« I have read in the Montreal « Herald » the Introduction to your forthcoming Book on Acadian History. The subject is of much interest to me, for I have made a special study of it as well as of the Acadians themselves, who are numerous in Yarmouth County, where more than fifty years of my life have been passed.
« I see that you charge Parkman with partiality, if not with dishonesty, in dealing with your subject. You are right ; dishonesty seems to be the proper word, for he has evidently suppressed the truth when treating of the Acadian Expatriation of 1755. He has ignored, I am sorry to say, whatever tended to exhibit the deportation in its true light ; he has garbled historic records to suit his purposes ; he has explored every nook and corner to hunt up something disparaging to the Acadians, and he has taken no account of Haliburton, Andrew Brown, and other trustworthy writers.
« The Home Government not only did not aid or sanction the deportation, but they opposed it, as did also General Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces in North America. I have become conversant with the main facts since my book was published, but I had glimpses of them all along. Casgrain lets in some light, but there is much more to be said in the same direction. For the mere sake of truth and justice, I am glad that you lead the way, and that you expose Parkman’s perversion of the facts of history, etc., etc. »
After reading Mr. Brown’s book (who by the way is a stranger to me), I wrote to him, saying, in substance, that his praise of Acadians seemed to me rather excessive. I here extract the following from his answer :
« In your letter you intimate that I might be held chargeable with undue partiality to the Acadians. I do not, and I stand ready to justify everything I have said of the Acadians of Yarmouth County with whom I have been long and intimately acquainted, and when I say that since the year 1761, when Yarmouth County was first settled by the English, there is not a case on record of an Acadian being charged with a capital crime, — that, though they number about 8,000, nearly one third of the population of the County, the occasions have been of the very rarest when the prison doors have been opened for an Acadian charged with an offence of even the most trivial nature, there is little danger of one’s saying too much in their praise. »
