SOURCE: Taylor, M. Brook. “Haliburton as a Historian.” In The Thomas Chandler Haliburton Symposium, edited by Frank M. Tierney, pp. 103-22. Ottawa, Ont.: University of Ottawa Press, 1985.

[In the following essay, an earlier version of which was published in Acadiensis: Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region in spring 1984, Brook shows how Haliburton used historical narrative and promotional description to bolster Nova Scotian patriotism by suggesting that the colony embodied the best and most vital qualities of British civilization.]

“This is my own my native land.”(1)

Thomas Chandler Haliburton needs little introduction to students of Maritime history and literature. From the moment the first of his satirical Clockmaker series appeared in 1836, Haliburton and his fictional hero “Sam Slick” became international celebrities. And if Haliburton's reputation has subsequently faded abroad, and suffered periods of quiescence at home, he has never wanted for readers, and is even now the object of renewed scholarly interest.² This paper will not, however, undertake another investigation of Haliburton in his role as “the father of American humour”; rather it will be the purpose here to study Haliburton ante Slick—the young man whose writings were primarily promotional and historical. My intention will be to explain why he wrote, how he wrote, and what he wrote about the history of Nova Scotia by an examination of his A General Description of Nova Scotia (1823),³ and especially his two-volume An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova-Scotia (1829).⁴

Haliburton was one of that first generation of native Nova Scotians who came to maturity in the 1820s. According to Joseph Howe, the most famous member of the new generation, it was “the unerring law of nature” that the first born of the colonies should transfer a priority in their hearts from the land of their ancestry to the land of their birth.⁵ It was this reorientation of local and imperial patriotism that D. C. Harvey labelled “the intellectual awakening of Nova Scotia.”⁶ Prior to this acclimatization, English-language accounts of Nova Scotia were written by authors who thought of themselves primarily as British subjects living abroad. In pursuit of individual goals, and uninhibited by native loyalty, their opinions of Nova Scotia ran to extremes of praise and condemnation. “It has been,” Haliburton wrote, “the peculiar misfortune of Nova-Scotia, to have suffered alike from its enemies and friends. By the former it has been represented as the abode of perpetual fog and unrelenting sterility, and by the latter as the land of the olive and grape.”⁷ Such exaggerations were, in the eyes of his generation, an irresponsible legacy which could only compromise the reputation of Nova Scotia.

Reputation is important to a young colony. Nova Scotia depended on the tolerance of the British government to carry the expense of civil administration and military defence, and on the good will of the British people for capital and emigrants. Furthermore, many Nova Scotians were eager to see the young colony become a credible alternative to the New England states in the Atlantic carrying trade through the maintenance of a system of colonial preferences. Unfortunately British domestic needs usually combined with the pressures of international rivalries to withhold from Nova Scotia the privileged status her inhabitants coveted. Only occasionally, as during the War of 1812-1815, did events coalesce in a way that propelled the colony to the forefront of the imperial economy. Unhappily, this prosperity proved momentary, and simply made the post-war recession and Nova Scotia's return to a peripheral economic position all the harder to bear.⁸

The first generation of Nova Scotians thus came of age at a time when their compatriots, not just the British public, were beginning to question provincial conceits. “There is,” wrote one of Haliburton's contemporaries, “a difference between being inspired and being puffed up—The latter is as injurious to weak heads as it is often distressing to weak bowels.” It was, this writer contended, “impossible to push on a colony advantageously beyond the course of nature.”⁹ Such was the mature patriotism of awakened Nova Scotians, of individuals thoroughly aroused to the strengths and weaknesses of their birthright: Defending themselves from insult and trying to understand their predicament, they sought to fashion a responsible, realistic image for their homeland.

Haliburton was in sympathy with his generation, but in speaking for it also spoke for himself. One must not lose sight of the fact that the young man who wrote the Description and the Account was not yet famous, although by all reports he had a desire so to be.¹⁰ Briefly, Haliburton was born December 17, 1796 at Windsor, a descendant on his father's side of a successful Tory family of lawyers, and on his mother's of Loyalist refugees. He was educated locally and well at King's College, graduating in 1815. Called to the provincial bar in 1820, he settled at Annapolis Royal, and represented that town and its constituency in the Assembly of Nova Scotia from 1826 until his elevation to the bench in 1829. Yet Haliburton lacked the patience and humility necessary to accept an assured, slow passage through life as a member of the local Anglican elite. His was an ambitious and restless intelligence, rendered all the more piquant by its expression in bold oratory and satirical wit.¹¹ Colonial society offered many targets for his talents, but could only whet, not satisfy, his appetite.

The decade and a half prior to the appearance of Sam Slick was a frustrating time for Haliburton. Harbouring aspirations which could only be fulfilled on a larger stage, he tended to be at once both defensive and contemptuous of his colonial upbringing. From his second trip to England in 1816 he brought back a bride, but also an abiding sense of grievance: “in early life I twice visited Great Britain, and was strongly, and I may say painfully, impressed with a conviction that has forced itself upon the mind of every man who has gone to Europe from this country—namely, that this valuable and important Colony was not merely wholly unknown, but misunderstood and misrepresented.”¹² The distinct impression left with the reader is that slander of Nova Scotia was one thing, but that Haliburton too should be considered inferior by association was quite another. Fred Cogswell has placed the resulting conflict at the heart of Haliburton's literary character: “say, do, or write what he would, Haliburton knew himself to be a colonial and that on this account all his achievement would be patronized in the very places that he considered to be his own true spiritual home.”¹³ It was this potent combination of personal and provincial pride that made Haliburton such a determined historian. As he wrote of the Account to his friend Judge Peleg Wiswall (1763-1836), a Loyalist living in Digby: “I feel great ambition to have this book do justice to our Country, and some little credit to myself.”¹⁴

The writing of a comprehensive account of Nova Scotia was, in the 1820s, a difficult and time-consuming undertaking. Haliburton began his collection of material in 1821, but was pre-empted in 1823 when Walter Bromley of Halifax heard of his endeavours, and, having an unemployed press, convinced Haliburton to throw together such information as he had in hand. The result, A General Description of Nova Scotia, was a disappointment to Haliburton, who never acknowledged its authorship publicly, and privately complained of the “hasty manner” of its composition, and the “inconsiderate alteration” of his plan from a wide-ranging account to a simple emigrants' guide.¹⁵ Haliburton resumed his efforts to write the more comprehensive Account almost immediately. Originally he thought of it as a second edition of the Description, and on this basis hoped to complete the project by late 1824 or early 1825.¹⁶ Imperceptibly Haliburton found the work growing in size and scope into something far more ambitious. At one point he even hoped to include studies of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to increase the Account's potential interest for a British audience.¹⁷ In this case intentions outpaced stamina, and Haliburton's interest began to flag. Before 1824 was out, Haliburton wrote to Wiswall, “I feel like the man who walked by land to the East Indies, got half way, and find the other half appearing a great deal longer, than the whole did at first.”¹⁸ Under pressure from Wiswall, as well as his own ambition, Haliburton did complete the task, but not until 1829.

