George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[72] without an intrepid assault, in which the English had

chap. III.} 1750.

six killed and twelve wounded.¹ Thus was blood fist shed after the peace of Aix la Chapelle. Fort Lawrence was now built on the south of the Messagouche, but the French had already fortified their position on the opposite bank at Fort Beau Sejour as well as at Bay Verte. Having posts also at the mouth of the St. John's River and the alliance of the neighboring Indians, they held the continent from Bay Verte to the borders of the Penobscot.

Such was the state of occupancy, when, in September, at Paris, Shirley, who had been placed at the head of the British Commission, presented a memorial, claiming for the English all the land east of the Penobscot and south of the St. Lawrence, as constituting the ancient Acadia.² The claim, in its full latitude, by the law of nations, was preposterous; by a candid interpretation of treaties, was untenable. France never had designed to cede, and had never ceded, to England, the southern bank of the St. Lawrence, nor any country north of the forty-sixth parallel of latitude. In their reply to the British claim, the French commissaries, in like manner disregarding the obvious construction of treaties, narrowed Acadia to the strip of land on the Atlantic, between Cape St. Mary and Cape Canseau.³

There existed in France statesmen who thought Canada itself an incumbrance, difficult to be defended, entailing expenses more than benefits. But La Galissoniere⁴ pleaded to the ministry, that honor, glory,