The necessity of a permanent British settlement and Military Station on the Atlantic Coast of the Peninsula, had long been considered the only effectual means of preserving British authority, as well as for the protection of the coast fishing, which, at this time, was deemed of paramount importance to British interests. But lately the continual breaches of neutrality on the part of the French, together with the loss of Louisburg, under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chappelle, in October, 1748, rendered such an establishment indispensably necessary to the support of the British Crown in Nova Scotia. The scheme for settlement at Chebucto is said to have originated with the people of Massachusetts,[1] who, in calling the attention of Government to the claims and encroachments of the French, suggested the necessity for, as well as the great commercial advantages to be derived from such an undertaking; and it has also been asserted that a committee of influential citizens had been formed in Boston for the purpose of more effectually advocating the design. No authentic information on the subject, however, has been found beyond the suggestions contained in Governor Shirley's letters to the Secretary of State, in 1747 and 8, in which one extensive plan of British colonization throughout Nova Scotia is proposed and details suggested, many of which, however, did not receive the approval of Government.[2] [Footnote 1: One Thomas Coram, whose name appears frequently in the history of the state of Maine, is said to have suggested a scheme for building a town at Chebucto in 1718, and applied to Government for a grant of land, but was prevented by the agents of the Government of Massachusetts Bay, who supposed that such project might interfere with their fishing privileges, and he was compelled to abandon his enterprise. This, however, has not the weight of much authority.] [Footnote 2: Copies of several of Shirley's letters were furnished Governor Cornwallis on leaving England, as part of his instructions.]