The Account was divided into two volumes. The first comprised a narrative history of Nova Scotia down to the British conquest, with a chronology of subsequent events—whose significance for Nova Scotians is often difficult to ascertain—appended. The so-called statistical, second volume of the Account was not in fact statistical in any real sense at all; rather, it was a choreography, a form which fused topographical description with an assessment of the material achievement of human settlement. It was upon this, the second volume, that Haliburton desired to “bestow the most labour.” Anxious to correct slanders and exaggerations, he considered the description of the province's true situation “by far the most important part” of his work.¹⁹

What distinguished him from a plague of earlier promoters? Haliburton aimed to establish his credentials as a responsible patriot first by the quality of the information he provided. In this regard he had a distinct advantage over the promoters of the mid-18th century, who had feigned a comprehensive knowledge of the colony, and enthused over fictitious assets. English settlement was now no longer restricted to isolated footholds established by a few families; by 1800 up to 50,000 settlers were spread around the peninsula seaboard and up fertile valleys and basins; by 1827 this number had swollen to 120,000.²⁰ Those areas of Nova Scotia not populated had been professionally surveyed by agents of a provincial government impatient to “be put in possession of facts.”²¹ The counties Haliburton described were not the fictions of a topographer, they were populated civil divisions containing mills, churches, and schools, and sending elected representatives to the Assembly in Halifax. In writing the descriptive second volume, Haliburton did not have to rely entirely on the observations of his travels or the hearsay of a few adventurers; he could harvest a mass of information from the public records, surveys, and charts of the document-generating local government, “and also from an excessive correspondence with respectable and intelligent people in all parts of Nova-Scotia.”²² Many of his inquiries (which took the form of a general appeal for information rather than of a questionnaire) could be answered by his fellow MLAs, by duty drawn from every county to the capital each winter.²³ Writing in 1968, Gerald T. Rimmington admired the sweep of Haliburton's knowledge, faulting only his unfamiliarity with a portion of the Minas Basin shoreline.²⁴

Having gathered his information, Haliburton did not meddle with it. His avowed function was simply to compile and fit his material “up on the Stocks.”²⁵ The work of the surveyors Titus Smith, Charles Morris III, and H. W. Crawley, the reports of the Central Board of Agriculture, census returns, and the responses from dozens of individuals named in his Preface, were all arranged and displayed.²⁶ Haliburton felt no inhibition in giving over entire sections of the second volume to the submissions of others,²⁷ while himself often compiling from the whole cloth of his sources.²⁸ He hoped that the British public would accept the verbatim provision of state documents as “a true picture of the posture of affairs at their respective dates.”²⁹ Indeed the very absence of a personal voice in such a composition was a kind of guarantee of authenticity. When Haliburton did occasionally insert his own prejudices, they were so clearly demarcated that the reader can easily come to terms with them without compromising the objectivity of the whole.³⁰ All this was done with scarcely a footnote or quotation mark, but it drew no criticism from the individuals involved. Haliburton was defending a community, and the community was only too glad to help. Together they served up a comprehensive array of facts meant to convince the sceptic.

The first 273 pages of the second volume's total of 453 pages provided an appraisal of the boundaries, physical and natural characteristics, and human settlement of the whole of Nova Scotia, county by county. Subsequent chapters examined the size and composition of the population, religious denominations, institutional forms of government and justice, climate, soil and agriculture, trade, natural history, and geology and mineralogy. Haliburton's usual approach was to lay down the boundaries and extent of a county to establish units of political and judicial control, and then introduce local topography by following the various routes of access. The land was drawn and quartered, resources catalogued, and human achievements noted. Like a phrenologist feeling his way across a cranium, Haliburton probed for the potential of his province. The land was a passive resource waiting for human development: trees were cut, rivers dammed, minerals extracted, and land ploughed. The topical form enhanced the objective and comprehensive appearance of the volume; the very process of description assimilated and then civilized the terrain; and by division the vagaries of time were mastered.

Because the second volume was predominantly descriptive, and the information it contained quickly dated, its reputation has subsided. It is now rarely read in conjunction with the first volume's narrative account of Nova Scotia's history prior to 1763. This partition is reinforced by Haliburton's scattered comments on the nature of history. To Wiswall he wrote that “after [1763] the ‘Short and Simple Annals of the Poor” afford no materials for a continuation, and a history of the province subsequent to that epoch would be about as interesting as one of Dalhousie Settlement.” However, in the same letter Haliburton also wrote: “when I … called the work I had in hand the history of the Country I did not mean to apply it in its usual acceptation as a narrative of Political events, but in a more enlarged sense as an account of whatever of interest might be found in the Colony.” Climate, population, trade, towns, mines, government institutions, agriculture, natural advantages, were all for Haliburton worthy of historical consideration, because, as he said, they showed “the manner in which our little Colonial machine is put into Motion [,] the objects that attract the attentions of its Government [,] the mode of Conducting Public business [,] and the gradual and progressive improvement of the Colony.”³¹ The second volume was not, then, a description of an isolated moment in the development of Nova Scotia; it was a rendering of the dynamic accretion of colonial settlement.

