r having the appearance of being so, as if the
world was not governed by appearances.] Thus these poor people remained
under this deplorable dilemma. Some of them too, had not even
habitations to go back if they would: they had been forced into the
measure of deserting their country, and passing over to the French side,
by the violence of the Abbot de Loutre, who had not only preached them
into this spirit, but ordered the savages, whom he had at his disposal,
to set fire to their habitations, barns, &c. particularly at
_Mirtigueesh_. [The reader is desired to observe, that in the memorials
delivered into the English court by the French ministers, this burning
of villages was specifically made an article of complaint, at the same
time that it was their own incendiary agent, at their own instigation,
who had actually caused fire to be set to them by his savages. Could
then impudence be pushed farther than it was on this occasion?]

In the mean time the French did not spare, at least, the consolation of
words and promises to these distrest Refugee-acadians. They were
assured, that they would infallibly be relieved on the regulation of the
limits taking place, which was then on the point of being settled, by
commissaries, between the two crowns. [The truth is, that in these
assurances the French government, which never intended a conclusion, but
only an amusement, did not scruple equally deceiving the English, and
these infatuated Acadian subjects of ours, who, to the French interest
had sacrificed their own, their possessions in their country, their
sworn faith, in short, their ALL. Whoever has the patience to go through
the French memorials, in their procedure with our commissaries, may see
such instances of their pitiful prevarications, petty-fogging chicanery,
quirks, and evasions, as would nauseate one. The whole stress of their
argument, in short, turns merely upon names, where the things themselves
were absolutely out of the question, from the manifest notoriety of
them.] This hope, in some sort, pacified them; and they lived as well as
they could in the expectation of a final decision, which was not so soon
to come.

Yet even this example of the sufferings of these people, purely on
account of their attachment to the French government, could not out
balance with the French Acadians, who remained in the English district,
the assiduous applications of our priests to keep them firm in the
French interest. They never