MISCELLANEOUS. 1139 



In 1744, England and France were still again involved in war. 

 Among the earliest hostile deeds were the surprise of the English 

 garrison at Canseau, Nova Scotia, and the destruction of the buildings, 

 the fort, and the fishery there, by a force from Cape Breton, and the 

 capture at Newfoundland of a French ship, laden with one hundred 

 and fifty tons of dried codfish, by a privateer belonging to Boston. 

 These, however, are incidents of no moment, and may be disposed of 

 in a word. 



The French fisheries had continued prosperous. They excited envy 

 and alarm. Accounts which are considered authentic, but which I am 

 compelled to regard as somewhat exaggerated, show that they 

 employed nearly six hundred vessels and upwards of twenty-seven 

 thousand men; and that the annual produce was almost a million 

 and a half quintals of fish, of the value of more than four and a half 

 millions of dollars. More than all else, the fishery at Cape Breton 

 was held to be in violation of the treaty of Utrecht; for, as has been 

 said, that island was in the never-yet-defined country, Acadia. 



Robert Auchmuty,* an eminent lawyer of Boston, and judge of the 

 court of admiralty, when sent to England as agent of Massachusetts 

 on the question of the Rhode Island boundary, published a pamphlet 

 entitled "The importance of Cape Breton to the British nation, and a 

 plan for taking the place," in which he demonstrated that its con- 

 quest would put the English in sole possession of the fisheries of North 

 America ; would give the colonies ability to purchase manufactures of 

 the mother country of the value of ten millions of dollars annually; 

 would employ many thousand families then earning nothing ; increase 

 English mariners and shipping; cut off all communication between 

 France and Canada by the river St. Larwence, so that, in the fall of 

 Quebec, the French would be driven from the continent; and, finally, 

 open a correspondence with the remote Indian tribes, and transfer the 

 fur trade to Anglo-Saxon hands. All this was to follow the reduction 

 and possession of a cold, distant, and inhospitable island. Such was 

 the sentiment of the time. 



In 1745, the conquest of Cape Breton was undertaken. Viewed as 

 a military enterprise, its capture is the most remarkable event in our 

 colonial history. Several colonies south of New England were invited 

 to join the expedition, but none would consent to waste life in a project 

 so mad; and Franklin, forgetting that he was "Boston-born," ridi- 

 culed it in one of the wittiest letters he ever wrote. In Massachusetts, 

 and elsewhere at the North, men enlisted as in a crusade. Whitefield 

 made a recruiting house of the sanctuary. To show how the images in 

 the Catholic churches were to be hewn down, axes were brandished 

 and borne about; and, while Puritanism aimed to strike a blow at 



*Robert Auchmuty was of Scottish descent, but was educated at Dublin. He came 

 to Boston when young, and was appointed judge of the court of admiralty in 1703. In 

 1740, he was a director of the "Land Bank," or bubble, which involved the father of 

 Samuel Adams and many others in ruin. He was sent to England on important serv- 

 ice, and , while there, projected an expedition to Cape Breton. After his return, he was 

 appointed judge of admiralty a second time. He died in 1750. His son, Samuel, a 

 graduate of Harvard University, was an Episcopal minister in New York; and his 

 grandson, Sir Samuel Auchmuty, a lieutenant general in the British Army, and died 

 in 1822. The Auchmutys of the revolutionary era adhered to the side of the crown. 



