The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia: A Marginal Colony During the Revolutionary Years 9780773595224

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Copyright
Table of Contents
Introduction To The Carleton Library Edition
Foreword To The Original Edition
1: AN END AND A BEGINNING
2: THE INCOMING TIDE
3: THE NEW FOUNDATIONS
4: THE HUMILIATION OF JONATHAN BELCHER
5: LAND BOOMS AND RESIDUES
6: SELF-SUPPORT AND DEPENDENCE
7: A NEW NEW ENGLAND
8: NOVA SCOTIA UNDER HALIFAX RULE
9: THE NEW BROOM
10: PROFITS AND PAINS OF NEUTRALITY
Bibilography
Additional Bibilography
Note on The Author
Index

Citation preview

THE

NEUTRAL YANKEES OF

NOVA SCOTIA A M A R G IN A L C O L O N Y D U R IN G T H E R E V O L U T IO N A R Y Y E A R S BY

JO H N BA RTLET BREB N ER W IT H A N IN T R O D U C T IO N B Y

W . S. M ac NUTT

The Carleton Library No. 45 McClelland and Stewart Limited Toronto / Montreal

THE

CARLETON

LIBRARY

A series of Canadian reprints and new collections of source material relating to Canada, issued under the editorial supervision of the Institute of Canadian Studies of Carleton University, Ottawa. D IR E C T O R O F T H E IN S T IT U T E

Pauline Jewett g e n e r a l

e d it o r

Robert L. McDougall e d it o r ia l

board

David M. L. Farr (History) Michael S. Whittington {Political Science) H. Edward English (Economics) Bruce A . MacFarlane (Sociology) Gordon C. Merrill ( Geography) W ilfrid Eggleston (Journalism) Robin S. Harris (Education)

© McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1969 The following dedication appeared in the original edition: TO H A R O L D A D A M S IN N IS

7he Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia was first published in 1937 by Columbia University Press, New York.

The Canadian Publishers McClelland and Stewart Limited 25 Hollinger Road, Toronto 374

P R IN T E D A N D B O U N D IN CANADA B Y T. H . BEST P R IN T IN G C O M P A N Y L IM IT E D

CONTENTS

I N T R O D U C T IO N T O T H E C A R L E T O N L I B R A R Y E D I T I O N , X i

F O R E W O R D T O T H E O R IG IN A L E D IT IO N , x ix

1: A N E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G , 1

The death of Governor Lawrence; Belcher succeeds; decline of the strategic importance of Nova Scotia after the con­ quest of the lie Royal and Canada; prospective immigration to Acadian lands from New England; the handicaps ot geography and topography; rivalry of Great Britain and New England in trade; in the fisheries; in exploiting Nova Scotia; the constitutional issue; the permanent officials or Halifax - Green, Bulkeley, Belcher, Morris, Hinshelwood, Nesbitt, Breynton; the people of Halifax; three leading mer­ chants - Saul, Mauger, Salter; refugee Acadians; the In ­ dians; peace and change. 2:

T H E I N C O M I N G T ID E , 19 , The New Englandism of Nova Scotia; some obscuring factors; the general northward migration; land hunger, speculation; Lawrence’s attempts to attract the migrants; his terms of January 1759; immediate response; origins and character of the migrants; the fishermen; the farmers; gov­ ernmental aid; obstacles in 1759 and 1760; war; storm of November 1759; Lawrence’s problem-legacies; instability in London; New England opposition to emigration; speculative grants; Councillors and others; Alexander M cNutt, the broken dykes; the Acadian problem; the second expulsion; expediency rules.

3:

41 A survey of the Province before the Proclamation of 1763; Chaleur Bay to Cape Breton; Cape Breton and Canso; the Halifax region; the South Shore; Chester; Lunenburg; New Dublin; Liverpool; the Cape Sable Shore; Barrington; Y ar­ mouth; Annapolis and Granville; the Minas townships; Cornwallis, Horton, Falmouth, Windsor, Newport, Truro, Onslow and Londonderry; the Chignecto region; Amherst, Cumberland and Sackville; rivalries for the St. John and

T H E N E W F O U N D A T IO N S ,

Passamaquoddy regions; Governor Pownall’s group; Sttimpel; the Maugerville settlers; a suggested total census for

4 : THE H U M ILIA T IO N OF JON ATH AN BELCH ER, 54

Belchers prospects; Lieutenant Governor under Ellis; his character; unfavourable circumstances; the bounty systemrum duties and the distillers; the debt certificates; G ibbon’s reconstruction of how the Province was looted; Indians and the trade monopoly of B. Gerrish; expensive pageantry; the Indian reservation; the Debtor’s Act; J. Gerrish’s interest; the British economy campaign badly handled; difficulties with Council and Assembly; the strike of the Assembly / 0 1 -6 2 ; the offenders dismissed; Mauger organizes resist­ ance in London; Belcher’s fatal interference with the rum duties; legerdemain; Mauger wins; the Board castigates Belcher; he lies to the Council; Mauger acts again; Belcher supplanted by Wilmot; Belcher exposed; Belcher humiliated; Belcher s revenge. 5: LAND BOOM S AND RESIDUES, 7 7 Delimitation of the New England migration, 1760-68; rea­ sons; population growth to 1775; speculation; officials; from the older Colonies; M cN utt’s second campaign; the colossal grants of 1765; W ilmot’s death; Campbell and Francklin succeed; Francklin’s St. John Island adventure; settlement o f the Acadian problem; a sketch by regions of the growth o f settlement, 1763-75, Chaleur Bay along the coast to Passamaquoddy; emigration after 1768; immigration from the British Isles; Francklin and Yorkshire; Witherspoon and Scotland; British alarm. 6: SELF-SUPPORT AND DEPENDENCE, 1 0 4

Economic factors in Nova Scotian behaviour; relation to Anglo-American rivalries; trade; fisheries; relative failure of New England’s hopes; Nova Scotia’s “colonial” statusbalances of trade and o f payments; the Parliamentary grant; is : lu r; wood-products; mines; the coal problem; agricul­ ture; separation of the consuming from the producing regions;, the vain attempts to build roads; manufactures: Mauger s distilling industry in its relation to revenue, public debt and subservience to London; the mercantile position and interest; the campaign against the Stamp Act; relations with other Colonial opposition; economic depression and emigration after 1768; the Halifax Tea Party.

7 : A N E W N E W ENGLAND, 1 4 9

.

Nova Scotia in the progression “down East ; the division of the townships; character of the towns; architecture, rural and Haligonian; decoration and furnishing; household gear; home handicraft; dress; foods; barter trade; Halifax luxu­ ries; religion, urban and frontier; the established Church or England at Halifax and elsewhere; the heterogeneous Con­ gregational Church; Mather’s; Congregational churches in the townships; Presbyterianism; the Methodists and Baptists; Henry Alline; Roman Catholicism among the Indians, Acadians and Halifax Irish; education, Anglican and non-Angli­ can; worldly wisdom and social democracy in the household; tavern and meeting house; the contrast of aspirations and morals; diversion, Halifax and rural; literature and the arts; punishment as spectacle! cheating the Post Office; smallpox inoculation; nobility, spiritual and in manners; the rising generation. 8 ‘ N O V A S C O T IA U N D E R H A L I F A X R U L E , 1 8 0

Appearance and reality in royal government; Governor, Council, Legislature; the court structure; the struggle for the New England form of local government; apparent victory in Halifax control; issues in the Legislature; procedure; control of local revenue; change in the constituency system, 1765; the position of Francklin and Campbell; John Day s struggle for control of the purse, 1765-66; the incubus of debt; victory over the distillers in Halifax; defeat in London; depression and apathy; smuggling; the lighthouse ]candal; Mauger demands a change; Campbell transferred; Dart­ mouth sends out Legge to investigate. 9: T H E N E W B R O O M , 21 2

Francis Legge; his character; his temerity; close relations with Dartmouth; assistants sent by Dartmouth; Gibbons; Monk; disturbing reforms in the Parliamentary grant; the issues emerge; land tax, impost, excise; trouble with the Council; irregularities in the Treasury; the new quorum proposal; the audit of 1774-75 rocks the foundations; Monk prosecutes too zealously; the validity of the audits; Jonathan Binney, professional martyr; the crucial summer Legislature, 1775; gradual destruction of the harmony between Legge and the Assembly; the quorum proposal again; agreement about Binney; the loyal address of June 24; 1775; Legge s obtuseness; sudden change in temper of the Assembly; pos­

sible reasons; the break and the assault on Legge; his con­ fusion and concessions; the roles o f Francklin, Butler, and Mauger; Mauger assaults his third governor; Germain suc­ ceeds Dartmouth; the campaign against Legge; Francklin’s efforts at rehabilitation; Legge recalled for investigation; glee in Halifax; last nails in the coffin; Legge not allowed to return; Francklin loses the lieutenant governorship; mock tyranny destroyed. 1 0 : P R O F IT S A N D P A IN S O F N E U T R A L I T Y , 2 5 5

The Legge affair commits the Halifax oligarchy to loyalisnr some comparisons with the rebellious Colonies; mercantile position; financial position; obstacles to debt repudiation; Anthony Henry’s presentation of the rebel cause in the press, his appeal to the townships; the barriers to Nova Scotian solidarity; insulation; encouragement to passivity; pensioned Halifax profits by wars; the binding decisions of 1775-76; natural sympathies with New England; rebellious acts in Halifax; town meetings elsewhere: the appeal to cupidity; West Indian trade and supplies for Boston; the influx of fishermen and traders from New England; Halifax as naval and military headquarters; Halifax affirms loyalty; the out-settlements refuse militia service and demand neutral st^ys; desire to trade with both sides; natural friendliness to the American cause and disinclination to assist British; the American response; mutual dependence; American pri­ vateers and British navy curb the contraband trade; the appeals and efforts of active Nova Scotian revolutionaries; Lyon and Machias; Washington, Congress, and Massachu­ setts anxious to help; help impossible without naval superi­ ority; results of the invasion of Canada and the French alliance; Eddy’s unsuccessful raid on Fort Cumberland; Allan’s long efforts to win the St. John through the Indians; Francklin his successful opponent; the British navy drives in the American frontier; rival attempts to found New Ireland; the privateer raids and Nova Scotian behaviour Liverpool as an example; Lunenburg; Halifax prosperitydomestic events; naval executives; deserters, escaped pris­ oners, and seamen; failure to attract Loyalist settlers; the stifling of treasons; Hutchinson, Seccombe, Salter, and Houghton; the unreality o f Halifax authority; the Legisla­ ture, rum duties; country sheriffs; removable judges; the power of the purse; the shadow of the Loyalist migrationconflicts to be resolved.

