Thus is history fabricated. The Compiler begat Parkman, Parkman begat Archibald, Archibald begat Goldwin Smith. By dint of repeated mutilations, step by step, they have succeeded in giving the lie to the received opinions of a whole century and in proclaming to the world, in telling phrase, that the cruelty of this deportation is merely a nursery fable. There remains but one further step to take : let some still more audacious perverter of history affirm either that the deportation itself is a myth, or that the Acadians, if they were not ungrateful, ought to erect monuments to Lawrence, Belcher and Wilmot, because they did not exterminate them on the spot.
Of the writers mentioned above, the Compiler and Parkman are the only ones against whom there is overwhelming evidence of bad faith. The others erred through rashness in that they ventured on ground that was unknown to them except through the descriptions of the garbling pair. For it is hardly necessary to emphasize the fact that Mr. Goldwin Smith, though dabbling in history for fifty years, has probably never gone in for original research, but has preferred to write, in admirable English, brilliant one-sided summaries and glittering, though seldom golden, generalizations. However, there is just one short sentence, in the passage I have quoted from him, which looks very much like bad faith « embalmed in barley-sugar » puerility. « The commander of the troops, Winslow, » says this great word-monger, « was an American ». Now, as these events took place twenty years before the Revolutionary War, there were at that time no Americans as distinguished from Britishers. Besides, Winslow was merely the local commander at Grand Pre ; there were three other such commanders, Hanfield at Annapolis, Murray at Pigiguit, Monckton at Beaubassin, all three having nothing at all to do with the American provinces in what is now the United States. Yet, in the teeth of these well-known facts, Mr. Goldwin Smith tries, by an apparently simple statement, to shift the responsibility for the deportation on shoulders that ought not to bear that crushing weight. His covert insinuation means this : The cruelty of the deportation is a lying legend ; and at any rate, if it is not, British honor is safe, since he who commanded the troops was an American. Before Mr. Smith, no one ever accused Winslow of being the author of the deportation; he merely carried out the orders of his superior, Lawrence. To ignore the Governor who concocted the whole scheme, and to throw the blame on one of the subordinate officers who obeyed his orders, is piece of childish trifling unworthy of an intelligent school-girl. As for Longfellow, he needs no defence. His work is but a poem ; yet the conscientious historian will find more truth in his « barley-sugar » than in all the lofty sneers of Mr. Smith.
The following letter was addressed to me since this work has been put in the publisher’s hands. It is from George S. Brown, Esq., now of Boston, Mass., ex-M. P. P. for Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and author of a valuable History of that country :
