Primary Source: Minutes From Council

Primary Source: Minutes From Council Meeting, 1755

Since the beginning of recorded history, government has gone hand-in-hand with bureaucracy. No decisions can simply be made and acted upon; there must be deliberations, referendums, etc. The fledgling government of the British colonies in Canada during the 18th Century, though largely rudimentary, was no exception. The minutes from their council meetings, carefully recorded and preserved, are a testament to the slow yet grinding wheels of government that existed to subjugate and control the land and populations in the territory newly acquired from the French. This document, the minutes from a particular meeting in 1755, records the thoughts and actions that led to what is sometimes known as the "Great Expulsion" of the French-speaking and -descended Acadian population. It describes, in rather flat terms, the petitions (or "memorials") made by the Acadians to restore the liberties the British monarchy -- through the personage of the newly appointed governor of Nova Scotia, Charles Lawrence -- had recently taken away, and the reaction of the council and governor to these petitions. Though the minutes are written in a seemingly objective and purely factual style, a careful analysis of them reveals a perhaps unsurprising view of the British colonial government, besieged as they were by French and Native populations, as a reactionary and almost paranoid government, bent on total control of what it considered to be its people.

This area of Canada was a relatively recent acquisition on the part of the British. The first French colonists arrived in Arcadia in 1604, and more French families continued to arrive over the next century. British colonizers were arriving during this time as well, and the Acadians -- the first arrivals, who had left France for a new and better life far away from that country -- were caught in the many conflicts between the powers of the French and British monarchy. They were largely responsible for governing -- or not governing -- themselves, and practiced a careful neutrality in an attempt to retain their freedom and self-allegiance. In 1713, the part of Acadia that became Nova Scotia was ceded to the British by the French crown, and the Acadians found themselves citizens of the British Commonwealth whether they liked it or not. Over the next several decades, the British attempted to administer an oath of allegiance to the Acadians, who politely yet emphatically and repeatedly declined. Things continued in this rather uncertain matter, with the Acadians fostering and enjoying the freedom of that uncertainty, while the British grew more nervous with each installment of the ongoing conflicts with the French.

This nervousness is very apparent in the language of the document. The minutes themselves are rendered objectively, describing what was said during the council meeting without the U.S. Of adjective or other necessarily subjective description. However, this very neutrality -- given the tone and context of the meeting described -- is a tacit approval of and alignment with the policies and attitudes of the British colonial government, especially Charles Lawrence. This is not exactly surprising, as the meeting was explicitly a gathering of British colonial officers, and it was no doubt an official of this government that recorded the minutes of the meeting. Making the British reaction less surprising still -- if no more justifiable -- was the fact that the recent taking of a French fort in the area had revealed a large number of supposedly neutral Acadian men among those defending it. It is true, too, that the Acadians couched some thinly-veiled sarcastic insults in the memorials they presented to the council -- lines such as, "We beg your Excellency, on this subject, to have the goodness to make known to us your good pleasure before confiscating our property and considering us in fault. This is the favour we expect from your Excellency's kindness..." (p. 72). It is also important to remember that this was before the major democratic revolutions of the age (that is, the American and French Revolutions), and that similar such petitions to various monarchies over the past centuries had been considered presumptuous and even tyrannous.

Still, the requests that the Acadians made through their memorials -- the return of their guns for protection and hunting, the free use of their canoes for transporting goods, and a general return to the British acceptance of their neutrality -- were not unusual or extreme, and they are careful to point out that they cannot be responsible for the actions of individuals (though they do not mention the incident at the French fort) and that therefore the group, saying, "If some refugee inhabitants at the point have been seized[...]we are not on that account, by any means guilty" (p. 71). The British response to this, however, was extreme -- eventually in the expulsion and mass migration of the Acadians, but more immediately in the reaction of the council to the Acadians' memorials. They determined that the Acadians who had presented the memorials were "arrogant and insidious[...]and were severely reprimanded for their Audacity in Subscribing and Presenting so impertinent a Paper" (p. 73). The council determines that it should again read the memorials point-by-point, but not in an effort to understand and negotiate with the Acadians, which would be beneath the dignity of the monarchy, but rather this process was undertaken to "shew them the falsity as well as Impudence of the Contents of their Memorial" (p. 73). This systematic refutation and condemnation of the memorials, and the resultant decision to once again offer the oath of allegiance and then expel those who do not take it, comprises the bulk of the rest of the document.

These refutations by the British of the Arcadian complaints and requests were often vague and improvable if not wholly unfounded. In response to their not unreasonable and fairly self-evident claim that they were "affected with the Proceedings of the Government towards them," they were told "That they had always been treated by the Government with the greatest Lenity and Tenderness;" they asked for their canoes and were flat-out told that they only wanted them to carry "Provisions to the Enemy;" when they explained that letting them keep their guns would not cause rebellion, just as taking them away would not cause loyalty, they were asked how they could treat "the Government with such Indignity and Contempt as to Expound to them the nature of Fideility" (p. 74, 5, 6). This belies an utter lack of respect not only for the Arcadians' sense of government and fairness, but also for the Arcadians simply as humans capable of rational thought and deserving of some sort of equitable consideration.

This attitude is borne out in several other places, as well. In explaining the British government's confiscation of the Arcadians guns, the council notes that "By the Laws of England, All Roman Catholicks [sic] are restrained from having Arms" (p. 75). Though this religious contempt and disregard was not new or limited only to the New World colonies, it still has an important bearing on the Lawrence government's treatment of the Acadians. Another indicator in the utter disregard with which this council held their French subjects comes early in their response, when they condescend to answer the various points of the Arcadians' petition "in Compassion to their Weakness and Ignorance" (p. 73). It is not just the inequality inherent to the monarch-subject relationship that exists in this council meeting's minutes, but also that of the subjugated and the subjected; of ethnocentrism and might-is-right philosophy; frankly, of plain old bigotry.