Gwyn, Julian

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

COMPTES RENDUS - BOOK REVIEWS 211 RONALD RoMKEY, ed.-Expeditions of Honour, The Journal of John Salusbury in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1749-53. Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1982. Pp. 221. John Salusbury ( 1707 -62) epitomized one type of British official in the eighteenth-century British empire. Unfit for anything but the misspending of other people's wealth, he was obliged by his own poverty to accept a position in the new government established at Halifax in 1749. Ignorant of trade, without capital, he survived on credit. Of little weight in politics, he was arguably the man on the Council least fitted to hold office. He appears in all to have been one of the least successful of that curious breed of migratory Welsh gentlemen. He went to Halifax as an "unavoidable inconvenience" (p. 24), after a career at Cambridge which trained him as a "fortune hunter and gigolo". (p. 27) His debts were paid off upon his marriage in 1739 to his cousin, Hester Cotton. Yet his mother managed to encumber his own expected inheritance, so that he was soon incapable of supporting himself, his wife or his daughter, the celebrated Hester Lynch Piozzi Thrale . Dr. Romk:ey says his £365 a year salary did not go far; but he should remember that it was the equivalent to having a fortune of £12,000 at 3 percent! In addition he had a small allowance from his brother. The fool and his .money were soon parted, while his wife supported herself and daughter on £125! Financial rescue came ultimately from his sister-in-law, the daughter of Sir Henry Penrice, a wealthy judge of the Admiralty Court in London; and Salusbury was able to desert Halifax and live on his brother's charity in comfortable London houses. The death of this dear lady left the Salusbury brothers in a financial position which even John could not successfully assail. It seems utterly fitting, to this most inconsequential of individuals that he died of an apoplectic stroke, occasioned by a prolonged argument with his daughter over a suitor, the Southwark brewer, Henry Thrale, her first husband. The value of his diary is limited . He was witness to the first British expedition to the Chignecto Basin in April 1750, a fiasco. Also of interest is his reference to the immigration of German and Swiss "Protestants" to Halifax between 1749 and 1752. He complained that many were deserting to Louisbourg. Though he does not mention it, they were in reality Catholics, some of whom even resettled in Halifax after the capture of Louisbourg in 1758. They appeared then as Anglicans, only to re-emerge as Catholics after 1784 when priests again began to minister to the Roman Catholic faithful in Nova Scotia. Furthermore, his diary reinforces the impression that the early settlers felt isolated and displayed an inordinate fear of both French and Indians. This derived from their garrison, or fortress, mentality. "Here is nothing but dullness, the very Empire of dullness." (p. 15i) Perhaps it was a suitable epitaph for himself; but how different the view taken by enterprising New Englanders, of whom the editor says too little, whom the prospects of trade and the fisheries excited. To have brought the journal, the original of which is in Manchester's John Rylands Library, to the public eye was useful, and puts, marginally at least, all historians of early Nova Scotia in the editor's debt. * * * Julian GWYN University of Ottawa NoEL. BAILLARGEON, Le Seminaire de Quebec de 1760 a 1800. Quebec: Presses de l'Universite Laval, 1981. Pp. 297. The book under review is the third volume-and the most interesting to this point-of Baillargeon's history of the Seminaire de Quebec. Volume one covers the Seminary's 

RONALD ROMKEY, ed.—Expeditions of Honour, The Journal of John Salusbury in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1749-53.

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RONALD ROMKEY, ed.—Expeditions of Honour, The Journal of John Salusbury in Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1749-53.

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Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)