78 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
to doubt that he acted along what he believed to be the line of duty? 
Putting aside for the moment the sad details of the expulsion, we may 
face, from an academic standpoint, this question: Is it permissable 
for a government, desirous of building up a strong and vigorous colony, 
in the face of a rival nationality with which it is in conflict, to remove 
from its borders a class of inhabitants whom it believes to be disloyal 
and a source of peril? To this it seems to the writer there can be only 
one answer. But was this the question Charles Lawrence and his 
associates had to face? Or did they honestly believe that such an 
emergency had arisen? Here again opinions may differ. 
In any consideration of the policy for which the governors of. 
Nova Scotia and New England were jointly responsible in 1755, it must 
be borne in mind that the idea of a general deportation of the Acadians 
was not a new thing. It had been suggested ten years before by so 
mild a governor as Paul Mascarene, who gave it as his opinion that 
the most practical solution of the problem of making a strong British 
colony of Nova Scotia would be to remove the Acadians, and to give 
their lands to settlers from New England or to Protestant settlers from 
Europe and the British Isles.! Various suggestions made by the 
Governors of Nova Scotia along those lines have been already mentioned 
in this paper. 
It is difficult in these days of the entente cordiale, which King 
Edward, of blessed memory, did so much to create, to realize that a 
century ago each of the great powers of western Europe regarded the 
other as its hereditary enemy. In the period now under review pro- 
found distrust prevailed in America between the colonists of New 
England and those of New France. Long years of conflict had greatly 
embittered their relations and the antipathy had been accentuated by 
the atrocities begotten of the contact of either race with American 
savagery. New England undoubtedly suffered most from the pro- 
longed border warfare; indeed, there was hardly a hamlet or a village 
on the frontier that had not been the scene of a tragedy. 
For many years the situation of the Governors of Nova Scotia 
had been beset with difficulty. Granted that much may be said in 
favour of the Acadians, the fact nevertheless remains that, with singular 
unanimity Vetch, Caulfield, Philipps, Armstrong, Mascarene and 
Cornwallis expressed the opinion, that they were inimical to British 
rule and ready at the first favourable opportunity to side with the 
enemy. 
In order to form a proper estimate of the conduct of Lawrence, 
Shirley and Winslow in connection with the expulsion, it is necessary 


‘ See Canadian Archives for 1894, p. 109. 