B IB L I O G R A P H Y , 3 1 1 A D D IT IO N A L B I B L I O G R A P H Y , 3 1 7

N O T E O N T H E A UT HOR, 319

IN D E X , 320 M A P O F N O V A S C O T IA A T T H E T I M E O F T H E A M E R IC A N R E V O L U T IO N

IN T R O D U C T IO N - xv

cousins to the south, have been accepted as classic and satis­ factory. Like the Acadians of the intervale lands before them, the New Englanders were confronted with a choice. Unlike the Acadians they were not compelled to make the choice, for was no American invasion, no bitter crunch, that compelled them to react to a clearcut way. They were in the same positiori as countless thousands of “neutrals” in the thirteen colonies who shrank from showing a preference for one side or the other in a great civil war. They were able to wait out the crisis of conscience until British sea power decided their fate, just as the lapse of British sea-power off the Virginia Capes played so great a part in deciding the fate of “neutrals” in their homeland. Though Brebner’s perspective on the Nova Scotian scene is an outside one, though he is completely at home amid the political and cultural factors that made the American Revolu­ tion, he treads lightly over the military and strategic place of the province in the conflict. Students who wish to attain this more rarefied altitude should read Piers Mackesy’s The War for America, 1775-1783 (London, 1962) and G. S. Graham s Empire of the North Atlantic; The Maritime Struggle for North America (Toronto, 1950; rev. ed., 1958). W hat Brebner per­ haps did not develop sufficiently strongly was that so much British power rested on Halifax. The loss of Halifax would be “irreparable” (Mackesy, p. 156). Perhaps geography is all that is needed to explain everything. Sir Robert Peel would cheer­ fully relinquish the Canadas in 1838 but would insist on the retention of Halifax. The same strategic implication is to be found in the thinking of the twentieth century. Following a victorious war against Britain, General von Bernhardi would have Germany dominate the North American continent by occupation of the Nova Scotian peninsula. The Neutral Yankees merely sets the stage for what D r. Archibald MacMechan called the Nova Scotianess of Nova Scotia, the achievement of a provincial consciousness akin to a local nationalism, a rich awareness of distinctiveness that North American continentalism has never since overcome. As if determined to shun temptation Brebner halts abruptly with the advent of a fresh admixture of English-speaking people, the United Empire Loyalists. It is to be lamented that nobody of his calibre has since taken up the torch; that, in spite of a bounty of archival resources, the period from 1783 to the rise of Joseph Howe is wanting an historian of Brebner’s flair and industry. From the steady flow of bulletins and reports emanating from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, especially since the coming

xvi - T H E N E U T R A L Y A N K E E S O F N O V A S C O T IA

of D . C. Harvey as Archivist in 1931, the professional can laboriously glean the threads of the story. But the blending of Loyalists with Neutral Yankees, the fusing of a population of so many elements into an organism, the great leap forward that came with the W ar of 1812, the realization o f an oceanic destiny, have the making of an important volume that could be authentic as well as dramatic. Perhaps the newer and younger historians are fearful of the wider canvas and the making of minor errors. This stricture applies to all Nova Scotian history after Brebner. Our Canadian Whigs have run rampant through the later eras of the province, concentrating on the career of Howe which so well epitomizes the independence of its people, ignor­ ing almost everything else including Howe’s rival, J. W . John­ ston who enjoyed as long and as great a basis of public support as the tribune” himself. It might be asserted, perhaps a little fancifully, that native historians have subconsciously reflected the past and continuing aversion to Confederation. Howe is the hero of scores of books, plays, newspaper yarns, radio and television scripts. Comparatively speaking, Nova Scotians have ignored Tupper, Thompson, Fielding, and Borden, men whose performances were probably more Canadian than Nova Scotian After these there come Ilsley, Angus L. Macdonald and Ralston all national figures with a good Nova Scotian quality. Nova Scotian historians have a tremendous inducement to raise their sights above the traditional range that is colonial and local. What province, in proportion to population, has contributed more in men and ideas to Canada? The Neutral Yankees has no sequels o f its quality. If there is to be a caution, it must be that Brebner, in this book, is the historian of a single theme. Perhaps, as J. S. Martell generally complained in the Dalhousie Review (July, 1937), the BostonBay of Fundy axis is given too much weight in the assessment of underlying factors. The New England ingredient was the greatest of all single influences, but there were Acadians, Ger­ mans, English, Irish, and Scots as well. And it was not the New England connection that proved to be the ultimate determining factor in the making of Nova Scotia’s destiny. For a commentary on Brebner’s most important work, North Atlantic Triangle, see the introduction to the Carleton Library edition (1966) written by Donald G . Creighton. The assertion that Brebner was of the continentalist school of Cana­ dian historians, that he realized rather too late the important contribution of Great Britain to Canadian development, has

IN T R O D U C T IO N - xvii

some bearing on his earlier volumes on Nova Scotia. The Car­ negie series, The Relations of Canada and the United States, in the origin and planning of which Brebner played so great a part, was conceived and written on the premises that Canadians and Americans are remarkably alike, that past differences are of little consequence, that, in accordance with the promise of international peace to which the series is dedicated, no important differences could possibly occur in the future. North Atlantic Triangle was written to compensate for this maladjustment of emphasis. Brebner died in 1957, aged sixty-two years, with a large text on Canadian history unfinished. Edited and completed for the University of Michigan Series by Donald Masters, it views Canada from an approach more American than Canadian. Perhaps Brebner in his last years became more continentalist, more engrossed with Canada as a curious collection of frag­ mentations bypassed in the march of American Manifest Destiny. This prodigiously industrious scholar, whose books are so heavily and accurately documented, will be remembered as long as Canadian history is written. His work is much more factual than that of many of his contemporaries, but, combined with the toil of extracting his raw material from the archives and from obscure books, there is an imaginative talent that gave new meaning to facts and new classifications to hitherto amor­ phous areas of investigation. He was enthusiastic and infectious as well as imaginative. He carried on an extensive correspon­ dence with scholars in all parts of the English-speaking world, with mutual profit to his own and their works. A revealing account of Brebner is given by Gerald S. Graham, a younger contemporary and correspondent, now Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at the University of London, who knew him well. Like Burke, his mind roamed the universe; he knew a little, or sometimes a lot, about everything. O n a country tour he would describe habits of birds or deer and name the species. On a visit to a mine in Northern Ontario he could tell the chief engineer or surveyor the contents of the veins, or the best method of exploiting them, and usually he was right. And this enthusiasm infected his writing. After a Canadian Historical Association meeting where his virtuoso tactics were again in evidence, I told him he had the most elastic mind in North America. He replied neatly (and modest­ ly), “Yes, just like a balloon.” (This was privately written but Professor Graham has authorized its publication.)

xviii - T H E N E U T R A L Y A N K E E S O F N O V A S C O T IA

From the catalogue of Brebner's writings his origins might be surmised. He was Anglo-Canadian-American. Born in Tor­ onto in 1895, he studied at Toronto and Oxford before attaining his doctoral degree at Columbia in 1925. In the same year he joined the faculty of Columbia and in 1954 was made Gouverneur Morris Professor of History. He was a president of the Canadian Historical Association and held honorary degrees from M cG ill and Toronto. In this edition of The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia, the original text, references, and bibliography are unaltered. Two appendices in the original edition, one providing the rates of impost and excise tax in force in Nova Scotia, 1751-1782, and the other suggesting some emendation to New England’s Out­ post, have been omitted from this reprint of the work. A short of bibliography, comprehending works written since 1937, has been added. W . S. M A C N U T T ,

University of New Brunswick, August, 1969

Foreword “The old stock comes from New England, and the breed is tolerable pure yet, near about one half applesarce, and tother half molasses, all except to the Easterd where there is a cross of the Scotch.” s a m s l i c k , The Clockmaker, 1835 A n undeserved seventeenth-century name and a nineteenthcentury poet’s legend have obscured the fact that New England was the dominant influence on Nova Scotia up to the eve of the American Revolution. She repeatedly fought for the region in the seventeenth century, gradually drew it into her marine and mercantile domain, finally conquered it in 1710, supplanted the immigrants from England after the founding of Halifax in 1749, stimulated and carried out the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755, and planted twice as many settlers in the Province in their place. Yet when the Revolution came, Nova Scotia broke with her and remained loyal to Great Britain. This paradox has not escaped attention. Various historians, from D r. Andrew Brown in the eighteenth century onwards, have commented on it and offered explanations. The late Dr. Benjamin Rand of Harvard and his cousin the Reverend Dr. A . W . H . Eaton of Boston repeatedly drew the problem to the attention of historians, notably in 1891 at the American Historical Association. Yet no investigator attacked the problem sufficiently comprehensively to ensure general satisfaction. Dr. Rand, Dr. Eaton, and several other readers and reviewers of my New England’s Outpost, which dealt with Nova Scotia before 1760, urged me to make the attempt. The reason why this had not been done before was that it was properly questionable whether the result, even if fairly definite, was sufficiently important to justify the necessary expenditure of time. It seems debatable, for instance, whether this book should not have been much briefer than it is, con­ sidering the relative colonial insignificance of Nova Scotia. After I had made some preliminary searches my colleagues in history at Columbia University gave me the income for 1933 from the fund which the late Professor W . A . Dunning left to their disposal, and the university granted leave of absence, thus permitting a substantial beginning on the source materials at Ottawa and Halifax.

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T H E N E U T R A L Y A N K E E S O F N O V A SC O T IA

Unfortunately the complexities of a Nova Scotia which only intermittently lost its strategic importance in North America, which in itself was little more than a geographical expression, and which was a prize in dispute between New England and Old, prohibited rapid examination and disposal. They also made it difficult to present a lucid narrative. I have tried to weed out irrelevancy, antiquarianism, and response to local piety from the text by means of footnotes, probably with moderate success, for it is an intricate, perhaps fascinating, story of wheels within wheels, and after this lapse of time it seems wrong to offer any summary explanation. I hope that this study can be regarded as a fabric of hypotheses which interested readers will modify in the light of their own knowledge and ideas. Nova Scotia has always had a way of breeding insularity and neutrality, but it is a doubtful business to offer assured explanations for passive behaviour. That I have reached conclusions different from those of my predecessors and portrayed situations different from those which they portrayed is a matter o f arithmetic rather than policy, for opportunity provided me with more information. 1 hope that no one will have to do the work over again, but there are some parts of it which might repay deeper study with some alteration of interpretation. Since the foundation of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, in 1931, and the productive alliance made by the Archivist, Professor D . C. Harvey, with Dalhousie University, it seems certain that Nova Scotian history will be ably rewritten from the sources. Some years ago it was justifiable for an outsider like myself to enter the field, but with this book I withdraw, interested though I am in what others may find concerning Nova Scotia’s effect upon the immigrants after 1782. In a study of this sort it proved impossible to use footnotes merely for reference to supporting evidence, but speaking generally their matter can be ignored except by critical students. A detailed Table of Contents, in combination with an Index of the names and places mentioned in text and footnotes, seemed to provide a better apparatus for reference than mere chapter titles and a topical index. A n appendix contains some correc­ tions and modifications of this book’s predecessor, New Eng­ land’s Outpost. Quite the pleasantest aspect o f this work and one which may have considerably reduced the necessity of repeating it, has been the generous collaboration which characterizes the present generation of Canadian historians and other students

