Nova Scotia Archives

Au cœur de l'Acadie

Archives concernant la Déportation et le Grand dérangement, 1714-1768


236  NOVA SCOTIA DOCUMENTS.



taken with regard to those Inhabitants, until We have laid the whole State of the Case before His Maiesty and received his Directions upon it, yet it may not be altogether useless to point at some Provisional Measures which it may be proper to enter upon untill His Majesty's Pleasure can be known.

      We were in hopes that the Lenity which had been shewn to those People by indulging them in the free Exercise of their Religionl and the quiet Possession of their Lands, would by degrees have gained their Friendship and Assistance and Weaned their Affections from the French; but We are sorry to find that this Lenity has had so little Effect, that they still hold the same Conduct, with respect to them and Us, that they did before the Settlement of the Province, furnishing them with Labour, Provisions and Intelligence and concealing their Designs from Us.

      The Proclamation you issued for recalling those of the Districts of Minas and Piziquid, who went to work at the Dyke the French are making at Beau Sejour, and the proposal you made to employ them at Halifax, was certainly a proper and prudent step, and We should have been glad to have found that it had the desired Effect, but this is a Circumstance which in the present state of the Province is not to be hoped for.

      It is certain that by the Treaty of Utrecht their becoming subjects to Great Britain (which We Apprehend they cannot be but by taking the Oaths required of Subjects) is made an express Condition of their continuance, after the Expiration of a Year, and therefore it may be a question well worth considering, how far they can be treated as Subjects without    
    Governor Lawrence was appointed to the command of a Brigade by General Amherst at the second siege of Louisburg in 1758. During his administration, the first Legislative Assembly was convened at Halifax, under his authority, and met on 2nd Octr., 1758. He died at Halifax, on Sunday, 19th Octr., 1760, after eight days' illness, in the prime of life, of inflammation of the lungs, said to have been caused by a cold, taken at a Ball at Government House. He was unmarried. The Legislature voted a monument to his memory to be erected in St. Paul's Church, Halifax, "From a grateful sense of the many important services which the Province had received from him during a continued course of zealous and indefatigable endeavours for the public good, and a wise, upright, and disinterested administration." This monument is not to be found among those which now adorn the walls of St. Paul's Church. The expense of his funeral was defrayed out of the public chest. — Journals of N.S. Legislature. Manuscript Documents N.S.
    "He was a man inflexible in his purposes, and held control in no feeble hands. Earnest and resolute, he pursued the object of establishing and confirming British authority here with marked success." — Murdoch's Hist. N.S., vol. 2.



Selections NSHS II ~ Brown NSHS III ~ Winslow NSHS IV ~ Winslow
               

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