Nova Scotia Archives

Acadian Heartland

Records of the Deportation and Le Grand Dérangement, 1714-1768

336

NOVA SCOTIA DOCUMENTS.

opinion of His Majesty's Council, whose Resolutions are now humbly submitted, together with Copies annexed of the several Letters and Papers upon which their opinion is founded. I cannot, my Lords, but exceedingly lament so unfortunate a circumstance against this Government, and at a time when the Province was necessarily drained of its forces, for retaking St. Johns Fort in Newfoundland, and the more is it to be regretted, my Lords, as so many repeated and nugatory expulsions must naturally exasperate the minds of this dangerous set of people, who may become desperate for the worst mischiefs, by themselves, and their instigations of the Savages, to the possessions and improvements of the new Settlers. This sentiment I have the honor to be confirmed in, by a paragraph of a Letter from your Lordships Board to Governor Lawrence, dated 10th March 1757, expressing the sense of their Lordships, upon the bare permission of the Southern Colonies to some of the Acadians removed there from hence, to coast along from one Province to another, in order that they might come back to Nova Scotia, "that nothing could have been more absurd and blameable, and that had not the Governors of New York and the Massachusetts Bay prudently stopped them, there is no attempt, however desperate and cruel, which might not have been expected from persons exasperated, as they must have been, by the treatment they had met with."

“ The conduct of the Massachusetts Assembly, and more especially the Agent upon this occasion, will remain for your Lordships consideration. Having been referred by your Lordships to His Majesty's Secretary of State upon the subject of removing the Acadians, I do by this opportunity address my Lord Egremont, with the state of this proceeding, and have again humbly interceded in favor to this Colony and the new Settlements, that the Province may be freed from the dangers to be dreaded from so inveterate an Enemy. In the same paragraph of the Letter, their Lordships of the then Board of Trade, further express themselves to the late Governor, in terms the most pointed and conclusive, upon the matter before them of the Acadians, “ it is certainly very much to be wished, that they could be entirely driven out of the Peninsula, because until that is done, it will be in their power, by the knowledge they have of the Country, however small their numbers to distress and harrass the outsettlements, and even His Majesty's Troops, so as greatly to obstruct the establishment of the Colony.”