In short, despite the static, even iconographical, appearance of the volume's catalogues, tables, and reports, the sketches Haliburton drew of each county were in his mind historical. They were not so much accounts of raw material as descriptions of human achievement. Each unit outlined the sufferings which the early settlers experienced, the difficulties which they surmounted, and, in combination, the rise and progress of a young nation. The process by which the wilderness is converted into a fruitful country was, Haliburton admitted, slow: but “time, that crumbles into dust the exquisite monuments of art,” eventually fostered colonial improvements, “until at length hills, vales, groves, streams and rivers, previously concealed by the interminable forest, delight the eye of the beholder in their diversified succession.”³² To a British audience Haliburton was suggesting that the frustrations and difficulties of the past were the natural and unavoidable consequences of pioneer life. He was proud rather than embarrassed by this heritage of struggle, for it linked inextricably Nova Scotia's future prospects to the proven quality and achievements of the founding settlers. This became in Haliburton's mind the central theme of Nova Scotia's history.³³

Haliburton's theme of historical progress was also a potent weapon when turned on Nova Scotians. The scattered lessons of each settlement were that true progress came only with hard work and agricultural self-sufficiency. Colonization was a weaning process in which “idle and profligate” disbanded soldiers, inexperienced Loyalists, and would-be aristocratic landlords, failed and “soon removed to other places.” Of the Indians there was no word at all. Highland Scots and the Acadians of Clare, although industrious and frugal, were found to be held back by their antiquated agricultural habits. The real progenitors of Nova Scotia were the energetic agriculturalists from the Scottish Lowlands, Germany, and the United States.³⁴ The moral which Haliburton drew was that those who dabbled in the fisheries and the lumber industry, and neglected their farms from “the prospect of support, with less labour and fatigue,” inevitably suffered economic loss and moral decay. The profit-seeking of the late war had been particularly damaging.³⁵ Continued progress, while still inevitable, would be greatly speeded if Nova Scotians demonstrated the moral and mental vitality of their forefathers. In the temper of his compatriots John Young (Agricola), Thomas McCulloch, and Joseph Howe, and often in the face of economic common sense,³⁶ Haliburton promoted the virtues of a staunch agrarianism, unweakened by the vices of luxury and idleness.

The characteristic Nova Scotian, as pictured by Haliburton, was a yeoman of the middle class, one who accepted the challenge of clearing the wilderness.³⁷ The selective process of emigration and the initial hardships of colonial settlement forged the Nova Scotian patriot from an “Anglo American” alloy.³⁸ This environmental approach provided Haliburton with a useful tool for generalizing the Nova Scotian experience. It also served another purpose: for a people who thought of themselves as Nova Scotians, but could not reject their British heritage, environmentalism offered a formula for explaining why they were at once British, yet distinctly Nova Scotian. Here we have the ambiguous nexus of Haliburton's patriotism. Within the sharply demarcated environment of Nova Scotia's peninsula the best of the British character emerged without the concomitant extremism of the limitless, lawless, American frontier.³⁹

In the opinion of the young Haliburton, Nova Scotia should, in her relations with Britain, imitate the independent yeoman, stand on her own two feet, and not rely on imperial patronage. Such an emancipation would be invigorating for colonials, and deflect the animosity of the British taxpayer and consumer. He therefore welcomed the liberation of the colonies from the mercantilist “spirit of jealous exclusion,” through William Huskisson's Navigation Act of 1825, for he was confident that freer trade would prove more profitable for both Nova Scotia and Great Britain.⁴⁰ Haliburton was eager to strike a similar balance between colonial and imperial political power. He rejected the doctrine of virtual representation in the British Parliament, preferring to build on the maturity of the provincial government with its Lieutenant-Governor, Council, and Assembly—the constitutional, not the social, equivalents of the British Crown, Lords, and Commons.⁴¹ The overriding message was that the association could go forward only if Nova Scotians lived up to their potential, and if the British adequately recognized colonial contributions.

In defending the honour of his native land and defining the characteristics of its people, Haliburton was a source, not merely an echo, of the commonplace attitudes of his time. Joseph Howe recognized the dual nature of Haliburton's work when recommending the Description to a friend:

Everything which tends to make our country better known in Great Britain—does it a positive advantage—because the more these Colonies are known on that side of the water—the greater value must be placed upon them by the Mother Country, which will have the effect of strengthening the ties which bind them to each other—There is also another advantage which may in some degree flow from this work—that it tends to make the Nova Scotian himself better acquainted with the value and usefulness of the soil he inhabits and to turn his attention to the many advantages he enjoys under the present state of things.⁴²

Likewise, Peleg Wiswall wrote to Haliburton, “I feel a great desire that your [Account] should afford pleasant reading, together with a comprehensive view of our Province, to foreigners,—and at the same time become a standard book of reference for ourselves.”⁴³

A history of early Nova Scotia was not immediately relevant to Haliburton's descriptive, promotional task. The introduction of the French and Indian wars, for instance, would clearly be incompatible with his carefully fashioned picture of European progress in a civil wilderness. Indeed, the opening chapter of the Description was designed simply “as a sketch of the political changes of the country” prior to the Conquest,⁴⁴ and Haliburton maintained this limited view when first contemplating the structure of the Account. He wrote to Wiswall that

there is in fact no history of Nova Scotia to relate, and that the few Military events which might have happened here have as little Bearing on the true history of the Country as the Battle of Trafalgar of which it can only be said that it was fought in a particular latitude and longitude and of which the sole remaining trace is a point on the general chart of the world. These occurrences resemble duels, for which the parties for political purposes sought our wilderness as the most convenient place of Rendezvous.⁴⁵

Wiswall (contemporaneously working on his own manuscript history of the province) agreed:

The numerous strange adventures, intrigues, petty wars, and revolutions which occurred amidst the wild scenery and wilder savages of Nova Scotia from the time of Demonts' attempt to colonize in the year 1602 up to the expulsion of the french neutrals in 1755 may afford material for american poets and novelists to work upon, but the history of that period is otherwise of little general interest, saving that it accounts for the small progress made by the colonists in population and improvement during so great a space of time.⁴⁶

Wiswall's letter did provide Haliburton with one important reason for not disassociating his own generation from its distant past entirely, for that past and its bloody wars explained the failure of settlement to take hold in Nova Scotia for almost two centuries. “It must be admitted,” Wiswall added, “that Nova Scotia is not that naturally rich country which can bear up against plunder, oppression or mismanagement. Its inhabitants require both present protection and prospective security in order to [develop].”⁴⁷ Since at least the time of the Conquest, Britain had provided such security, with results now obvious to all. Properly handled, the conflict of the past might act as a foil against which present achievements could be measured. The new sense of Nova Scotian maturity could in part, then, be articulated by contrasting the civil present with the rude past. The key implication was, as Tom Vincent has suggested of other contemporary literary productions, that time and society had grown beyond their semi-feudal roots.⁴⁸ Or, as Joseph Howe put it:

Go seek the records of a fearful age
In dark Tradition's stores, or History's page,
Of scenes like these you now shall find no trace
On fair Acadia's calm and smiling face.(49)

The presentation of early Nova Scotian history as a foil for the modern era had a nice corollary too. Haliburton's generation believed that the critical period in the history of their colony ran from the decision of the British government to build at Halifax in 1749 to the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Economic progress did not follow immediately—the land and the Acadians had to be cleared, speculators discouraged, and representative institutions established. Nonetheless, Imperial resolve had finally ended two centuries of frustration for British interests in the region.⁵⁰ Haliburton thought this a moral with a contemporary ring. What better way to catch the attention of officials in London than with a portrayal of the high costs of ignorance and inattention?

