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and the Acadians who are prisoners in New England, be sent back to their lands."—"Granted except as to the Acadians."

Poor Acadians! Persecution pursues them even in exile. The most solemn treaties, that of Utrecht, in 1713, that of Paris in 1763, assure them of no protection, give them no respite. If certain clauses appear to favor them, these clauses are afterward ignored, and the great persecution holds its way.

Even the United States' war of independence—to which Canadians owe the act of 1774, abolishing the test oath, and re-establishing, with liberty of war ships, French laws in civil matters—turns against them and serves as a pretext for despoiling them, for the last time let us hope, of their lands at Minoudie, at Gédaique, at the River St. John, so as to provide for the loyalists of Boston. Always the Bostonians, and always fatality!

Yes, the war waged against the Acadians was all the more implacably furious because it rested on no positive ground of justice, but rather marked the infamy of its authors. "Conceived by a plunderer (Craggs)," says Mr. Richard, in his 'Missing Links in a Lost Chapter of American History,' "the expulsion of the Acadians by Lawrence, in 1755, had plunder for its object." And, as always happens in such cases, the robbers had no peace of mind until they caused their victims to disappear or made it impossible for them ever to reclaim their stolen property.

Then came Akins, still more odious, perhaps, than Lawrence. The latter committed the crime; the former justified it. Of the martyrs whom the governor had made, the archivist attempts to make criminals. It is for those whom history has slandered that the poet has said: