[RAYMOND] NOVA SCOTIA UNDER ENGLISH RULE 77 
mote the cause of New France under trying and perplexing conditions. 
It may be perfectly true that the action of the French governors in 
employing the missionaries, le Loutre, Germain and Gaulin, to incite 
the Indians to acts of hostility at a time when peace prevailed between 
the rival crowns was unjustifiable, but such proceedings were charac- 
teristic of an age which acted in accordance with the maxim “all is 
fair in love and war.” There was little confidence at the time on the 
part of the opposing leaders with regard to the designs of their rivals, 
and neither the one nor the other was disposed to be too scrupulous 
in securing an advantage. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle did not 
bring peace in America. 
The Acadians, in their simplicity, were at a loss how to act and hesi- 
tated as to their course of action until they were involved in a common 
ruin. That they would have been wiser to have shown more decision 
is easily said, but in view of what they were and the situation in which 
they were placed, the line they followed seems a natural one. 
The conduct of the French missionaries, too, was not unnatural. 
They were ardent patriots, for the most part, and Church and State 
were so closely united in their day that the priests were regarded by 
the Acadians and the Indians as their natural leaders in both temporal 
and spiritual affairs. The Abbé le Loutre was surely an extreme spe- 
cimen of his class and his actions bordered on phrenzy at various times, 
drawing upon his head the censure of his ecclesiastical superiors. 
The attitude of the English inhabitants of Nova Scotia and of the 
people of New England towards the Acadians implied want of 
confidence and dislike. They had suffered much at the hands of the 
savages, who had devastated their settlements, and were believed to 
have been inspired in their hostility by their French allies. There was 
also an element of religious bigotry that intensified the mutual dislike 
that subsisted between the two races. The temperate historian who 
reads the anathemas uttered by either party against the religion of 
its rival may deplore the lack of charity, but realizes how natural 
it all was. 
The controversy over the Acadian expulsion has been, even in 
recent days, too much influenced by religious and racial instincts. 
The conduct of Winslow and of Lawrence, on the one hand, and of La 
Jonquiére and the Abbé le Loutre, on the other, have been alike exe- 
crated by partizan writers. 
Governor Lawrence’s part in the Acadian Expulsion. 
There are, doubtless, many Canadians who will dissent from the state- 
ment that the course taken by Charles Lawrence was a very natural one, 
in view of all the circumstances of the case, but is there good reason 