The sources for a narrative history of early Nova Scotia were to be found “in an infinite variety of old Colonial books, in which the country [had] been incidentally mentioned, and in the public records.”⁵¹ The town of Annapolis Royal, in which Haliburton resided, contained neither public nor private libraries, and thus he was forced to procure books of reference from Halifax, Boston, and London, and from an assortment of friends. Under the best of circumstances this would have been a laborious process, and it was rendered still more tedious by the demands of his fledgling law practice and political career.⁵² It has subsequently become traditional to speak of his “almost complete dearth of materials for the work he had in mind.”⁵³ However, such difficulties were a matter of degree, and Haliburton's were incomparably less than those faced by earlier promoters. He often spent portions of the year in Halifax, which had a public library, a commercial reading room, and the collections of a number of scientific and literary associations (the Provincial Agricultural Society alone had more than 300 catalogued volumes by 1825).⁵⁴ The legislative journals had been ordered organized and bound in 1809, and £150 had been voted in 1811 to put other public documents in order.⁵⁵ These papers, which included among other items the governors' letter-books and the original minutes of His Majesty's Council at Annapolis Royal, were in the custody of the provincial secretary, Sir Rupert George, who in 1828 gave Haliburton unique permission “to take them to his lodgings for more convenient reference.”⁵⁶ The city also offered Haliburton the supportive companionship of “The Club,” a convivial literary association inhabited by the likes of Titus Smith, Joseph Howe, the lawyer-historians Beamish Murdoch and T. B. Akins, and the poet Andrew Shiels.⁵⁷ And finally, Haliburton could obtain transcripts from distant repositories in England and America, especially from the library and collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.⁵⁸

The information Haliburton presented was carefully controlled. The narrative of Nova Scotia's early history would lose all credibility, even as a foil, if it descended to a fanciful or romantic level. Thus Haliburton's object was, according to the Preface, to collect “scattered notices” of Nova Scotia from the writings of Lescarbot, Charlevoix, Abbé Raynal, Thomas Hutchinson, George R. Minot, Jeremy Belknap, M. Wynne, William Douglass, Abiel Holmes, and Tobias Smollett, “and form them into a connected narrative.” These prefatory acknowledgements were rarely repeated in the footnotes “from a wish to avoid … pedantry.” All matter was “collated with great care” before being “compiled,” and Haliburton apologized for “the irregularity in the style” his method necessitated.⁵⁹

Today Haliburton would be called a plagiarist, and it is a charge which has often been laid at his door. J. G. Bourinot in particular drew attention to Haliburton's version of the Seven Years' War, which Bourinot claimed was drawn verbatim from Tobias Smollett's History of England.⁶⁰ The problem was, in fact, somewhat more complex. There were not many passages in the first volume where Haliburton openly copied from one source for pages on end. The longest of these was taken from Minot (pp. 143-148),⁶¹ while Smollett's longest continuous run was only a little more than two pages (pp. 206-208).⁶² Far more often Haliburton followed the method adopted in chapter one: he selected the best single source as the backbone of his narrative, in this case Belknap's American Biography, and then mixed in additional material from such subsidiary sources as Lescarbot and Charlevoix, with an occasional extra point supplied from the likes of Thomas Prince.⁶³ An even finer example of Haliburton's method of gluing sources together was his account of the first siege of Louisbourg (pp. 111-134): almost every word in this passage was copied from another work, but so finely were his four main sources (Belknap, Douglass, Hutchinson, and Minot) woven together, that rarely did one run uninterrupted for more than a paragraph at a time.⁶⁴

When Haliburton interfered with a source the motive was not style, but length. He spoke out only if there was an open disagreement between his sources over a fact, usually a date. Otherwise he remained uncritical of his material, ignoring changes in style, and even of approach. This did of course raise a few anomalies: in the fourth chapter Haliburton's discussion of the expulsion of the Acadians shifted from such anti-Acadian sources as Smollett and Douglass, to the more sympathetic Minot, to the pastoral Raynal—with ambiguous results. Thus, although the arrangement of his material took time, once the books were collected most of Haliburton's creative task was over. A comparison of the sources listed in the Preface with Haliburton's actual text reveals that approximately 70 per cent of the narrative in volume one was copied.

One obvious reason for Haliburton's slavish adherence to sources was that this was the accepted practice of the writers whom he admired. Belknap's History of New Hampshire, for instance, paraphrased and copied from many of the same sources Haliburton had used. Indeed, virtually all the works available to Haliburton were by historians who had, according to a recent student, “merely rephrased or copied the best or most recent secondary works at hand, achieving, as a result, little more in much of their prose than crudely spliced editions of large blocks of material copied from prior histories.”⁶⁵ It is true that earlier historians tended to footnote more than Haliburton, but when William Cochran criticized Haliburton for not following their practice, he did so only because the failure to footnote made it difficult for readers to go back to the sources themselves.⁶⁶ A remarkable freedom from scholarly rivalry and a strong sense of being part of a co-operative venture meant that most historians were flattered to have their writings borrowed by others.⁶⁷ At a time when basic facts were not as near as the closest library or textbook, when many of the relevant books were almost unobtainable, creativity lay in bringing a story together for the first time in a convenient form. Originality of expression was a secondary consideration, and one which opened the door to prejudice and bias; far better to leave sources untouched and uncorrupted. The Anglo-Irish author Oliver Goldsmith made this point when reviewing the very work Haliburton was so often accused of plagiarizing, Smollett's History of England:

… in proportion as History removes from the first witnesses, it may recede also from truth,—as, by passing thro' the prejudices, or the mistakes of subsequent Compilers, it will be apt to imbibe what tincture they may chance to give it. The later Historian's only way, therefore, to prevent the ill effects of that decrease of evidence which the lapse of years necessarily brings with it, must be, by punctually referring to the spring-head from whence the stream of his narration flows.⁶⁸

And if credibility was a tricky philosophical issue in Europe, it was a harsh pragmatic reality when writing of colonial British North America.

