social results that flow therefrom. These results have been not, indeed, produced, but greatly favored by scientific and material progress; so true is it that all sorts of progress are linked together. And may we not indulge the consolatory hope that these results will ultimately lead us to the reign of goodness, of truth, of justice, of the love of humanizing ideas, of true brotherhood; so that then will be realized, in its most exalted sense, that prayer we utter every day: Thy Kingdom come?

These strivings after high ideals, these constant aspirations towards a social status more in keeping with justice and solidarity, point to that great current of humanizing tendencies, the source of which is on the top of Calvary, and the waters of which are bearing us onward to a future age when the making capital out of man, the shameful pauperizing of tlie masses, culpable ignorance, and the horrors of war shall be »o more. The world has been terrorized by threats and mortal dread, whereas Jesus wished to reign through love and charity.

In the conflict of Christian civilization, in the struggle between ignorance and error, the army that is fighting for us is made up of diverse elements which often seem to hinder and paralyze each other. Let us not peevishly complain of the slowness of this, or the rashness of that other ally; both may delay and both may ensure the victory. In France, under the first Republic and the Empire, victories were won rather by impetuosity. It was this furia francese that enabled Bonaparte to overrun Europe with his conquering armies and to humble the coalition of .Kings. In 1870 it was the wise slowness of heavy artillery that brought France in her turn to her knees. Catholicism is that artillery, often cumbersome, which, at a given moment, will make amends tor the rash haste of outpost skirmishers and make victory sure. The life of societies, like that of individuals, is a conflict; to quit the ranks is to court death and oblivion. The evolution which is urging social fabrics toward horizons that are either unknown or dimly outlined through the thick mist of our ignorance, carries along with it the most conservative elements of society. This evolution, ardently desired by some, unobserved by the majority of men, combated by others, and extending its sway over every one, finds in Catholicism the most determined support of established order as \vell as the element that most successfully withstands the onset of injudicious innovation. It is more friendly to order and stability than to progress; it dreads the precipitate courses, the sudden enthusiasms, the shocks and random jolts of the latter. It may delay progress sometimes; however, at an opportune moment, it will make a move to the front in order to decide, by its guidance, the victory of Christian progress and civilization. For instance, in our time. Leo XIII, m the shape of an explicit recognition of Republican forms in France, has done more for the future than could have been accomplished by the most skilful combinations of diplomatists and statesmen. Each progressive step taken by an essentially conservative body is a much more valuable and lasting acquisition than would be a similar proceeding on the part of a liberal or radical element. In spite of its slowness, its changeless character, the apparent inflexibility of its principles, Catholicism will not fail to lend itself to the evolutions germane to the life of mankind. As was recently said by an eminent Catholic orator, Count Albert de Mun, “Pope Leo XIII has taken his stand squarely in the forefront of democracy.”

Each element contributes its quota to the general advance. A few years more or less cannot affect the issue, and they count for little in the long lapse of ages. Provided that, on the whole, mankind is not too violently hurled ahead or thrust backward, we can accommodate ourselves, without loud complainings, to achieved results.

History is but an agglomeration of useful teachings; and the horrible drama which I have striven truthfully to penetrate and expose has its own special instructiveness. To touch the heart of man is to make him better; and if this pitiable and unjust fate of a people had no other effect than this, it would yet be a lesson laden with fruitful germs. Deeds of cruelty, such as have been chronicled in these pages, would be impossible to-day. At the first move of a new Lawrence, the cry of indignation wrung from the witnesses of his crime would instantly be echoed in the four quarters of the civilized globe.

Taught by experience in-the school of misfortune, let us, the sons of those hapless Acadiana, understand that we should devote ourselves to the noble cause of education; let us enter manfully on the path of that progress which will win for us ail honorable place among the nationalities with whom our lot is cast. Let us be friends of order, lovers of our country, living in peace and harmony with our compatriots of a different origin; but, above all, let us preserve that high morality which has secured for us so much sympathy in our misfortunes from the very men who might have beau interested iu condemning us. Nor should we forget that the real motives which brought on our misfortunes were unknown, that those who espoused our cause—and they were the majority—had, in order to do so, to go counter to their natural feelings and to condemn acts which they believed to be referable to the Home Government. This will make it easier for us to forgive and forget. At the same time we may derive comfort from the thought that, sooner or later, the entire truth will issue in all its splendor from the well in which our persecutors thought they had forever drowned it.

Oh! if we could only blot out from our memory these sad recollections! Why is there not, as the old fable tells us, a river whose waters make one forget the past ? What people are pleased to call the blessing of education is precisely what increases our grief; by feeding our fancy and refining our feelings, it revives and quickens in us the sorrows of a past that Mali not let itself be forgotten. The pains and hardships that are the outcome of our own misdeeds or of every-day misfortunes are easily forgotten; not so the pangs produced by injustice and especially by the injustice of the Government on which we depend. If only that authority, to which we owe respect and obedience, but to which, in the present condition of things, we cannot give our love, had the magnanimity to acknowledge the injustice of its past aud to seek to repair that injustice in any degree, such a reparation would be generous, grand, noble, and—an important consideration—it would be highly politic. A measure of this sort would wipe out at one stroke all the bitterness of our recollections; all would be effectually forgotten and effaced; the germ of hate that still perhaps ferments in more than one breast would be transformed into a germ of gratitude and love and find voice in a concert of praise that would echo through the whole civilized world, the beneficent fruits of which England would reap among all those peoples whom she has conquered without assimilating them by winning their love and gratitude. There is much boasting about the sun never setting on her dominions. This pride is based on merely one sentiment, that of power. Will the day ever dawn when England will have made enough progress in civilization to take more pride in saying that the sun never sets on a wrong done by its Government? Will the time ever come when all those emblems of wild beasts: teeth, horns, claws, etc., which are proudly flaunted on red, white and blue rags, will disappear and be replaced by emblems more in keeping with a truly Christian civilization?

For 137 years we Acadians have, day by day, seen the sun set on this wrong, the ghost of which haunts us unceasingly. Often, it is true, have sympathetic writers applied balm to our wounds; but how much sweeter would be the thought that this wrong has been righted or at least acknowledged by the Government itself! Great, indeed, would be our joy if such a consolation were offered to us. Since this deportation -was executed without cause and against the orders of the only competent authority—the Home Government—the confiscation of our property by the iocal authority, by the despoiler, was, from the first, null and void; and therefore our claim to reinstatement or to compensation cannot be questioned. As this solution would be embarrassing and onerous, we would ask nothing more than that a certain sum be devoted to the founding of a college for higher education for the benefit of the Acadians of the Maritime Provinces, or that the two existing Acadian colleges be liberally endowed. The struggle for existence is still very hard for these Acadians; robbed of the rich farms they owned, the sons of the exiles had to become fishermen, coasters, mechanics; those who took to farming again were forced to do so on soil of a very inferior quality; hence it is only at the cost of heroic sacrifices that they have succeeded in founding these two colleges. It would be a noble, though slight reparation of the past to place these two institutions on a footing that would make them more efficient; this would, moreover, win the gratitude of all the young men who should profit by this generous deed and also of all the educated Acadians who mould the opinions of their countrymen. And, if this small satisfaction be deemed excessive, we should be glad of any declaration, of any pronouncement implying acknowledgment, regret or amends for the wrongs we have suffered. Is this hoping too much? Corporations are ajudged to have no soul; is this true of governments?