in 1752 the population was above four thousand. Thus was
born into the world the city of Halifax. Along with the crumbling old
fort and miserably disciplined garrison at Annapolis, besides six or
seven small detached posts to watch the Indians and Acadians, it
comprised the whole British force on the peninsula; for Canseau had been
destroyed by the French.

The French had never reconciled themselves to the loss of Acadia, and
were resolved, by diplomacy or force, to win it back again; but the
building of Halifax showed that this was to be no easy task, and filled
them at the same time with alarm for the safety of Louisbourg. On one
point, at least, they saw their policy clear. The Acadians, though those
of them who were not above thirty-five had been born under the British
flag, must be kept French at heart, and taught that they were still
French subjects. In 1748 they numbered eighty-eight hundred and fifty
communicants, or from twelve to thirteen thousand souls; but an
emigration, of which the causes will soon appear, had reduced them in
1752 to but little more than nine thousand.[74] These were divided into
six principal parishes, one of the largest being that of Annapolis.
Other centres of population were Grand Pre, on the basin of Mines;
Beaubassin, at the head of Chignecto Bay; Pisiquid, now Windsor; and
Cobequid, now Truro. Their priests, who were missionaries controlled by
the diocese of Quebec, acted also as their magistrates, ruling them for
this world and the next. Bring subject to a French superior, and being,
moreover, wholly French at heart, they formed in this British province a
wheel within a wheel, the inner movement always opposing the outer.

[Footnote 74: _Description de l'Acadie, avec le Nom des Paroisses et le
Nombre des Habitants, 1748. Memoire a presenter a la Cour sur la
necessite de fixer les Limites de l'Acadie,_ par l'Abbe de l'Isle-Dieu,
1753 (1754?). Compare the estimates in _Censuses of Canada_ (Ottawa,
1876.)]

Although, by the twelfth article of the treaty of Utrecht, France had
solemnly declared the Acadians to be British subjects, the Government of
Louis XV intrigued continually to turn them from subjects into enemies.
Before me is a mass of English documents on Acadian affairs from the
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to the catastrophe of 1755, and above a
thousand pages of French official papers from the archives of Paris,
memorials, reports, and secret correspondence, relating to the sam