In so far as Haliburton could be said to have disappointed his contemporaries, it was because he failed to take full advantage of the government records thrown open to him. Although “directions were given by the provincial secretary to afford every facility to Mr. Haliburton in his inquiries” and the ante-room of the council chamber made over to his use, Haliburton's researches through the public papers were, to judge by the results, irregular and fitful.⁶⁹ The pressure of time seems to have dictated Haliburton's policy, for he only came to the documents in 1828, well after he had already composed much of his narrative. William Cochran, one-time president of King's College, contemporaneously worked through the public papers in order to compile his own manuscript history of the province, and was, in contrast, able to shape a full account of events on the peninsula between 1713 and 1755. Cochran inserted in his manuscript a list of criticisms he had of the Statistical Account, prominent among which was Haliburton's failure to consult these same sources. T. B. Akins, Nova Scotia's first archivist and one of Haliburton's research assistants, also later complained that his friend had not made effective use of the papers in the office of the provincial secretary and had instead relied for the most part on the publications of others.⁷⁰ In summary, despite Haliburton's claim to have made “numerous searches” of the public records, he barely scratched the surface of the manuscript collections available to him in Halifax.⁷¹

Haliburton used the narrative of the first volume to demonstrate how little could be gained in Nova Scotia so long as imperial inattention permitted desultory conflict, and ignorance hindered development. His cautionary tale began with the French, who were so determined to discover riches of silver and gold that they ignored the more prosaic agricultural potential of their colony on the Bay of Fundy. Acadia fell into disrepute and neglect, and this “spirit of inconstancy contributed to the loss of the country to France, and operated as an insuperable barrier to the acquisition of any solid advantage from it.”⁷² The British acted little better. They often found themselves in possession of Acadia (more through accident than design), but until 1713 were repeatedly to bargain the area away at the conference table.⁷³ Indeed, it was the New Englanders who, appreciating Acadia's strategic geographical position and perceiving a threat to their vital interests, finally forced Britain's hand, and secured the peninsula by the Treaty of Utrecht.⁷⁴

British possession did not bring about an immediate change. By 1713 the peninsula's existing inhabitants, the Acadians, “had become so discouraged by the repeated attacks of the English that they made but little progress in settling the country.” After 1713 matters were no different: “the English did not display the same zeal in the settlement of the Country which they had manifested in its conquest”;⁷⁵ and the French, now realizing the value of what they had lost and what they could still lose, started a new round of violence which eventually led to the expulsion in 1755.⁷⁶ Once again it was the New Englanders who, in the face of French incursions from Louisbourg, forced the British government to wrest control of the whole of the Maritime region from their enemies.⁷⁷ In the meantime, the political changes and insecurity of property caused by recurrent conflict “had a tendency to divert the attention of the settlers from agriculture,” and operated powerfully to check the progress of the region.⁷⁸

Significant British development in Nova Scotia commenced only in 1749 with the decision to build at Halifax. Born of military necessity, Halifax was a symbol of the arrival of the permanent civilization which would finally break patterns of neglect and violence. A fortress for “confirming and extending the dominion of the Crown of Great Britain,” Halifax also constituted “Communities, diffusing the benefits of population and agriculture.” The settlers on board the ships resting in Chebucto harbour, surveying the beautiful wooded coastline, “reflected that it was to be removed by their hands,” and “they were appalled at the magnitude of the undertaking.” But the wilderness did not frighten, much less assimilate, them. Of this British authorities made sure: before any settlers “were allowed to reside on shore, it was necessary to convince them that crimes could not be committed with impunity, and that as much of the Law of England had followed them to the wilderness of Nova-Scotia, as was necessary for their government and protection.”⁷⁹ In contrast, the Indians and French had acted in defiance of civilized law, oaths, and treaties, and had squandered their legitimate opportunities.

The fourth chapter was organized around the conflict between the nascent settlement at Halifax and the Indians, Acadians, and French—a conflict which was resolved only by the expulsion of 1755. Haliburton's presentation of the expulsion was to play an important role in the development of Maritime historiography in the late 19th century, and has a retrospective fascination.⁸⁰ His position was purposely ambiguous. On the one hand, as the legislative representative for the constituency harbouring the largest group of Acadians in the province, Haliburton was disposed to be sympathetic to their predicament in 1755.⁸¹ Relying on Minot, Raynal, and a partial transcript of John Winslow's journal (which he obtained from the Massachusetts Historical Society),⁸² Haliburton labelled the expulsion “cruel,” “unnecessary,” and “totally irreconcileable with the idea, as at this day entertained of justice.” On the other hand, he used Smollett and Douglass to establish a clear picture of the immediate pressures of war. What other course could a Governor have adopted, Haliburton asked rhetorically, which, “while it ensured the tranquility of the Colony, should temper justice with mercy to those misguided people?”⁸³ “Seduced” by the French government, the Acadians “would neither submit to the English government themselves, nor allow others to enjoy it with tranquility.”⁸⁴ In Haliburton's mind, the crime of the Acadians was just this, their failure to let British agricultural settlement grow in peace. If he was content to obscure the harsh implications of this judgement by the use of contradictory sources, there can be no doubt that in the broad sweep of history, the foundation of Halifax, not the expulsion, was for Haliburton the central fact of Nova Scotia's past.

The last chapter and concluding chronology rounded off Haliburton's tale of the arrival of civilization in Nova Scotia. Using council minutes and the legislative journals, he described the decision in 1758 to call an assembly and its meeting the same year. As an event in Nova Scotian history this ranked only slightly behind the foundation of Halifax. In 1760, while “the settlement of the Province was advanced by these liberal and judicious proposals, its tranquility was secured by the operations of the army” in Canada.⁸⁵ The volume came to a satisfying and natural conclusion with the peace of 1763.

Taken together, Haliburton's two volumes composed a single drama in four acts: two in the past, one in the present, and one in the future. The first act, a moral tale in narrative form, detailed the feudal era of the French and Indian wars, the purpose of which was to act as a foil for subsequent plot development, and as a lesson for British officials on the penalties imposed for neglect. The crucial role New England played as prime mover in the resolution of conflict was itself an implied threat that Nova Scotians had other avenues for evolution.⁸⁶ The second act, which began as a narrative of institution-building in volume one, and then dispersed into a series of descriptive accounts in volume two, portrayed an age of valiant pioneers around whose memory a golden glow was already beginning to descend. The third act highlighted contemporary development, and catalogued the material progress of Nova Scotian society. This was the crisis of the play, in which the actors could either derive inspiration from their own and their forefathers' achievements, or mark time living off the family patrimony. The climactic fourth act took place off stage in the future. It was Haliburton's hope that Nova Scotians had the moral and intellectual qualities necessary to exploit, in conjunction with an understanding and supportive imperial government, the natural advantages of their colonial environment. In this respect, whatever one's pride or natural interest in the past might have been, history was subordinate to the future of Nova Scotia.

