If Nova Scotia was to be retained with a population ever ready to rise at the first gleam of success of the enemies of Great Britain and its religion, Louisbourg, it was evident could not be allowed to continue, a constant omen of danger and loss. Whoever first proposed the attack, and I think it must have been a necessity everywhere understood, it was Shirley, then Governor of Massachusetts, who prepared the organization by which the first taking of Louisbourg was effected, and whose energy and ability led to the expedition of 1745. William Pepperel was appointed its commander. Few such expeditions have been marked by such signal organization and completeness, a striking contrast to the contemptible result of Phipp’s expedition against Quebec in 1690, and Walker’s miserable failure in 1711. Admiral Warren commanded the naval forces. Louisbourg fell. The booty was immense, and to increase it the French flag was kept flying so that vessels from France entered the harbour to become the spoil of the conqueror. A lesson not forgotten when Boston was evacuated by the British in 1776, by the incompetent General Gage and his equally inefficient lieutenants. For the British flag, still flying on the fort, invited the English vessels unhesitatingly to sail in, if combatants, to become prisoners of war and for the stores and merchandise to be sequestrated. It is said that at Louisbourg the share of a seaman before the mast was eight hundred guineas. The efforts on the part of France to revenge this reverse were futile. The design was even to destroy Boston, but the expedition was one of the most impotent on record.
Port Royal, Annapolis seemed more easy of attainment. The commandant knowing the weakness of his garrison applied for reinforcements. On the arrival of 420 men, they were sent to Minas. A French fort was then at Chignecto. An attack was at once determined. The English troops took no precaution, as if they were in full security. Led by Acadian guides to the exact locality where the men were quartered, the French arrived at 2 o’clock in the morning on 23rd January, 1747. Snow was falling so the advance was not seen until close on the sentries. The troops, attacked in bed, made a desperate resistance, but they were defeated and capitulated. Such a result would have been impossible without the assistance of the Acadians, who led the troops precisely to the points to be attacked and withheld all knowledge of the expedition.
The disgraceful peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was made in 1748. It is hard to believe that Louisbourg and Cape Breton were given back to the French under the vague clause that no conquest since the commencement of the war should be held. England, therefore, retained Nova Scotia and France Cape Breton, for the tragedy of Louisbourg to be repeated ten years later. We all recollect the toast of Blucher that the diplomatist may not lose by the pen what the soldier has gained by the sword. On this continent we have much to remind us how a few words in a treaty, indistinct and indefinite in their purport, have ignored many years of national effort, courage and determination, at the same time sacrificing remorselessly a multiplicity of private interests.
But the time had come when the quarrel between France and England should be fought out, and both powers felt that this chronic condition of war could no longer continue. In ten years the struggle had ceased. One by one the strongholds of France passed from her hands, and in ten years her flag had ceased to be a type of power on the continent. Both countries accordingly put forth their whole strength in this period: a fact of importance when the question of the treatment of the Acadians is judged. One of the first steps was the foundation of Halifax in 1749 under Cornwallis. It was done with rare organization, with perfect success. Without delay Cornwallis called upon the Acadians to take the oath of allegiance. They declined. For six years was this request avoided with ill-concealed hostility. “In fact,” said Governor Hopson in July, 1753, “what we call an Indian war is no other than a pretence for the French to commit hostilities upon His Majesty’s subjects.” The French, moreover, while recognizing the provisions of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, drew an arbitrary boundary of Nova Scotia: that of Missiquash River, now the boundary of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and La Jonquière, then Governor of Canada, sent a force under La Corne to erect a chain of forts from the Bay of Fundy to Bay Verte. They constructed Fort Beauséjour. The Governor of Nova Scotia established Fort Lawrence, near the settlement of Beauséjour. In 1755 it was resolved to drive the French from their position. As was looked for, the Acadians were there on the French side, but the fort was taken and called Fort Cumberland. It was these very encroachments of the French against Nova Scotia which led to the declaration of war in May of 1756. What followed I need but cursorily mention. Louisbourg again fell in 1758; Quebec in 1759. In 1760 Louisbourg was demolished, for no other port than Halifax was needed. In six months this monument of French power, which it had taken twenty-five years to raise, was levelled to the ground. All of value was transported to Halifax, many of the boucharded stones, even, having been taken there. In this year Montreal capitulated, and De Vaudreuil signed the capitulation which gave the continent to British rule.
All these facts require to be stated when the deportation of the Acadians has to be considered. What else could be done with them in this crisis? From the period when Cornwallis first arrived, in 1749, it was the one question: how to act with a body of men disloyal to the country as it was governed. Too weak to obtain a national standing, but constantly intriguing to injure the authority they lived under but would not recognize; refusing all efforts of conciliation; and, with the guarantee of possessing personal liberty, the free practice of their religion, the enjoyment of their property, they still declined to give the slightest assurance of good behaviour or fidelity. They refused even to furnish supplies to the British garrison, and they ranged themselves actually on the side of the French expeditions. They encouraged the savage to rob, and to plunder, and to murder. They complacently looked on while a vessel was looted under their eyes, and at the same time they were subject to no direct tax and had every privilege a loyal subject could ask. European writers who have alluded to this proceeding have dwelt much on the peaceful lives and the quiet, primitive habits of most of those who suffered. That fact has never been disputed. But poetry has endeavoured to sublimate their virtues to a height they never reached. The Acadians lived in rude plenty, unmarked by the least culture. Their prejudices were only developed among themselves. They were litigious and grasping, and French writers of that date complain that the specie which they received never left their possession, for they held it back for the hour of difficulty, which would have been in no way unwelcome if it ended in driving from their midst those who, with all the exaggeration on the subject, could not be called their oppressors. In September, 1755, a considerable number of the most troublesome were seized, arbitrarily, undoubtedly, and banished from the country. What the number was which were thus scattered and shipped in transports it is hard to state. Many were left behind, as the despatches of subsequent Governors clearly establish. In Grand Pré 1,925 were collected. At Annapolis and Cumberland many took to the woods. I cannot form any other opinion than that the number 5,000 is an exaggeration. Among the papers at the Colonial Office or at Halifax the true state of the case may be found. I am quite unable, from what I can learn, to give any estimate, but the evidence leads me to think that probably less than 3,000 were so deported. A melancholy fate of suffering, sorrow and privation; for these poor creatures were sent, homeless and destitute, to other States; but there was no unnecessary hardship and cruelty shown, and their condition was not worse than that of the immigrant who in old days sought our shores.
Undoubtedly it is a chapter of human misery, this enforced exodus, but those who suffered by it could have avoided it by a line of conduct marked by no one act in any way unworthy or humiliating. All that was called for was the acceptance of an unavoidable condition of events, beyond their control, irremediable. They refused to become friends of those who made the offer of peace and conciliation in the hour of danger and difficulty. They showed themselves to be avowed enemies. For upwards of forty years they destroyed the peace of the colony, and had at length to pay the penalty their conduct exacted, which was only with reluctance adopted as a necessity which self-preservation demanded.
It is not until 1714 that Nova Scotia ranks as a British Province. There were many mutations before it took this definite form, and in connection with its history there is the record common to most of the communities of this continent: that of misapprehension and a failure to understand its importance as an American possession.
For the hundred and seventy years which Nova Scotia has continued under British rule its population has steadily increased from various sources, and as a maritime people they have placed themselves in the highest rank. Nova Scotia thus possesses the distinction of being the oldest British Province of the Dominion.