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justifiable for them to shake off by every means in their power the yoke of British power, a power illegally constituted so far as they are concerned. He draws some by persuasion and more by force within Fort Beausejour, on French territory, hoping with their assistance victoriously to repel the invaders. The Acadians, believing themselves still bound by their oath of neutrality, notwithstanding its repudiation by the governors of Halifax, refuse to fire upon the English soldiers.

Far from placing to their credit this exaggerated sense of honor, Lawrence makes their neutrality one of the capital charges against them; and, like the Man of Sorrows against whom the Jews could establish no seditious act, they are none the less, in consequence of this charge, doomed to die.

A certain number of Acadians, about six thousand in all, succeed in escaping the banishment of 1755, and proceed to form new villages on the Island of St. John (Prince Edward Island) in French territory. Three years later, when the crops flourishing in the fields promise a goodly harvest, General Amherst and Admiral Boscawen suddenly fall upon them: destroy crops and dwellings, and, in violation of the law of nations, carry off the poor farmers and disperse them again.

The treaty of Paris (1763) which cedes to England, Canada and all New France, interrupts, all over the world, hostilities between the two great powers and their subjects. All over the world; yes, save in Acadia where private oppression succeeds to official persecution.

Article 37 of the capitulation of Montreal (1760), proposed by Vandreuil, stipulates that no Frenchman remaining in Canada shall be afterwards transported to England or to English colonies. Amherst writes on the margin: "Granted, except as regards the Acadians."

There is a similar restriction to article 54 which proposes that "the officers of the militia, the militiamen,