Haliburton's optimism took the form of a mature patriotism rather than a selfish promotionalism. His concern for the long-term reputation of Nova Scotia and the moral instruction of its people instilled in him a restraint, the methodological consequences of which were a dependence on documents and previous historical writings. This meant that as a historian Haliburton laboured under a certain tension: he was conscious of the demands of critical method, but working against this was his own desire, and the insistence of his society, that history strengthen local loyalties, confirm provincial pride, and teach moral lessons. While it is to Haliburton's credit that his scholarship rarely degenerated into propaganda, his patriotic assumptions were not without their cost. He demonstrated a distinct lack of sympathy for those who did not contribute to his notion of what was best for progress in Nova Scotia: natives, lumbermen, fishermen, merchants, soldiers, and most government officials, were given short shrift; the French régime was condemned out of hand for its shortsighted approach to development. Haliburton also created a false impression of contemporary. Nova Scotia by shunning any discussion of internal religious, political, or personal animosities. On the other hand, under the necessity of describing Nova Scotia and promoting its image, Haliburton avoided excessive concentration on the political and constitutional issues which so engrossed European historians. In common with most other early Maritime reports, pamphlets, and apologias, Haliburton's Account reflected a wider interest in providing a systematic description of both human activity and physical geography, co-ordinated by the unifying theme of progress.

Haliburton's history was patriotic because it met the needs of Nova Scotians. Specifically, he fashioned a comprehensive descriptive and narrative account which fitted the conception his fellows had of themselves, their partnership with Great Britain, and their future together. At least three other Nova Scotians were contemporaneously engaged in the production of a manuscript history of the province, none of which, if published, would have been so satisfactory. Peleg Wiswall's “Notes for a History of Nova Scotia” were too obviously polemical in tone, impressionistic rather than documentary, and would have offended without convincing.⁸⁷ William Cochran's “Memoranda … with a view to a History of Nova Scotia” were a chronology which surpassed Haliburton's first volume in research and detail, but lacked a unifying form as history, and commented on neither the present nor future concerns of Nova Scotians.⁸⁸ Beamish Murdoch, in open imitation of Robert Christie's various memoirs of Lower Canada, used real scissors and real paste to manufacture from newspaper clippings “Historical Memoirs of the British North American Provinces Since His Present Majesty's Accession.” His purpose was to defend the right of colonial assemblies to control the purse, but in doing so he exposed debilitating conflicts not only between colonists and the imperial government, but also among the colonists themselves.⁸⁹ Only Haliburton struck the right balance, and even his critic J. G. Bourinot, writing in 1899, had to admit that the Account remained the best survey of Nova Scotian history available.⁹⁰

Haliburton was weary of the Account long before it was published, and its immediate reception did little to revive his historical curiosity. His hope of appearing before the British public was effectively dashed by his failure to attract a publisher in London, and although the work was honoured in Nova Scotia,⁹¹ it did not generate much in the way of sales. Joseph Howe, the eventual publisher, found the work a “ruinous speculation”:

It cumbered my office for two years, involved me in heavy expenses for wages, and in debts for paper, materials, binding and engraving. … None sold abroad. The Book, though fairly printed, was wretchedly bound, the engravings were poor and I was left with about 1000 copies, scattered about, unsaleable on my hands.⁹²

A problem of equal if not greater concern to Haliburton was the constraint historical method imposed on his natural wit and flair for the satirical.⁹³ Certainly what he called his “resort to a more popular style” in the Clockmaker series better suited his talents.⁹⁴ In 1839 he thought of updating the statistics and descriptions in the second volume of the Account, but failed to do so when he was unable to obtain a guarantee of £250 from either the provincial government or his publisher.⁹⁵

The historical elements to be found in both the Description and the Account cannot be separated from the promotional setting which determined their arrangement and interpretation. Together, historical narrative and promotional description merged in Haliburton's hands to give substance to Nova Scotian patriotism—a patriotism which suggested that the colony represented the best and most vital qualities of British civilization. The qualities which Haliburton admired most were those of the intelligent, hardworking, progressive, yeoman farmer. More to the point, Haliburton implied that the typical Nova Scotian exhibited these qualities, and that he was himself proud to be associated with them. By the time he came to write the Sam Slick stories in the 1830s, Haliburton delighted in demonstrating how far Nova Scotians fell short of this ideal, and by extension how far he was himself drifting from identity with them.

Notes

1. Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel, canto vi, st. i. The line was adopted as the motto for a series of articles entitled “Characteristics of Nova Scotia,” which ran in the Acadian Magazine; or Literary Mirror (Halifax) in 1826. The motto was also prefixed to Thomas C. Haliburton, An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova-Scotia (Halifax, 1829).

2. For example, R. A. Davies, ed., On Thomas Chandler Haliburton: Selected Criticism (Ottawa, 1979).

3. Published anonymously in Halifax. Hereafter referred to as the Description.

4. Hereafter referred to as the Account.

5. “Love of Country a Stimulus to Enterprise,” an address delivered before the Halifax Mechanics' Institute, November 5, 1834, and partially reprinted in The Heart of Howe: Selections from the Letters and Speeches of Joseph Howe, ed. D. C. Harvey (Toronto, 1939), pp. 49-66.

6. D. C. Harvey, “The Intellectual Awakening of Nova Scotia,” Dalhousie Review, XIII, no. 1 (April 1933), 1-22.

7. Account, II, 358.

8. David Sutherland, “Halifax Merchants and the Pursuit of Development, 1783-1850,” Canadian Historical Review, LIX, no. 1 (March 1978), 1-17.

9. Public Archives of Nova Scotia [PANS], Peleg Wiswall Papers, MG 1, vol. 980, item 1, Peleg Wiswall to Samuel George William Archibald, March 14, 1818; reprinted as “A Blue Print for Nova Scotia in 1818,” ed. D. C. Harvey, Canadian Historical Review, XXIV, no. 4 (December 1943), 397-409.