F O R E W O R D - xxi

of Canadian history. Determined to avoid waste effort and supported by policies such as those of the Canadian Historical Review, the Canadian Historical Association, and the D om in­ ion and Provincial Archives, they go out of their way to keep each other and interested historians in the United States in­ formed of their discoveries and ideas. Footnotes and biblio­ graphical references indicate only part of my indebtedness to this useful habit, for conversations and correspondence contri­ bute largely. A t the Public Archives of Canada not only Sir Arthur Doughty and his staff but students in related fields did everything they could to help, particularly Professors Marion Mitchell and W . M. Whitelaw. Miss Norah Story let me use her unpublished study of my subject and cleared up by correspon­ dence a number of difficulties when they arose. The same attitude prevailed at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. There Professor Harvey, Dr. J. S. Martell, Miss Margaret Ells, and Miss Marion Gilroy read the whole manuscript and offered both evidence and suggestions to improve it. Miss K . R. Williams, a student of M cGill University, did the same thing with about two-thirds of the manuscript. Miss Ells resolved some particu­ larly complex problems by correspondence. M y colleague, Professor Samuel McKee, Jr., criticized the book in the light of general American history. W ith Professor W . B. Kerr, whose interest in the loyal American colonies after 1763 led him to close study of Francklin and Allan of Nova Scotia, I have corresponded steadily since 1932, exchanging completed work, information, and ideas, and debating differences in interpreta­ tion. Professor R. G. Lounsbury lent me his unpublished study of the Nova Scotian land system and discussed with me his own and Professor Innis’s ideas about the North Atlantic fish­ eries. D r S. A. Saunders sent me the manuscript of the first section of his economic history of the Maritime Province region. The librarians and staffs of the Columbia University Library, the Dalhousie University Library, the Nova Scotian Legislative L i­ brary, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society have in my case considerably exceeded their normal great helpfulness to students. I have ventured to inscribe this book to Professor Innis, as an acknowledgment of his leadership in much of the recent effective reinterpretation of Canadian history. J . B. B.

Columbia University November 14, 1936

A B B R E V IA T IO N S B. o fT . C.H .A .R. C.H .R. D.A.B. MASS. H.S. N .E.O. N.S. A10, B l l , etc. N.S.H.S.C. P.A.C. P.A.C.R. P.A.N.S. P.A.N.S.R. R.& R. R.S.C. S.P.G.

Board of Trade Canadian Historical Asociation, Report Canadian Historical Review Dictionary of American Biography Massachusetts Historical Society New England's Outpost Nova Scotia State Papers, various series and Volumes Nova Scotia Historical Society, Collections Public Archives of Canada (Ottawa) Public Archives of Canada, Report Public Archives of Nova Scotia (Halifax) The numbers used with this abbreviation indicate manuscript volumes. Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Report J. Robinson and T. Rispin, A Journey through Nova Svotia Royal Society of Canada, Proceedings and Transactions Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts

1: An End and a Beginning “If we rightly improve the opportunity, we cannot fail to be as much an object of Envy as we were before of Compassion.”1

O n the afternoon of Thursday, October 24, 1760, the townsfolk of Halifax turned out to witness a stirring piece of pageantry. Governor Charles Lawrence, who had died of pneu­ monia on the 19th, was being taken to his burial in St. Paul’s. The procession which formed at the Governor’s house included representatives of all the elements which could contribute to the solemnity of the occasion - the troops and their officers with arms reversed and muffled drums, two pieces of field artillery, the officers of the provincial and municipal governments, the Legislature, the magistrates, the clergy, the physicians, the Freemasons, and prominent citizens. As their parade neared the church, Mistress A nn Wenman marshalled the pitiable, sickly, and deformed children from the Orphan House, who, singing a hymn, accompanied the coffin. Then the company found places in the unfinished church to listen to a florid eulogy from the Reverend John Breynton before the body was lowered to its place beneath the floor and buried close to the communion table. 2 After the funeral, private homes, the Great Pontac tavern, and the many rumshops buzzed with talk about the exciting present and the problematical future. It was hard to tell which was the more interesting - the question of Lawrence’s successor or the fall of Montreal, which had some six weeks earlier com­ pleted the conquest of Canada. They all knew that the Chief Justice, Jonathan Belcher, 3 had persuaded the Executive Coun­ cil to yield to him instead of to the Treasurer, Benjamin Green , 4 the presidency of the Council which in Lieutenant-Gov­ ernor Monckton’s absence gave him the highest authority in 1 G o v e rn o r Law rence’s c o m m e n t to the N o v a S co tian A ssem bly on the capture o f Q u ebe c, D e c . 4, 1759, N .S .D 2 , 201. a T . B . A k in s , “ H isto ry o f H a lifa x C ity ,” N .S.H .S.C ., V I I I , 61-62 (1 8 9 5 ). 3 R . G . L o u n s b u ry , “ J o n a th a n B clcher, J u n io r ,” in Essays in Colonial

History (N e w H a v e n , 1931). ‘ M e rc h a n t a t B oston a n d Secretary a t L o u is b u rg , 1745-1749; m e m ­ b e r Executive C o u n c il a n d n a v a l officer a t H a lifa x . J u ly 14 a n d 19, 1749; J u d g e o f the A d m ir a lty , O c t. 15, 1750 to A p r . 11, 1753; in ­ terim P ro v in c ia l Secretary, Sept. to N o v . 1750 a n d A u g . 1752; P ro­ v inc ia l T reasurer, Ju ly , 1750-Feb. 2, 1768; die d O c t. 14, 1772.

2 - T H E N E U T R A L Y A N K E E S O F N O V A S C O T IA

the Province. They did not know that more than two years before, Belcher’s attorney, Ferdinando John Paris, had filed a caveat with the Board of Trade in London to anticipate the very situation which had just developed, but everyone knew some details of the feud between Belcher and Green, which antedated the first provincial Legislature in 1758. Those who hated Bel­ cher’s pomposity and those who were doubtful about his executive aptitude trusted that Lieutenant Governor Monckton would return or that a new Governor would be appointed. On the other hand, the Anglican clergy, who had felt the effects of Belcher’s devotion to the Established Church, hoped that the King would allow him to succeed to the governorship. The truth was that Nova Scotia had lost more heavily than men knew by the death of Lawrence. As Andrew Brown, who disliked him for his share in the Acadian expulsion, put it, he “possessed ye best talent for Representation [in London] that any Govr of N.S. ever shewed. ” 0 Some men may have risen above mere local preoccupations to a consideration of the general condition of Nova Scotia, and a few observers, keener than the rest, may have perceived that Lawrence s death marked the end of an era. 0 Their own town, part naval base and part frontier village, had shrunk to half of what it had been in the third year after its founding in 1749, in spite of the characteristic war-time prosperity. About 3,000 citizens7 remained in the houses, which, frequently built of unseasoned and unpainted lumber, had but weakly withstood the Halifax climate. Soldiers and sailors and civilians had torn down many of the empty houses and the fences around the disappointing farm lots of the town peninsula to provide fire­ wood, that prime necessity, which had already become expen­ sive. Yet it seemed unthinkable that the triumphs of the Seven Years’ W ar would not somehow set things right. The Acadians had been expelled from their lands in 1755. Louisburg had been British since 1758, and, as Lawrence told the Assembly after the news from Quebec in 1759, the British navy and armies had “Justly rebuked the Pride of France, and put His Majesty '•Brown M S . 19075, f. 261. F o r a note o n D r . B row n , see J . B. B rebner, “T he B row n M S S . a n d L o n g fe llo w ,” C .H .R ., X V I I 172 (Ju n e , 1936). 0 Discussed, w ith

considerable d e ta il fo r the pe riod

1710-1760, in

J . B. B rebner, New England’s Outpost (N e w Y o r k , 1927), hereafter cited as B rebner, N .E .O . 7 The estimates before 1761 require c au tio u s in terpre ta tio n , see I. F . M a c k in n o n , Settlements and Churches in Nova Scotia, p. 16 (H a li­ fax, 1930).

AN E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G - 3

in Possession of that barbarous Metropolis, from whence His good Subjects of this Province, and of the King’s other Ameri­ can Dominions have groaned under such continual and Unpar­ donable Wrongs.”s Now, with all Canada conquered, the future must be bright and free from the old fear of the French. Time was to show, however, that the conquests of lie Royale and New France had neatly destroyed the strategic importance which had won for Nova Scotia the spasmodic but increasing interest and financial support of Great Britain and New England since 1688. This sad circumstance was not imme­ diately obvious, but the unaccustomed neglect and the enforced economy to which the British Government subjected Halifax and Nova Scotia after the peace in 1763 were to have much to do with the pessimism, lethargy, and venality there during the succeeding twenty years. Instead of being the pivot on which turned the long battle lines of France and Great Britain in North America, instead of being the rival Gibraltar to Cape Breton where the seaway from Europe divided either to enter the St. Lawrence or to follow the coast southwestward to the older British colonies, instead of being New England’s closely-guarded steppingstone to the riches of the North Atlantic fisheries, a surprised and discomfitted Nova Scotia suddenly became to the British parliament and administration a relatively negligible colonial outpost whose usefulness for war must be conserved as cheaply as possible in days of peace, and to New England an eastern frontier region whose potentialities inside the New England economy could be exploited eagerly or casually, depending on relative rates of profits. N o doubt it was basically healthy for Nova Scotia to be thrown back on her own resources, but the shock of the change from receiving £5 0 ,0 0 0 a year from the British Parliament to receiving only a tenth as much was a severe one even when the reduction was spread over five years. 9 Lawrence, who had been forewarned of its coming, had a vision of the remedy, however, and he had started to bring his solution into reality during the last two years of his life. This was an old idea inherited from Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, who had formulated it in the early ’forties. Its growth had been gradual, 1 0 but after the expulsion of the Acadians, avowedly for military reasons, it could be bluntly summarized in a rhetorical question. 8 D ec. 4, 1759, N.S. D 2, 199. o T he a n n u a l grants 1749-1764, Chalmers Collection, N ova Scotia and Miscellaneous, f. 29 (N e w Y o r k P u b lic L ib r a r y ). B rebner, N .E .O ., chaps, v , v ii, a n d viii.

