[bourinot] builders OF NOVA SCOTIA 2S 



no doubt there is something to be said in mitigation of the severe 

 sentence which posterity, largely influenced by the sentiment of pity to 

 which poetry and romance have lent their powerful aid, has passed upoti 

 a man. who, in his day, did good service for the crown and for the 

 development of the province committed to his care. 



One would fain believe that other measures, less cruel in their 

 consequences, could have been devised and successfully consummated to 

 bring the contumacious Acadians to their senses and make them 

 eventually loyal British subjects. But while we pity these exiles and 

 condemn the sternness of the resolve that drove them from the lands 

 which they had tilled with so much industry, it is well to remember that 

 in the conflicts of old times between the French and English colonies 

 humane councils too rarely dominated, and the annals of la petite guerre, 

 which constantly devastated parts of New England, are full of the stories 

 of murdered men, women and children. Even Frontenac, brave soldier 

 and statesman, was ready to carry out a bold plan by which all the 

 British and Dutch people in what is now New York state would be 

 forcibly driven from their homes and their places taken by the French. 



Lawrence was a stern soldier like Frontenac and believed that, in 

 the deadly struggle between France and England for the supremacy in 

 North America, the conditions of the province required that he should 

 deal vigorously with a people who obstinately declared themselves 

 neutrals, and might at any moment be found flghting on the side of 

 England's hereditary foe. At the present time, so far removed from the 

 uneasy, insecure condition of things that existed at the beginning of the 

 Seven Years' "War, it is not easy to form an impartial judgment on the 

 severe conclusion to which Lawrence came — reluctantly we would fain 

 hope — on the ground of stern military necessity. Lawi'ence was a man 

 of inflexible purpose who had ever before him the object of establishing 

 the authority of England beyond dispute in a province whose security 

 was committed to his care. He conferred enormous advantages on the 

 province by inducing the migration from New England of a large number 

 of settlers, who possessed those industrious, thrifty qualities which have 

 done so much for the old Puritan colonies from which they came to 

 Nova Scotia in the middle of the seventeenth century.^ 



With the names of Cornwallis and Lawrence must be mentioned that 

 of the first chief justice, the Honourable Jonathan Belcher, the second son 

 of a governor of Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard College, and a 

 student of the Middle Temple. The earlj- enactments of the legislature 

 were drafted by him and made the basis of the statutory law of the 



1 Notwithstanding my eflForts for a number of years I have not been able to find 

 in England or America a portrait of either Cornwallis or Lawrence, who, above all 

 other governors of Nova Scotia, must be regarded as the makers of the province, 

 and entitled to special recognition in this paper. 