10. Public Archives of Canada [PAC], Henry James Morgan Papers, MG 29, D 61, vol. 47, Beamish Murdoch to Henry James Morgan, September 28, 1865; Beamish Murdoch, A History of Nova-Scotia, or Acadie, 3 vols. (Halifax, 1865-1867), III (1867), 577-578; V. L. O. Chittick, Thomas Chandler Haliburton (“Sam Slick”): A Study in Provincial Toryism (New York, 1924), pp. 122-123.

11. Chittick, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pp. 15-42; Fred Cogswell, “Thomas Chandler Haliburton,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, IX (Toronto, 1976), 348-349.

12. From a speech reported in the Nova-scotian (Halifax), June 12, 1839; partially reprinted in D. C. Harvey, “History and Its Uses in Pre-Confederation Nova Scotia,” Canadian Historical Association, Annual Report (1938), pp. 8-9.

13. Cogswell, “Thomas Chandler Haliburton,” p. 355.

14. T. C. Haliburton to Peleg Wiswall, December 1, 1824, in Nova Scotia, Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Report of the Trustees of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia for the Year Ending 30 November 1945 (Halifax, 1946), Appendix C, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” p. 44.

15. Haliburton to Wiswall, December 31, 1823, ibid., pp. 36-37.

16. Ibid.; Haliburton to Jean Mandé Sigogne, September 5, 1825, quoted in Chittick, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pp. 54-55.

17. Haliburton to Wiswall, December 1, 1824, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” pp. 42-43.

18. Ibid., p. 43.

19. Haliburton to Wiswall, January 7, 1824, ibid., p. 38.

20. Andrew H. Clark, “Titus Smith, Junior, and the Geography of Nova Scotia in 1801 and 1802,” Association of American Geographers, Annals, XLIV, no. 4 (December 1954), 295-297; Harvey, “Intellectual Awakening of Nova Scotia,” pp. 14-16.

21. Report of the Council Committee on Hemp Culture, May 5, 1801, quoted in Clark, “Titus Smith, Junior,” p. 296n. This committee was directly responsible for Titus Smith's commission to survey the peninsula interior in 1801-1802.

22. Account, I, vii.

23. PANS, John George Marshall Papers, MG 1, vol. 1548, item 4B, Haliburton to John George Marshall, December 7, 1826.

24. Gerald T. Rimmington, “The Geography of Haliburton's Nova Scotia,” Dalhousie Review, XLVIII, no. 4 (Winter 1968-1969), 494.

25. Haliburton to Wiswall, May 10, 1825, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” p. 47.

26. PANS, RG 1, vols. 380-380A, Titus Smith, Surveys of Nova Scotia; Public Record Office (London), Colonial Office Series, 384/17, “Copy of the Report laid before the Colonial Department by Lieut. Colonel Cockburn, on the subject of Emigration, together with the Instructions received from that Department on 26 January 1827, printed by order of the House of Commons, 10 March 1828,” Appendix A, no. 1, “Extracts from the Letter and General Information book of Charles Morris Esq. Surveyor General of Nova Scotia”; PANS, RG 1, vol. 234/39, Charles Morris III to Lt.-Col. Cockburn, June 15, 1827; Account, II, 201n; J. S. Martell, “The Achievements of Agricola and the Agricultural Societies, 1818-25,” Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Bulletin, II, no. 2 (1940), 14.

27. For example, “the whole of the information contained in the geological sketch of the Eastern District of Nova-Scotia, and the Island of Cape-Breton” (II, 414-453), came from Richard Brown and Richard Smith: Account, I, viii.

28. It has been recognized for some time that large sections of Haliburton's second volume were copied from Charles Morris III's “General Information Book”: see Victor H. Polsits, review of Builders of Nova Scotia, by John G. Bourinot, American Historical Review, V. no. 4 (July 1900), 801-802. Other portions of the volume were taken from the now lost replies to Haliburton's inquiries: see John Roy Campbell, A History of the County of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia (Saint John, N.B., 1876), p. ix.

29. Description, p. 179.

30. For example, Haliburton supported the claims of Pictou Academy (Account, II, 54-56), and questioned the need for Dalhousie College (II, 17-18).

31. Haliburton to Wiswall, January 7, 1824, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” pp. 38-39.

32. Account, II, 126.

33. Ibid., I, 2.

34. Ibid., II, 52, 101, 171, 179, 196, 279.

35. Ibid., pp. 67, 85, 366.

36. Rimmington, “Geography of Haliburton's Nova Scotia,” p. 489.

37. Description, p. 185.

38. Account, II, 293.

39. Cf. Arthur H. Shaffer, The Politics of History: Writing the History of the American Revolution, 1783-1815 (Chicago, 1975), p. 87.

40. Account, II, 377-389.

41. Ibid., pp. 326-328.

42. PANS, Burgess Family Papers, MG 1, vol. 162A, Joseph Howe to Agnes Wallace, April 9, 1826; partially reprinted in Heart of Howe, ed. Harvey, p. xxxvi. This reference was drawn to the author's attention by Tom Vincent.

43. Wiswall Papers, vol. 979, folder 1, Notes for a History of Nova Scotia, p. 5a [enclosure], Wiswall to Haliburton [1826?]; reprinted in Chittick, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pp. 133-134.

44. Description, p. 8.

45. Haliburton to Wiswall, January 7, 1824, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” p. 38.

46. Wiswall Papers, Notes for a History of Nova Scotia, p. 15.

47. Ibid.

48. Tom Vincent, “New Brunswick Classic,” a review of Argimou. A Legend of the Micmac, by Eugene [Douglas S. Huyghue], Canadian Literature, no. 81 (Summer 1979), p. 110.

49. Joseph Howe, “Acadia,” in his Poems and Essays (1874), ed. M. G. Parks (Toronto, 1973), p. 31.

50. Wiswall Papers, Notes for a History of Nova Scotia, p. 2.

51. Account, I, vi.

52. Ibid.; Haliburton to Wiswall, December 31, 1823, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” pp. 36-37.

53. Archibald MacMechan, The Centenary of Haliburton's Nova-Scotia (Halifax, 1930), p. 1.

54. “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” passim; Robert Cooney, A Compendious History of the Northern Part of the Province of New Brunswick, and of the District of Gaspe, in Lower Canada (Halifax, 1832), p. vii; Martell, “Achievements of Agricola,” p. 15.

55. C. Bruce Ferguson, “The Public Archives of Nova Scotia,” Acadiensis, II, no. 1 (Autumn 1972), 73-74.

56. Thomas Beamish Akins, letter to the editor, Boston Evening Transcript, March 19, 1885; cf. PANS, William Cochran Papers, MG 1, vol. 223, items 3-4, Memoranda … with a View to a History of Nova Scotia.