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“If Nova Scotia had been able to support some ten thousand Aca­ dians in comfort, why could not as many British Americans live on the same lands at least as well?” This question was being asked at a time when land-hunger in New England was about to be aggravated by the disbanding of armies and by Great Brit­ ain’s attempt to prevent the American colonists from breaking westward through the Appalachians into the hunting grounds of the Indians. Rural Nova Scotia had been almost depopulated by the expulsion of the Acadians in 1755. By that time, too, Halifax had shrunk from about 6 , 0 0 0 inhabitants to about 1,300; there were about the same number of German, French, and Swiss Protestant peasants at Lunenburg, and a few score fishermen here and there along the coast, notably at Canso. The war increased the population of Halifax again, but colonists rooted to the soil were still lacking in 1760. The policy-makers in London, Boston, and Halifax had hoped that the New England troops engaged in the capture o f Fort Beausejour and in the expulsion of the Acadians would be pleased to settle down on the empty farm lands, but the soldiers regarded their enlistments in typically North American fashion, and even when they accepted extra bounty money to remain on military duty at the forts, they had a way of slipping off home by land and sea. 1 1 Moreover, no New Englander with memories of frontier out­ rages was anxious to settle his family on lands still at issue between France and England and whose forest fringes still contained desperate Acadian refugees and Indians friendly to the French.The Board of Trade, however, kept urging Lawrence to begin the work by advertising in the other colonies and, when he came back fresh from the conquest of Louisburg in Septem­ ber, 1758, he was ready to act. 1 2 He was even half reconciled to defeat in his four-year fight against representative government in Nova Scotia by the thought that it would make the province more congenial to American colonials accustomed to such institutions. He issued his first public invitation on October 12, 1758, in the form of a proclamation to be distributed in the other American colonies. Now that the French were defeated in the Bay of Fundy and the G u lf of St. Lawrence, it was time to occupy the 100,000 acres of Acadian plowlands and the 100,000 acres of pasture, orchard, and garden. He rehearsed 31 F o r exam ples as la te as 1760, see P.A .N .S.2 19 , N os. 78-81, 83. 32 B. o f T . to Law rence, F e b . 7, 1758, N.S. A62, 95-97; reply Sept. 26, Ibid., 178-79.

A N E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G - 5

the riches of farm and forest and sea which were ready to be taken . 1 3 Ten weeks later he reported the fortunate coincidence which he had discovered between New England’s needs and Nova Scotia’s opportunity . 1 4 / have already been informed . . . that some hundreds of families, in the Colonies of Connecticut, Rhode Island and the Massachusett’s growing too numerous for their present posses­ sions at home, are associating and preparing, to take the benefitt of the Proclamation . . . another inducement besides the one already mention'd . . . is, that their taxes on the Continent are become intollerably burdensome by the War. The prospect seemed bright that Nova Scotia would share in the northward migration which was going on in New Eng­ land , 1 5 but further inducements were necessary. Lawrence’s rival agents, Apthorp and Hancock of Boston and Delancey and Watts of New York, reported inquiries but asked for particular conditions of settlement. Lawrence and his Council, therefore, worked out and proclaimed the tempting details of land grants and tenure and township administration which were to be the subjects of much agitation in later years. 1 0 Before he died Lawrence had seen the beginnings of New England’s occupation of the Acadian lands. “I perceive already they have but to see the lands and to be in love with them . ” 1 7 While peninsular Nova Scotia subsequently proved to be an effective magnet for land-hungry New Englanders and one of the destinations of their northward migration, past history had shown that it had geographical and topographical pecu­ liarities of its own and in relation to the rest of the continent which thoroughly complicated settlement and economic devel­ opment. 1 8 It was, to begin with, practically an island and the « N .S. A62, 193-96. Law rence exaggerated the a m o un ts o f cultivated la n d . i* T o B . o f T ., D e c . 26, N .S. A62, 208. F o r s im ila r expression in the N .S . A sse m bly , N .S. D 2 , 7A1. is l . K . M a thew s, The Expansion o f New England (B o s to n , 1909) o m its the m ig ra tio n to N o v a S cotia. i® A copy o f the p ro c la m a tio n o f J a n . 11, 1759, p rin te d by Jo h n D ra p e r , B oston, P .A .N .S. 301, N o . 3; also W . O . R a y m o n d , “ C o l. A le x a n d e r M c N u tt a n d the Pre-Loyalist Settlem ents o f N o v a S co tia,”

R .S.C ., 1911, Sec. I I , 23-115, A ppendices. N .S. A64, 197.

17 T o B . o f T ., J u n e 16, 1760.

is h .

A . In n is , “ A n

In tro d u c tio n to the E c o n o m ic H isto ry o f the

M a ritim e s (in c lu d in g N e w fo u n d la n d a n d N e w E n g la n d ) ," C .H .A .R ., 1931, (p p . 85-96; Select Documents in Canadian Economic History,

1497-1783 (T o ro n to , 1929), p p . 9-190.

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island farthest “down east” for Americans unless one wanted to take the last step to Newfoundland. The Isthmus of Chignecto which made it technically a peninsula was attached to the north­ east corner of the main continental mass and to the northern end of the “island” itself, which lay snug and exactly parallel to the mainland coast with the Bay of Fundy between them. Moreover the tangled, uninhabited forest massif of what is now New Brunswick but was then mainland Nova Scotia lay between the peninsula and either Canada or New England. The way to reach Nova Scotia from other settled regions was by sea. Then, too, as befitting a northern terminus of the Appala­ chian range, peninsular Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island topographically were like rounded mountain ranges projecting above the Atlantic. Their peaks were not high above sea level, but the landscape was like the highlands of the Green or White mountains, rough and wooded, with lakes and swamps and narrow fertile valleys down which the rivers hurried. Only three areas were general exceptions to this rule, and not only was each of these separated from the other two by rough country across which there were virtually no roads, but all three were on the opposite side of the peninsula from the capital, whose position was dictated by the natural preeminence of Halifax harbour and the Bedford Basin as a naval station. Acadian skill in the building of dykes had mastered the phenomenally high tides of the Bay of Fundy to convert the marshy shores of Annapolis Basin, Minas Basin, and the southern slope of the Isthmus of Chignecto into fertile, cleared farm land, and cultivation had crept up the Annapolis Valley, up the river valleys around Minas, and over the low Chignecto ridge to the slopes that looked across the Mediterranean blue of Northumberland Strait to the park-like rolling lands of St. John Island (now Prince Edward Island). Yet there were no roads for wheeled vehicles. The way to go from one settled place to another in Nova Scotia, therefore, was also by sea, and the routes were not only long and round-about, but they exposed the sailing vessels to all the strange vicissitudes of wind, fog, tides, and currents in the comparatively uncharted waters of the Bay of Fundy, the G u lf of St. Lawrence, and the North Atlantic coast. Yet the very seas that insulated Nova Scotia contained their own recompense, if Nova Scotians themselves could be induced to seek it instead of conceding it to others. The penin­ sula and Cape Breton rose above the submerged North Ameri­ can continental shelf, whose lower hills were the great North Atlantic fishing banks and whose submarine valleys and plains

A N E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G - 7

were the greatest nursery of the cod in the world . 1 0 For more than 250 years the fisheries had been the scene of manifold rivalries in which Nova Scotia had played a relatively passive part. There had been the international competition in which Portugal and Spain had given way to France and England, and France had finally been confined to the enterprises which she could base either on her home ports or on St. Pierre and Miquelon and the west coast of Newfoundland. There had been the contest between the fishery on the Banks themselves to take the catch to Europe “green” in brine and the fishery from harbours and smaller craft which improved the product a n d . reduced its bulk by drying the split fish on shore. The dry fishery having proved in general more remunerative than the green, it became clear that the most efficient fishery was that based on ports nearest the fishing grounds if beaches and sun were available and Nova Scotia clearly had the chance to develop her own fishery instead of serving as an advanced ^sum m er base for the aggressive New England fishermen. 2 0 Finally there had been the rivalry between New England and Old England which was soon to eventuate in war . 2 1 The North Atlantic fishery itself was but part of the matter in dispute, for more important was the trade which could be built around it. During the seventeenth century Boston had become the “Mart Town” for the West Indies, and had secured a substantial share of the English capital which poured into the islands by carrying and exchanging the fish, wood-products, foodstuffs, and livestock of the north and the sugar, molasses, tropical products, and rum of the south. Trouble came when the worn-out British sugar islands began to yield to French rivals, about 1700. Then New England, which dominated the Ameri­ can carrying trade, broke through mercantilistic control by trading directly with the French islands and weaving an enor­ mous fabric of marine trade largely illegal and therefore never accurately measured with England and Ireland, the Mediter­ ranean countries, Africa, the British and French West Indies, Nova Scotia, lie Royale, and Newfoundland. Attempts to put New England in her place in the British mercantilistic structure 10 In n is , op. cit., C .H .A .R ., 1931, p . 8 n . a n d R . G . L o u n s b u ry . The British Fishery at Newfoundland, 1634-1763 (N e w H a v e n , 1934), In tro d u c tio n . so T he technical dete rm in an ts o f the N o v a S cotian fisheries are dis­ cussed below , pp . 104-8. 21 The best analysis o f this as it affected N o v a S co tia is the u n p u b ­ lished econ om ic history o f the M a ritim e Provinces b y D r . S. A . Saunders.

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failed, as did efforts to make her help to bolster up the declining British sugar islands. New England was, of course, interested in the fisheries themselves. She even enjoyed the advantage over Great Britain of a winter fishery on the G u lf of Maine. Her fishermen had operated along the coasts o f Nova Scotia since the beginning of the eighteenth century, and after the Seven Years’ W ar they broke into the Newfoundland fishery. 2 2 But since her fishermen, operating far from their bases, could seldom produce the merchantable” fish which Europe demanded, New England either carried the fine product from the sedentary French fishery at Cape Breton or from Newfoundland, or, more frequently, took the poorer nonmerchantable fish to feed the negro labour of the West Indies. Nova Scotia entered the picture during the eighteenth century as an advanced base for the New England fisheries and as a possible rival to Newfoundland and Cape Breton for curing merchantable fish.23. Canso was the site of a vigorous effort to emulate the French sedentary fishery at Louisburg between 1720 and 1744, but was eclipsed by her mighty rival. When Louisburg fell and the war ended, New England was ready and anxious thoroughly to test Nova Scotian potentialities for fishing and fish-curing. Fishermen as well as farmers were about lo transform Nova Scotia from an outpost to a “new New England . ” 2 4 Nova Scotia had not yet had occasion to decide whether she would leave New England’s orbit in order to stand with Great Britain. Indeed she was relatively so negligible that she was on the whole a passive spectator of the struggle. None the less, her political future was being determined very considerably by the competition in fisheries and trade at Newfoundland, in the G u lf of St. Lawrence, and at Cape Breton. It was as yet not manifestly clear that Nova Scotian fisheries based on the peninsular ports must for the most part be limited by the same technical considerations as had hitherto handicapped New England . 2 5 Since its founding in 1749 Halifax had seen another variety 23 A fte r the in itia l assault G re a t B rita in he ld her ow n d o w n to the R e v o lu tio n , w ith a b o u t 70 percen t o f vessels by n um be r a n d 81 percent by tonnage. 23 The sailin g tim e fro m N e w E n g la n d to S o u th S hore ports varied fro m tw o days to two weeks.

21 The phrase used by V . L . O . C h ittic k in his Thomas Chandler H alihurton (N e w Y o rk , 1924), a lite rary study w h ic h is also a pene­ trating historical c om m entary . 25 See below , p p . 104-8.

