The position of the Acadians was deplorable. By the Treaty of Utrecht, France had transferred them to the British Crown; yet French officers denounced them as rebels and threatened them with death if they did not fight at their bidding against England; and English officers threatened them with expulsion from the country if they broke their oath of allegiance to King George. It was the duty of the British ministry to occupy the province with a force sufficient to protect the inhabitants against French terrorism, and leave no doubt that the King of England was master of Acadia in fact as well as in name. This alone could have averted the danger of Acadian revolt, and the harsh measures to which it afterwards
gave rise. The ministry sent no aid, but left to Shirley and Massachusetts the task of keeping the province for King George. Shirley and Massachusetts did what they could; but they could not do all that the emergency demanded.
Shirley courageously spoke his mind to the ministry, on whose favor he was dependent. “The fluctuating state of the inhabitants of Acadia,” he wrote to Newcastle, “seems, my lord, naturally to arise from their finding a want of due protection from his Majesty’s Government.”[223]
[191] Journal de Beaujeu, in Le Canada Français, Documents, 53
[192] Shirley to Newcastle, 29 October, 1745.
[193] Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 12 Septembre, 1745.
[194] Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 12 Septembre, 1745.
[195] Ibid.
[196] Admiral Knowles à——1746. Mascarene in Le Canada Français, Documents, 82.
[197] Mascarene, in Le Canada Français, Documents, 81.