57. Brian Cuthbertson, “Thomas Beamish Akins,” APLA [Atlantic Provinces Library Association] Bulletin, XLIV, no. 5 (March 1981), 49.

58. Account, I, vi.

59. Ibid., pp. vi-vii; Haliburton to Wiswall, February 19, 1824, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” p. 41.

60. John G. Bourinot, “Builders of Nova Scotia: A Historical Review; With an Appendix Containing Copies of Rare Documents Relating to the Early Days of the Province,” Royal Society of Canada, Proceedings and Transactions, ser. 2, V (1899), sec. ii, 63.

61. George Richards Minot, Continuation of the History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from the Year 1748. With an Introductory Sketch of Events from Its Original Settlement, 2 vols. (Boston, 1798-1803), I (1798), 122-130.

62. Tobias George Smollett, Continuation of the Complete History of England, 4 vols. (London, 1760-1761), II (1760), 284-286.

63. Jeremy Belknap, American Biography: or an Historical Account of Those Persons Who have been Distinguished in America, as Adventurers, Statesmen, Philosophers, Divines, Warriors, Authors, or Other Remarkable Characters, Comprehending a Recital of the Events Connected with Their Lives and Actions, 2 vols. (Boston, 1794-1798).

64. Jeremy Belknap, The History of New Hampshire. Comprehending the Events of One Complete Century and Seventy-five Years from the Discovery of the River Pascataqua to the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Ninety …, 3 vols. (2nd ed.; Boston, 1813); William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the first Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North America, 2 vols. (Boston and London, 1755); Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, 3 vols. (1764-1828), ed. Lawrence S. Mayo (Cambridge, Mass., 1936); Minot, Continuation of the History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

65. Richard C. Vitzthum, The American Compromise: Theme and Method in the Histories of Bancroft, Parkman, and Adams (Norman, Okla., 1974), p. 45.

66. Cochran Papers, Memoranda … with a View to a History of Nova Scotia, item 4, enclosure inside the front cover.

67. Shaffer, Politics of History, pp. 181-182.

68. Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Arthur Friedman, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1966), I, 44.

69. William H. Keating to Thomas Beamish Akins, March 11, 1885, quoted in Akins, letter to the editor, Boston Evening Transcript, March 19, 1885.

70. Cochran Papers, Memoranda … with a View to a History of Nova Scotia, item 4, enclosure inside the front cover; PANS, Thomas Beamish Akins Papers, MG 1, vol. 8, T. B. Akins to S. G. Lajoie, January 12, 1860; T. B. Akins to Francis Parkman (ca. 1884), quoted in Francis Parkman, “The Acadians Again,” The Nation (New York) January 22, 1885, p. 73; Akins, letter to the editor, Boston Evening Transcript, March 19, 1885; F. Blake Crofton, “Haliburton: The Man and the Writer”, in [A. B. DeMille, ed.,] Haliburton: A Centenary Chaplet (Toronto, 1897), p. 57; Archibald MacMechan, “A Gentleman of the Old School”, Halifax Herald, December 31, 1932.

71. Account, I, viii. Haliburton's habits of research later became a matter of controversy because he suggested in a footnote (I, 196n) that his failure to provide fuller documentation regarding the expulsion of the Acadians was due to a conspiracy among the perpetrators to suppress all incriminating evidence relating to that event. According to Akins, Haliburton had an exaggerated idea of what kinds of documents should have survived and furthermore missed many of the documents which did survive. Certainly nothing was withheld from Haliburton at the time. See Akins, letter to the editor, Boston Evening Transcript, March 19, 1885.

72. Account, I, 68; see also Descripton, p. 7.

73. Account, I, p. 46.

74. Ibid., pp. 80-85.

75. Ibid., pp. 65-66, 92.

76. Ibid., pp. 92-111.

77. Ibid., p. 111.

78. Ibid., II, 274.

79. Ibid., I, 136, 139.

80. For a summary of later historiographical debate, see B. C. Cuthbertson, “Thomas Beamish Akins: British North America's Pioneer Archivist,” Acadiensis, VII, no. 1 (Autumn 1977), 94-101.

81. Adams George Archibald, “The Expulsion of the Acadians,” part I, NSHS, Collections, V (1886-1887), 12; Rimmington, “Geography of Haliburton's Nova Scotia,” pp. 497-498.

82. Account, I, vii; Justin Winsor, “Authorities on the French and Indian Wars of New England and Acadia, 1688-1763,” in Justin Winsor, ed., Narrative and Critical History of America, 8 vols. (Boston, 1884-1889), V (1887), 458.

83. Account, I, 196-197.

84. Ibid., p. 159.

85. Ibid., p. 223.

86. For a time Haliburton viewed annexation to New England as the natural course of development for Nova Scotia: see Haliburton to Wiswall, January 7, 1824, “Haliburton-Wiswall Correspondence,” p. 40.

87. Wiswall Papers, vol. 979, folder 1.

88. Cochran Papers, vol. 223, items 3-4.

89. PANS, Beamish Murdoch Papers, MG 1, vol. 726.

90. Bourinot, “Builders of Nova Scotia,” pp. 63-64.

91. On March 27, 1829 the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia resolved unanimously to thank Haliburton “for the very laudable and laborious effort which he has made,” Account, II, Frontispiece. The Account was also favourably received in New England, and was responsible for Haliburton's being elected an honorary member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Novascotian, April 1, 1830.

92. Quoted in Chittick, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, p. 144; see also J. Murray Beck, Joseph Howe, I, Conservative Reformer, 1804-1848 (Kingston and Montreal, 1982), 98-99.

93. D. C. Harvey, “The Centenary of Sam Slick,” Dalhousie Review, XVI, no. 4 (Winter 1936-1937), 431.

94. Quoted in Tom Marshall, “Haliburton's Canada,” Canadian Literature, Nos. 68-69 (Spring-Summer 1976), p. 134.

95. “The Correspondence of Thomas Chandler Haliburton and Richard Bentley,” ed. William H. Bond, The Canadian Collection at Harvard University, ed. William Inglis Morse, Bulletin, IV (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), 61-62, Haliburton to Bentley, December 19, 1839; 63-64, September 1, 1840; 65, December 1, 1840; PANS, RG 1, vol. 253, p. 105 [Memorial by T. C. Haliburton to the Lieutenant Governor in Council, 18 November 1840].