A N E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G - 9

of clash between New and Old England, this time along legal and constitutional lines. 2 0 After the conquest in 1710 the British authorities had been content to let Nova Scotia, with its alien population, drift along under a makeshift, if authoritarian, local government and instructions to use Virginian precedents in unforeseen eventualities. 2 7 The expectation of an Englishspeaking, Protestant population after 1749, however, elevated Nova Scotia to normal American colonial status and, while government was at first by Governor and Council, the intro­ duction of representative institutions was so clearly envisaged in the Governor’s commission and instructions that the vocifer­ ous demands for them from the New Englanders who had poured into Halifax could not be denied. 2 8 This concession was forced upon Governor Lawrence in the midst of a crucial war and in spite of his fears that it would give play to colonial republicanism, because the British authorities expected more immigration from colonies where “the rights of Englishmen” were assumed to be part of British citizenship. In counter­ balance, it was expected that the new Chief Justice, Jonathan Belcher, would keep the laws free from the republican taint and that, at least as long as most of the official salaries continued to be paid by the British Parliament, the representative branch of the Legislature would not seriously handicap the Governor and his appointed Council. Nova Scotia was intended to be truly a “Royal Government” and not a quasi-rcpublic like Massachusetts. 2 0 Its immaturity and financial dependence seemed to ensure that this would be the case, but the opposing New England influences had been and must continue to be strong. Notwithstanding various devices to give the appearance of broader representation, the Nova Scotian Assembly of Law­ rence’s lifetime stood for Halifax, just as Halifax stood for almost empty Nova Scotia. But Halifax was no single entity. Indeed, just before the New England immigration to the empty farm lands and the promising ports elsewhere, Halifax was sloughing off many of the temporary characteristics incidental to her founding and to war time and taking on some enduring qualities which future days would demonstrate. That made for 20 F o r a v a lu a b le , i f biased , inside story o f N o v a S co tian politics, see Art Essay on the Present State o f the Province o f Nova Scotia by A M e m b e r o f A sse m bly ( ? H a lifa x , 1774).

37 B rebner, N .E .O ., pp . 73, 134, 138, 239, a n d passim. 28 Ibid., c h ap . ix. M See L . W . L abare e, R oyal Government in America (N e w H a v e n , 1930).

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clashes of temperament and opinion, the immediate pettiness of which tended to conceal their larger significance. For one thing, Governor Cornwallis and his successors, Hopson and Lawrence, regarded the official, salaried positions in the administration as personal patronage which they dispensed to their friends, usually military men, or to those who by birth and station came nearest to the soldier’s idea of proper members of the governing class. Gradually, however, the meagerness of life in Halifax and the obvious conclusion both of war in North America and of lavish expenditure on Nova Scotia winnowed out the less resolute officials, leaving those who were contented with the positions they had won or who saw opportunities of advance­ ment and profit. The chief officials of 1760 had then become Nova Scotians. Only one of Cornwallis’s original Council, for instance, remained, and he, Benjamin Green, had meanwhile become Provincial Treasurer, occupying an office of obvious advan­ tages, whose affairs were so complex that he was almost left alone in authority. Green was a minister’s son from Salem, graduate of Harvard, and bred a merchant in Boston, but since the Louisburg expedition in 1745 a purposeful member of the official class. The Provincial Secretary, Richard Bulkeley, on the other hand, had been one of Cornwallis’s British aides-decamp and secretaries in 1749, had secured the profitable post of director and manager of public works at Halifax (January 1, 1752), and had earned reversion of the secretaryship from Lawrence in October, 1758, by serving as a substitute for others. 3 0 He was also distinguished among execrable military penmen and composers for his clear hand, good spelling, and lucidity. In him the British soldier became the Nova Scotian official first by favour and then by merit and application. He, like Green and other officials, held secondary offices and per­ quisites, but he had also used some of his gains to purchase an office on the old Annapolis Royal establishment as a sort of financial sea anchor. 3 1 After he was settled in Halifax he inherited a very considerable fortune in England, but did not go home to enjoy it. The third of the high official triumvirate was the Chief 30 T he careers o f N .S . officials c an best be traced in the com m ission bo ok s, P .A .N .S. 163-70. T here are also som e reasonably accurate biographies in A k in s , op. cit., p p . 225-37. F o r Law rence’s recom ­ m e n d atio n o f B ulkeley to succeed W illia m Sherriffe (d eceased ), S ept. 20, 1760, see N.S. A64, 218. 31 See his m e m o ria l to L ie u te n a n t G o v e rn o r H a m o n d , M a y 9, 1782, N.S. A102, 40-41.

A N E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G - 11

Justice, Jonathan Belcher, J r . , 3 2 favourite son of the Governor of Massachusetts, 1731-41, and of New Jersey, 1747-57. Com­ ing as he did from mingled official and mercantile stocks in New England, and trained at Harvard and the Middle Temple for a political career, he proved unable to fulfill his father’s and his own hopes of great distinction or properly to adapt himself to his own capacities. Thus, although he had managed to make some kind of place for himself at the Bar in Ireland between 1742 and 1754, his repeated failures to obtain political preferment in England had made him urge his father to let him return to America. Meanwhile, however, he had offended American visitors to London by his stilted manners and selfimportance. He landed in Halifax as first Chief Justice in October, 1754, rather more English than the English, having ardently accommodated himself to the Church of England. Six years in the changing circumstances of Halifax had failed to teach him adaptability, judgment in human relations, or a sense of proportion about himself, when he became President of the Council after Lawrence’s death. He was learned in the law and a stickler for its English complexion in Nova Scotia, but the itching ambition instilled into him by his father made him reach beyond his own competence to grasp executive office. He had already estranged a substantial part of the citizenry by his obdurate resistance to Massachusetts precedents and practices in the courts. . These three high functionaries might, and did, differ violently among themselves, but they had a way of combining to face the outer world as the self-conscious administration of the province. Three lesser officials served to illustrate other tendencies. Charles Morris, the Provincial Surveyor, for in­ stance, gradually established a well-deserved reputation for honest impartiality and lack of personal greed. From 1746 on, he had been the chief agent in the field of Governor W illiam Shirley of Massachusetts in the policy which culminated in the expulsion of the Acadians and he had obeyed orders with a cold-blooded efficiency which seems sadly inhumane today. Yet this modest, well-informed, and able man, who could have filled his own pockets from his office and earned endless enmities, instead won general esteem and did so during the days when Nova Scotia was imitating only too successfully the govern­ mental corruption which was at its peak in Great Britain. Archibald Hinshelwood, one of Cornwallis’s clerks, was a rackety, excitable man who always found remunerative, if 33 See above, p . In .

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minor, official employment and who succeeded old Sebastian Zouberbuhler as leading spokesman for the German settlement of Lunenburg. He won momentary prominence in 1758 by a violent clash with the new Assembly which neatly symbolized the deep schism which was to develop between it and the C ouncil.1-* Yet after yielding to his anger over the Assembly’s curbing of his office-seeking in a profane verbal assault on Assemblyman W illiam Pantree in the streets, when he was arrested he apologized to the House. In fact, he learned dis­ cretion so well that after failure to secure a seat in the first Assembly, he was a member of the second, third, fourth, and fifth and was honoured by serving them as joint clerk. This official cast in his lot with the representatives of the people. W illiam Nesbitt, originally another of Cornwallis’s clerks, made up for a stormy and occasionally discreditable career as a practicing attorney and as Attorney General by serving the Assembly faithfully as Speaker for almost twenty-four years. Like Hinshelwood, he transferred some of his allegiance from the official group to the Assembly, probably because he failed in his long effort to induce the Board of Trade to add the Attorney General’s salary to the annual parliamentary grant and therefore had to depend on the favour of the local Legisla­ ture. Before he died, in 1784, he had outlived his enigmatic earlier behaviour to become a sort of living monument in Halifax and its legislative halls. The official group would be incomplete without mention of a sturdy upholder o f authority, the Reverend John Breynton, Rector of St. Paul s. Like so many eighteenth-century parsons who had to scramble anyway they could to get out of the class of domestic servants, he sullied a respected public character by his private greed for offices and perquisites. He was an indefatig­ able and skillful beggar to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London, he adroitly secured seniority over his associate Thomas Wood at St. Paul’s when the first pastor, W illiam Tully, retired, and he supplemented his income by permanent and temporary chaplaincies to the navy, army, militia, Assembly, poorhouse, workhouse, and orphanhouse.’ He even induced that noble clergyman and sinecurist, Robert Cholmondeley, hereditary “surveyor and auditor general of all his Majesty’s revenues arising in America” to appoint him his deputy for Nova Scotia in 1772.3-*A lowlier Nova Scotian cleric, 23 See A n Essay on the Present State o f the Province . . . p 34 A u g . 20, 1772, P .A .N .S. 168, 193.

10

A N E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G - 13

W illiam Ellis, believing that Breynton had interfered to check his career, charged him with having in 1776 £ 4 ,0 0 0 invested “in the funds,” an annual income of £ 1 ,5 0 0 , and two-thirds of the provincial gentry in his debt, a picture for which Breyn­ ton had provided the background if not such caricature in detail. 3 5 Yet during the smallpox epidemic of 1775 Breynton risked his life in devoted ministrations to the sick, winning an enthusiastic public approval which went far to explain “why the Meeting House [for Dissenters] should be almost deserted and the Church so crouded that it is difficult to procure Seats. ” 3 6 Breynton laboured manfully, aided by the full weight of official support, to uphold the Established Church and the British connection in a Halifax and a Nova Scotia where members of the dissenting faiths formed an overwhelming majority. It would be illuminating to sketch a cross-section of the Halifax citizenry to set over against the officials who governed them, but the nature of early Halifax and of the surviving historical evidence makes it impossible to present as explicit and representative a picture. Unofficial civilians are seldom commemorated in the pages of history except as groups or parties, because historical common sense suspects that the single persons who may be thrown up into sight and acquaintance are not safely representative of the mass. W e have, however, many and varied contemporary generalizations about the people of early Halifax which can be weighed and balanced so as to provide a reasonably trustworthy description. A t bottom, and they were well aware of it, the people of Halifax in 1760 were pensioners of the British Government. The British settlers of 1749 had been brought out to provide a core of English-speaking subjects in a colony which after forty years was still French. The Palatines, Swiss, and French were sent out shortly afterwards because they were supposed to be Protestants who could offset and perhaps undermine the prevalent Roman Catholicism of the Acadians at a time when authority was hesitant and unsuccessful in encouraging emigra­ tion from the British Isles. These first two groups of settlers were rapidly reduced in number by disease and desertion to the French, to the older colonies, and back to Europe, but fortun­ ately self-reliant New Englanders came to Halifax to take some 35 E llis

to

Legge,

1.2.1311. “ Anonym ous

Sept. 2 ,

1776, Dartm outh

Papers, p o r tfo lio I I ,

letter o f 1776, Society for the Propagation o f the Gospel, Nova Scotia, B25, N o . 151.

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of their places because they had heard that immense sums of public money were being spent on Nova Scotia . 3 7 Inevitably prosperity and numbers were so closely con­ nected with war and the presence of army and navy that men came and went in spite of governmental efforts to control them. The medley of types in the town was pronounced - disappointed emigrants from the British Isles, adventurers and simple peas­ ants from the Continent, camp followers of the armies, hangerson to the navy, sutlers and contractors from England and America, capable Americans from the older settlements, and lowly persons of all sorts eager to make a living but willing to fall back upon government doles. While the Anglicans were in authority, the Nonconformists formed the majority, and there were enough Jews to need a burying ground 3 8 and enough Quakers to render necessary special arrangements for their affidavits. "’ Probably the most common single enterprise was the selling of rum. The virtues of these pioneers are seldom recorded, whereas their clashes with authority, their peccadillos, and their crimes abound in the state papers and court records. Probably mere survival and the striking of roots in Nova Scotia should be accounted their great virtue. In addition they assumed and carried out various public offices, from the lower magistracy and the militia to the volunteer fire brigade and supervision of the poor and helpless. Even with lavish public expenditure, life in the frontier towns o f Halifax and Lunenburg was meager and hard. Fire had swept the Halifax peninsula and even burned off great patches of the thin peaty loam which covered so much of it. A few crops were grown in deeper pockets of earth or across the harbour at Dartmouth, but most of the farm foodstuffs and even some firewood came to Halifax by boat from Lunenburg, where the amazing transformation of inland European peasants into the best sailors of the North Atlantic was not yet apparent. Fish and game were plentiful for those who had the skill to take them, but trained and equipped fishermen were rare and most men still feared the Indians and Acadians who, they believed, infested the woods. Shelter was poor and the climate between December and June was very trying. Halifax was the capital and, like other capitals, was 37 See abov e, p. 3n. £ 9 4 ,6 1 5 in 1753; the a n n u a l average, 1749-57, was £5 7 ,2 6 3 . 88 Site fo r the w orkhouse, N o v . 2 , 1758, “ a piece o f L a n d w here the Jew s’ B uryin g G r o u n d w as, N .S. D l , 84. “ B ill passed a llo w in g a ffirm a tio n inste ad o f o a th , D e c . 21, 1 7 5 9 N .S. D 2, 239.

A N E N D A N D A B E G IN N IN G - 15

eventually to be supported by the rest of the province, but in 1760 it was dependent on Great Britain because there was no country population to do the work. One group of names emerged from the shifting ranks of the relatively nameless. The merchants of Halifax, like those of New England or London, made it their business to be known to authority, to frame mercantile policy for government, and to lobby vigorously in defence of their interests. Their influence in Nova Scotia during the next twenty years was to be very great and while much of it was under cover and therefore hard to define, something can be said about the men and the state of affairs at about the time of Lawrence’s death. The three great merchants during the first ten years of Halifax who were making hay while the British sun shone and the Seven Years’ W ar was being waged actively, were Thomas Saul, Joshua Mauger, and Malachi Salter. Saul, a commissary agent for Sir W illiam Martin, of London, was sufficiently prominent to be a member of the Council during the fifties, and held a succession or important public and semi-public employments in connection with the supply of provisions and with military pay. Lawrence, whom he repeatedly aided by selling him specie for bills on London during times of shortage, seems to have trusted him thoroughly, so much so that he delegated to him the difficult and relatively unsuccessful effort to collect the Acadians’ foodstuffs and livestock at the time of the expulsion. 4 0 Saul found it profitable to stay in Nova Scotia until 1760, when the parliamentary grants were shrinking and his chief customers, the regiments, had finished their work. Lawrence gave him a year’s leave from the Council in 1760, and he did not return. 4 1 For his type, the day was done. Saul’s chief rival, a man of lasting influence in the province, although he too left about the same time, was an acquisitive and unscrupulous Jersey sea captain, Joshua Mauger, who ultimately grew wealthy and influential enough through his mercantile adventures to buy his way into the unreformed British Parlia­ ment . 4 2 He gave up the mercantile marine to become a merchant at Louisburg after 1745, whence, like Green and others, he *0 B rebner, N .E .O ., p . 225 n., a n d N .S. A66, 55, 83, 87. 41 Sept. 20, 1760, extended fo r six m o n th s fr o m 1761; P .A .N .S.165, 83, 139. « T he evidences fo r his carecr are very scattered, b u t P ro f. D . C . H a rv e y has p u t at m y disposal in fo rm a tio n recently sent to h im by a student o f M a u g e r’s career, J . P . A lex a nd re , E sq., o f the G eneral Post Office, L o n d o n . H is n am e was pro n o u n c e d “m a jo r ,” see N.S.

A89, 27.

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transferred his activities to Halifax. Although he was agent victualler to the British navy, he also became something like chief provider of contraband for the French Governor at Louisburg . 4 3 His real inspiration, however, was his entrance into the distilling business behind the protection of a duty of three pence per gallon on spirits entering Nova Scotia. Between 1751 and 1763, while the duty was being progressively raised to a shilling and threepence, he and a lesser distiller (John Fillis) enjoyed a practical monopoly (except for smuggled spirits) of a commodity which was a principal part of everyday life in H ali­ fax. He also had a profitable share in the attempt to collect and dispose of the Acadians’ form products in 1755. He owned land and small stores for trade with soldiers, Acadians, and Indians here and there in the Province, and when he left for England he entrusted his affairs to an able subordinate, John Butler. Mauger’s stake in Nova Scotia was so considerable that he never gave up his interest, indeed he managed to make himself the principal consultant to the British government on Nova Scotian affairs. 4 4 Salter, who was subject neither to the wholesale favour of Lawrence, as was Saul, or to his slightly veiled hostility, as was Mauger, was a somewhat more obscure figure, but he was notable in that he chose to maintain his commercial contacts with New England, which had been his home. A t Halifax he seemed more the official than the merchant because after 1754 he held a number of offices as collector of impost and excise and of the lighthouse fees, but he seems to have kept his money invested in the New England-Nova Scotia trade. Indeed his connections got him into serious trouble in 1776. A t that time he owned and commanded a ship which was being loaded in London, presumably for Halifax. The British authorities sus­ pected that it was really destined for rebellious Boston and warned the Nova Scotian Governor. He and the Council kept Salter under supervision for some time, but did not press their prosecutions to a conclusion . 4 5 Other merchants naturally attempted to take the places of the original magnates, but time was to show that Mauger in particular had fortified himself too well to be dislodged. He extended his connections in London so that a London group 43 See Jo se p h G r a y ’s story fo r D r . A n d re w B ro w n . Brown M S . 19073, ff. 117-117V.

u H e w as la y in g the fo u n d a tio n fo r this po sitio n as early as 1750; N.S. A36, 5. 4B N.S. A96, 108-9, B17, 116-21; P .A .N .S. 136, 258, 266.

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competed with Boston to keep Nova Scotia in commercial dependence. For a while, the stakes were not large, but by a series of bold strokes Mauger’s group, again in competition with Boston, secured considerable financial control of Nova Scotia as well. When the Revolution came, Halifax at least found itself bound by ties which it did not find easy to break. 4 0 In spite of the great expulsion of 1755 and victory in the Seven Years’ W ar in 1760, Nova Scotia still contained unde­ termined numbers of refugee Acadians. Most of them had found safe retreats in the forests north of the Bay of Fundy, and a lesser number had hidden inland from the natural harbours at the southern tip of the peninsula, while still others had found their way back to join these groups from the American colonies to which they had been deported. From 1755 to 1759 they maintained a precarious existence and even waged a little guerilla warfare against the Halifax and Lunen­ burg settlements and the environs of Forts Sackville, Edward, and Cumberland, or picked off an occasional fishing vessel along the G ulf coast. When their hope of help from France came to an end during 1758, 1759, and 1760, they began to give themselves up. A t the time of Lawrence’s death the administration had a rough idea of the locations of about 2 , 0 0 0 professedly well-intentioned Acadians, but had not decided upon any policy towards them in spite of the fact that to many their presence seemed a serious handicap to immigration from New England. A few small bands of Indians also seemed a menace to settlement. They had learned in the past to play off British and French against each other for presents and supplies, both on the mainland between New England and Canada and on the peninsula near Cape Breton. In war, however, they had been consistently friendly to the French and expert in magnifying their small numbers and military effectiveness by practices which spread terror even by the rumor of their presence. They, more than the Acadians or the French from Canada, had bottled up the Nova Scotians close to their garrisons. Now they, too, had lost the support of the French, and, which was perhaps even more serious, there need no longer be any com­ petition for their friendship. They were about to descend from M M a u g e r fo rm ed a useful allian c e in L o n d o n w ith B ro o k W a ts o n , a re m ark ab le cripple d w a if w h o also began his m ercantile career in N o v a S co tia a n d w ho rose to becom e L o rd M a y o r o f L o n d o n ; see J . C . W eb ste r, “ S ir B ro o k W a ts o n ,” re prin t fr o m The Argosy, Sackvillc , N .B ., N o v ., 1924.

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the prestige invoked by the terror which they knew they could inspire to the receiving of bare sufferance from the European settlers. After questioning their priests and making some fum ­ bling efforts to estimate the new situation, in 1760 they were led by their dependence on European supplies to make overtures for peace. Such was Nova Scotia when Lawrence died and the war in America ended. The time was pregnant with fundamental changes. Policies, institutions, and men themselves must shake off the arbitrary habits incidental to the long conflict and turn to the elastic, experimental methods which could accompany peace.

2: The Incoming Tide “It has been formed by overflowings from the exuberant population of New England.”^

Burke’s description of the population of Nova Scotia was made just before the migration to Nova Scotia of American Loyalists, the majority of whom were from the Middle Colonies. Yet, in spite of that influx, the mark of New England has always been evident in Nova Scotia, largely because of strong regional influences, but perhaps more because the New Englanders who moved in after 1760 laid the abiding foundations of Nova Scotian life. They and Nova Scotia itself worked upon the Loyalists and other subsequent immigrants to produce an amalgam far more similar to New Hampshire and Maine than to the other Loyalist refuge in Upper Canada (Ontario ) . 2 This New Englandism has not been perfectly palatable to Nova Scotians, who have a natural desire for their own separate identity, nor has it given the characteristic flavour which it should have given to the histories of Nova Scotia, either alone or in larger syntheses. 3 For this there are several reasons, such as the breach with New England in the Revolution, the Toryism of the Loyalists, the anti-American patriotism of the W ar of 1812, and the economic rivalry since those times. Maintenance of Halifax as a British naval and military base for long gave upper-class Halifax a rather stubborn, if exotic, Englishry, and there were blocks of post-Revolutionary immigrants who might be excused for not recognizing the New England matrix. But it is significant that the Acadians have never been unaware of it and that it was a basic assumption to the shrewd early nine­ 1 E d m u n d B u rk e ’s description o f N o v a S cotia, F e b . 11, 1780, in h is speech in the C o m m o n s o n e con om ical re fo rm a tio n , Works, (O x ­ fo rd , W o r ld ’s C lassics) I I , 370. the a m a lg a m see D . C . H a rv e y ’s excellent essay “T he In te l­ lectual A w a k e n in g o f N o v a S c o tia ,” Dalhousie Review, X I I I , 1-22

2 On

( A p r il, 1933). 3 A n ex trao rdin ary early instance is S. H o llin g sw o rth , w ritin g just after the R e v o lu tio n , The Present State o f Nova Scotia . . . (2 d ed i­ tio n , E d in b u rg h , 1787), 120-21, w ho says th a t the A c a d ia n s’ la nd s “ becam e a desart” a n d defeated every effort to repeople them u n til the c o m in g o f the Loyalists. See also, fo r instance, Uie in a u g u ra l address o f the N o v a S co tia H isto ric al S ociety by L ie u te n a n t G o v ­ ernor A rc h ib a ld , J u n e 21, 1878, N 3 .H .S .C ., I , 18-33 (1 8 7 9 ).

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teenth-century observer, Thomas Chandler Haliburton . 4 The prevalent idea that in North America the only direction of migration has been westward has also played its part. It does not require much investigation to reveal that substantial bodies o f men have sought every point of the compass, depending upon the easiest routes of travel and the location of resources to be exploited."’ During the eighteenth century, from Pennsylvania northward, there was distinctly more migration toward the north and east than toward the south and west, but it did not grip historical imagination as firmly as did the later bursting through the Appalachians into the central plain. Yet Nova Scotia and, after 1784, New Brunswick received most of their original English-speaking population, pre-Loyalist and Loyalist, from what was to a large degree the same northward American migration which peopled Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and parts of what are now Quebec and Ontario. Fish and timber played their parts, but most of the colo­ nizing migrants were land-hungry farmers. During the seven­ teenth century American colonial populations increased, the underlying ownership of an increasing proportion of the avail­ able lands became concentrated in a few hands, and the stage was set for the rise in prices and the outbursts of speculation which characterized the eighteenth century in America as well as in Europe. From Carolina northward the desirable lands between the mountains and the sea were rapidly granted away. Newcomers and younger sons, finding themselves thwarted in the normal North American desire to own their lands outright or even if they relinquished that desire, unable to pay the rising rents, looked to the frontiers for opportunity. Older, wealthier Americans, who had seen how American fortunes were made, were eager to pave the way by profitable large-scale operations. But habit, topography, ease of communication, and the barrier of Fienchmen and Indians had inclined the northern colonists to prefer the coast and the broader river valleys to the Appala­ chian uplands. They used ships far more than roads between colony and colony. In brief, they did not go west until well after the victory over the French in 1760. Their initial expansion 4 C h ittic k , op. cit., passim. I n his early w ritings H a lib u r to n fo u n d it expedient to be o b liq u e a n d p la y fu l in touc hing o n this delicate m atter, b u t la te r when he fell o u t o f lov e w th a N o v a S co tia w hich was fighting fo r dem ocratic self-government he was m ore b lu n t. 5 T he Swiss w h o reached M in n e so ta fr o m H u d s o n B ay a n d the P e n n ­ sylvania G e rm a n s in O n ta r io are o d d exam ples.

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was north and northeast as French influence was gradually eradicated. 0 Lawrence spent the last two years of his life shepherding part of the movement of fishermen and farmers into his empty Nova Scotia, for although in obedience to British orders he included ex-soldiers in his plans for settlement he had little faith in their merits. 7 “Every soldier that has come into this Province since the establishment of Halifax has either quitted it or become a Dram Seller.” His inducements were set forth in what Haliburton called “The Charter of Nova Scotia,” that is, the proclamation of January 11, 1759.8 The Board of Trade had been urging him for more than three years to get settlers, and now he issued his terms on the advice of the Council, slurring over the fact that the Board had expressed their expectation of first receiving his proposals for approval. 0 Lawrence clearly had the Acadian farm lands chiefly in mind, for he proclaimed the establishment of a characteristically American rural township system and attempted to give the impression that life in Nova Scotia would be like life in agri­ cultural New England, without bothering to make special provision for the fishing towns on the Atlantic coast concerning which he had been in negotiation with potential colonists for two years. The farming townships, so situated as each to include desirable proportions of arable, pasture, and woodland, were to contain 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 acres, that is, were to be about twelve miles square. The arable and pasture were to be distributed in proportion to ability to cultivate, while each head of a family was to receive 1 0 0 acres of wild woodland and every other member of the household, fifty acres; the whole at a quit rent of one shilling per fifty acres a year, payment of which was to begin at the end of ten years. The lim it to one person in his own name was 1,000 acres. Every ten years one-third of each grant was to be cultivated, improved, or enclosed. N o new grant could 0 O n ly p a rt o f the n orthw ard m ig ra tio n is treated in L . K . M athew s, op. cit., b u t it figures in cide nta lly in such larger histories as that o f H . L . O sg o o d , o r fo r N o v a S co tia pa rtic ula rly , B . M u rd o c h , A His­

tory of Nova Scotia (3 vols., H a lifa x , 1865-67). A n explicit exam ­ in a tio n o f the effects o f la n d m o n o p o ly is R . H . A k a g i, The Town Proprietors o f the New E ngland Colonies (P h ila d e lp h ia , 1924), especially P a r t I I . W h ile this b o o k o m its the m ig ra tio n to N o v a S co tia, it provides its setting in N e w E n g la n d . W . O . R a y m o n d , op. cit., a n d I . F . M a c k in n o n , op. cit., discuss the m ig ra tio n as it affected N o v a S cotia. 7 T o B . o f T ., M a y 11, 1760, N .S. A64, 141. 8 See abov e, p p . 4-5.

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be made until the conditions of the old were fulfilled. The Government of Nova Scotia is constituted like those of the neighboring colonies, the Legislature consisting of Gover­ nor, Council and Assembly, and every township as soon as it shall consist of Fifty Members will be entitled to send two representatives to the General Assembly. The Courts of Justice are also constituted in like manner with those of the Massa­ chusetts, Connecticut and other Northern colonies. This section of the proclamation was distinctly disingenu­ ous inasmuch as Lawrence and Belcher had fought hard to keep the government of Nova Scotia unlike that of New England, indeed, they were at the moment in the midst of a protracted struggle with the Assembly over the same issue in the local government of Halifax. The answers to imagined New England tears went on. There was “full liberty of Conscience” and freedom to practice any religion except Roman Catholicism. The members of Dissenting congregations were excused from tithes to support the Church of England. There was abundant military protection. The Governor was, however, not authorized to offer any bounty of provisions to intending settlers. He declared himself “ready to lay out the lands and make grants immediately" under the conditions of his proclamation and to rcceive and transmit to London for approbation proposals “for settling an entire Township” under conditions conceived to be more advantageous by ambitious promoters. The response was immediate, for everywhere in New England there were soldiers and sailors and fishermen and traders who knew Nova Scotia and had been talking about its potentialities for years. They now had answers to their most important questions. The next step was to send agents to inspect sites and conclude negotiations. The stage was set for trans­ planting surplus population from solidly English communities, sturdy and self-reliant in the fourth and fifth generations of North American living. To some degree, also, this emigration to Nova Scotia was, like the movements to other North American Irontiers, an example of the urge to political, social, and economic independence whose course can be traced down through the American Revolution and populist revolts such as Shay s Rebellion to the explosion of Jacksonian democracy in the United States and the winning of responsible parliamen­ tary government in British North America. “ T o Law rence, F e b . 7, 1758, N .S .A 6 2 , 87.

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It is easy to guess and guess correctly what kinds of persons would respond. The largest number would be ambitious, capable fishermen and farmers whose scope at home was cramped by the entrenched position of wealthier, more privileged men. They and their attendant fringe of those who for one reason or another had failed to succeed in the older colonies would naturally form the free associations for township development and administration which had come to be the accepted eigh­ teenth-century American apparatus for the opening up of new free or nearly free lands. But in Nova Scotia as elsewhere, they had to compete with their natural rivals, the land speculators, whose ready capital enabled them to secure and take up large tracts which they either let or sold to lesser men in tolo or in which they retained large blocks of the best land until its socially created value reached what they judged to be a sufficiently remunerative level. The speculators were men of capital or promotional skill who were much more interested in the agri­ cultural than the fishing townships. Consequently they (if not their settlers) were natives of the larger centres, such as Boston or even Philadelphia, and included Thomas Hancock and Benjamin Franklin in their number. The co-operative groups and the general body of settlers came from the coast and interior of Connecticut and Rhode Island, from Cape Cod and Nantucket, from New Hampshire, and from all parts of Massachusetts. 1 0 The fishermen and whalemen were interested in the whole South Shore from Cape Sable to Canso because of its abundant harbours and its nearness to the Banks. 1 1 Some thought of Cape Breton where the French had been so successful and where at Louisburg an empty, if sorely damaged, town awaited occupa­ tion. There were even a few who were curious about the riches of the southern G u lf of St. Lawrence in salmon, seals, and walrus as well as in sea fisheries and whaling. The farmers for 10 D r . E a to n ’s pioneer w o rk o n the precise origins o f the pre-Revo-

lu tio n ary settlers has been extended in M a c k in n o n , op. cit., a n d in the un p u b lish e d m aster’s essay at D a lh o u s ie U niversity o f J . S. M a rte ll, Pre-Loyalist Settlements around M inas Basin. F o r aspects o f the C o n n e cticu t m ig ra tio n see F . M . C a u lk in s , History of N or­

wich (H a r tfo r d , 1845), p . 189, and History of New London (N e w L o n d o n , 1852), p . 470. H . C . K ittredge discusses the m otives a ctu a t­ in g the em igrants fro m C a p e C o d a n d N a n tu c k e t, Cape C od: Its People and Their History (B o sto n , 1 930), pp . 108-9. R . G . H u lin g ’s “ T he R h o d e Is la n d E m ig ra tio n to N o v a S c o tia ,” Narragansett H is­ torical Register, V I I , 89-135 (A p r ., 1889) is detailed a n d acc om ­ p an ie d by va lua ble docum ents. 11 K ittre dge , op. cit., 108-9.

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whom a new I arm had always implied laborious clearing were obsessed by visions of the long-tilled, fertile lands of the Acadians in the Annapolis Valley, around the Minas Basin, and on the slopes of the Isthmus of Chignecto. A few saw advantages of nearness to the older settlements to be added to the natural attractions of the St. John Valley. The Acadians had cleared very little forest upland, but where even tiny rivers met Fundy tides, they had reclaimed the marshes. The Nova Scotian administration had relatively little to do with the immigrant fishermen, who promptly began what was to be their common practice of keeping out of the way of Government in the hope that Government would leave them alone. They skirted the coasts, investigating harbours, beaches, and water and timber supply. W hen they chose a site some of them set to work making fish stagings and flakes and either assembling or constructing the frame buildings in which they were to live, while others went off in ships or boats to gather the harvest of the seas. They made only the slightest efforts at agriculture, for its season clashed with that of the fisheries. In their off-seasons they constructed wharves and various buildings or set up on the streams the crude sawmills which were helpful in many of their daily pursuits. Shipbuilding usually belonged to more settled communities, but Nova Scotian timber was too tempting to resist. It was necessary to send agents to Halifax to secure the general township grant and desirable to find out how much material assistance could be got from Government, but the fishermen knew that no roads led to their little settlements by land and that visiting them by sea was a tedious process. They neither needed nor wanted surveyors to lay out their townships, lor their kind had been settling their own rivalries over beach room and other matters since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Government might mean impressment for the navy, subjection to taxes and to the rigidity of landsmen’s civil institutions, which seemed silly to men who might close up a fishing village for a season or two or even knock down its movables to reassemble them somewhere else. Scores of vessels, for instance, carried on a summer fishery near Cape Sable with very sketchy establishments. The agents of the farmers’ associations and of the specu­ lators were more orthodox. They must see the quality of the lands to which they asked title, they must bargain as closely as possible for aid in transportation and in getting settlers established, and they must have answers to all sorts of questions

T H E IN C O M IN G T ID E - 25

which either had been or would be asked by intending im m i­ grants. O n April 20, 1759, Lawrence wrote to the Board of Trade about his first real catch.11* I have now the satisfaction to acquaint Your Lordships further, that Agents appointed by some hundreds of associated substantial families, residing in the Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, are arrived here without any other business or design than to visitt the Bay of Fundy and chuse lands for the immediate establishment of two or more townships. In their joy and relief Lawrence and his Council allowed themselves to be prodded from the position taken in the pro­ clamation. Not only did they decide to grant three townships on special terms without waiting for the approval of the Board of Trade, but they were persuaded to provide (conditionally) some financial assistance for the transportation and subsistence of the settlers. The Council was busy for several days with these careful negotiations for the peopling of Horton and Cornwallis, from Connecticut, and Falmouth, from Rhode Island, on the south shore of Minas Basin. Then Charles Morris took the agents in a provincial vessel to see the tracts in their winning spring verdure. By the end of July the business was over and the provisional grants issued. 1 2 So it went all summer. The Council seldom met without land business and periodically approved townships in each of the three areas tilled by the Acadians and at ports of the South Shore as well. Every part of New England was represented; and if the lists of names of prospective settlers had proved to be a little more genuine than they were, Nova Scotia would have received in the ensuing three years a population roughly proportionate to the available cleared lands. Lawrence’s report for the autumn mail attempted a summing u p . 1 3 He listed nine agricultural townships and four fishing townships, which were to receive 2,550 families in three years, 650 in 1760, 1,300 in 1761, and the remainder in 1762. Meanwhile “persons are now engaging for six or eight Townships more.” “I make not the least doubt but that every Acre of cleared Land in the province as well as the whole Coast from hence [Halifax] to Cape Sable will be well peopled sooner than heretofore has been conceived to be possible.” He regretted that aid in transHa N .S. A63, 30. See C o u n c il M in u te s, N.S. B9, passim, A pril- July , 1759. « Sept. 20, 1759, N .S .A 6 3 , 71. H is abstract is p rin ted in W . O . R a y ­ m o n d , op. cit.

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portation and foodstuffs, which would cost about £ 1 ,5 0 0 , had been promised to the lirstcomers without consulting the Board, but after long discussions the Council had deemed it necessary. “Had We refused the Bounty they asked . . . I have good reason to apprehend as they were the first that they would have been the last and the only ones we should have seen on that Errand.” For various reasons the great flood of immigration did not begin until after Lawrence’s death. For one thing many of the agents and promoters were so like their kind before and since that even the wishful Lawrence cannot entirely have believed that they could carry out their declared intentions. Then, sporadic outbursts of the guerrilla warfare which had been going on since 1755 occurred at Cape Sable, Lunenburg, Dart­ mouth, Canso, Fort Cumberland, Fort Sackville, and Fort Edward in 1759, so that the Council decided to postpone bringing in the New Englanders until the spring of 1760.11 The discovery that grants of land at Pisiquid (Windsor) and Chignecto had been made in 1736 to members of the old Annapolis Royal administration had no serious consequences, for it was promptly followed by arrangements for their annul­ ment for nonfulfillment of conditions. 1 8 The remarkably stupid order by the Board of Trade to “defer all further Proceedings untill His Majesty’s pleasure can be known ” 1 6 was fortunately scotched by their receipt of Lawrence’s glowing September report, but not without giving him and the Council a thoroughly uneasy winter and spring and eliciting a splendid letter of vigorous defence. 1 7 In March and May, 1760, Lawrence re­ ceived from the Board, in flattering, conciliatory terms, complete surrender of their ideas o f selling the Acadian lands and of settling soldiers. 1 8 Almost as serious as the guerrilla warfare, which naturally collapsed in 1760, and distinctly more serious than ancient grants or capricious inspirations of the Board of Trade, was the terrible storm of November, 1759. One of the worst gales in the history of the province, it levelled whole stands of timber along the South Shore and piled up the already high fall tides of the Bay of Fundy to an additional ten feet. Even had the 11 J u ly 16, 1759, N .S. B9, 208. » C o u n c il, O c t. 26, 1759, ibid., 240, ju r y fin d in g , A p r . 21, 1760, N.S. A64, 127. ]0 B. o f T . to Law rencc, A u g . 1, 1759, N .S . A63, 64. 17 D e c . 10, 1759, ibid., 124. 18 B . o f T . to Law rence, D e c . 14, 1759; Ibid., 144; P riv y C o u n c il a p p ro v a l, F eb. 16, 1760, P .A J/.S . 165, 77; B . o f T . to Law rence, M a r. 7, 1760, N.S. A64, 50.

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Acadians been present, it is doubtful whether they could have completely withstood this unprecedented assault on the dykes and sluices which protected the low-lying arable. At Annapolis, Minas, and Chignecto the neglected works were inadequate to prevent the rush of salt water over great areas which were “thereby rendered for this Three Years to come incapable of bearing G rain . ” 1 9 The astute fishermen of Liverpool were quick to take advantage of the catastrophe by renewing their demands for transportation and provision bounties on the ground that their plans for getting grain from trade with the Fundy settle­ ments were thus postponed. 2 0 The immediate effect, however, was to check what would have been a swelling tide of immi­ grants until the damage could be properly surveyed, so that the main movement did not begin until 1761, under Belchers governorship. In spite of these handicaps Lawrence lived to know that Nova Scotia would certainly be populated, that firstcomers had attached themselves to nearly all the new townships, and that only a catastrophe could hold off the rest. He himself visited Lunenburg and Liverpool on the South Shore and the Minas townships during the summer of 1760 and of course Morris kept him continually posted. He must have died reasonably content with his work. There were possibly 1,800 new settlers in his province, 2 1 and Halifax had ceased to be Nova Scotia. Lawrence left behind him four fundamental problems of settlement of varying urgency and persistence. There was the ever-present possibility that the Board of Trade and the British Government would upset things by unexpected interferences with the arrangements worked out on the spot. This seemed all the more likely because of the deliberate campaign just begun by George h i to get control of Government through frequent changes of ministers. Continuity of knowledge and policy was to be made extremely difficult. Moreover, the military triumphs of 1760 had their usual echo in an immediate agitation in the British Parliament for economy. The parliamentary grants to Nova Scotia were already being vigorously reduced, the profits to Halifax from naval and military activity were about to be snatched away, every one agreed that the province could not support itself by taxation, and yet colonists had begun to pour in, many of whom needed aid in transporting themselves and 10 M e m o ria l, A n n a p o lis T p ., D e c . 3, 1759, N .S .A 6 3 , 116. 30 M e m o ria l, D e c . 11, 1759, ibid., 140. 21 A n a p p ro x im a tio n fr o m the statem ent rendered D e c . 12, 1760, N.S.

A64, 278, a n d other figures.

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their stock and still more of whom would need aid in food and seed during the perilous first years of bringing the Acadians lands into bearing again. Lawrence had had a genius for making his views felt in London, but even he had had to yield to the demand for economy. His successors were to have a more difficult time than he. A second problem was the inevitable opposition in New England to the loss of population to Nova Scotia. A t a time when the British Government was discouraging, even spas­ modically prohibiting, emigration from the British Isles, New England was not likely to escape contagion with the fear of loss of population. Since both urban and rural property owners disliked any lessening of demand in their market, they tried to prevent the emigration. Lawrence had not much occasion to worry about this, but reports of interference came to Belcher, who passed them on to London . 2 2 Great pains have been taken on the Continent to retard the progress of these settlements, for besides the common method o f representing the lands much below their true Value, on the raising of the new levies [for the Montreal campaign] all means were taken, as I understand, by the principal proprietors of lands, to break the measures of the Nova Scotia Grantees, by obliging them to enter the service of the late Campaign, but a Peace will quickly put an end to such artifices. Belcher’s prophecy was wrong, however, for four months later he reported that the peace had “induced many of the Contractors to decline coming into this Province, the other Provinces being very Solicitous to detain them to settle their own Frontiers. ” 2 3 Fortunately, this problem settled itself, for the pull of Nova Scotia proved strong enough to defeat the scattered efforts of the “principal proprietors of lands” in New England . 2 4 The third problem was speculation, and it was to hang like a millstone on Nova Scotia until the coming of the Loyalists forced the government to shake off some of its worst effects. Lands held by speculators were usually unimproved and empty lands, which hampered good agriculture and laid inequitable 21 T o B . o f T ., D e c . 12. 1760, ibid., 262. 23 E nclo sure , A p r . 10, 1761, N .S .A 6 5 , 185. F o r exam ples in M assa­ chusetts, see M a in e H is to ric a l Society, Collections, second series, _ X I I I , 180, 248, 322 (P o r tla n d , 1909). 24 A s la te as N o v . 13, 1762, this discouragem ent gravely concerned fo u r C o u n c illo rs, w h o reported to G o v . E llis, N.S. A69, 174.

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burdens on the active settlers when it came to communal enter­ prises like road-building or maintenance of the ditches and dykes. When speculators pre-empted the best lands, honest settlement was discouraged because it had to be directed to regions which were patently worse. There had been some speculation immediately after the founding of Halifax, but it had collapsed with the collapse of high hopes there and the decline in population . 2 5 Naturally, greed raised its head again in 1759, indeed the Councillors themselves succumbed to it. The triangle between the Avon and the St. Croix rivers at whose apex stood Fort Edward was the nearest piece of first-class land to Halifax and as such was generally coveted. O n August 28, 1759, Lawrence and the Council allotted 7,000 acres of it to seven Councillors, 4,500 acres to six lesser officials (among them Mr. Breynton), and smaller amounts to favoured others. Thus began the process of developing the region which was to be a cherished semirural retreat for generations of privileged Nova Scotians. 2 0 Not until 1764 was Windsor Township created out of this exclusive preserve, but the grantees, as freeholders, had votes for the election of the Assemblyman for the original King’s County. Their lands seem to have been worked by Acadian prisoners at first, but subsequently there was keen competition in Halifax for the services of indigent immigrants to be sent to Windsor as tenants and labourers. It has been calculated that some fifty favoured grantees received more than 60,000 acres in and near Windsor . 2 7 Speculation among the outside applicants for townships undoubtedly existed, but it ran the whole gamut of reasonable­ ness from granting extra shares to the negotiators or modest padding of the lists of proprietors to giving whole townships to individuals or small groups who did not settle them. The Council had quite early to face the fact that the lists of names of intending settlers seldom corresponded closely with the “ T here w as a slu m p in to w n property , b u t in a d d itio n an optim istic project fo r Law rencetow n cast o f H a lifa x h a d failed. 20 “ T he gentlem en o f H a lifa x keep their C o u rts here,” J . R o b in s o n a n d T. R is p in , A Journey through Nova Scotia ( Y o r k , 1774), p . 9. H ereafter R .