[Footnote 75:  La Jonquiere a Eveque de Quebec, 14 Juin, 1750.  Memoire du Roy pour servir d’Instruction au Comte de Raymond, commandant pour Sa Majeste a l’Isle Royale [Cape Breton], 24 Avril, 1751.]

[Footnote 76:  See Appendix B.]

“We know very well,” pursues Roma, “the fruits of this conduct in the last war; and the English know it also.  Judge then what will be the wrath and vengeance of this cruel nation.”  The fruits to which Roma alludes were the hostilities, open or secret, committed by the Acadians against the English.  He now ventures the prediction that the enraged conquerors will take their revenge by drafting all the young Acadians on board their ships of war, and there destroying them by slow starvation.  He proved, however, a false prophet.  The English Governor merely required the inhabitants to renew their oath of allegiance, without qualification or evasion.

It was twenty years since the Acadians had taken such an oath; and meanwhile a new generation had grown up.  The old oath pledged them to fidelity and obedience; but they averred that Phillips, then governor of the province, had given them, at the same time, assurance that they should not be required to bear arms against either French or Indians.  In fact, such service had not been demanded of them, and they would have lived in virtual neutrality, had not many of them broken their oaths and joined the French war-parties.  For this reason Cornwallis thought it necessary that, in renewing the pledge, they should bind themselves to an allegiance as complete as that required of other British subjects.  This spread general consternation.  Deputies from the Acadian settlements appeared at Halifax, bringing a paper signed with the marks of a thousand persons.  The following passage contains the pith of it.  “The inhabitants in general, sir, over the whole extent of this country are resolved not to take the oath which your Excellency requires of us; but if your Excellency will grant us our old oath, with an exemption for ourselves and our heirs from taking up arms, we will accept it."[77] The answer of Cornwallis was by no means so stern as it has been represented.[78] After the formal reception he talked in private with the deputies; and “they went home in good humor, promising great things."[79]

[Footnote 77:  Public Documents of Nova Scotia, 173.]

[Footnote 78:  See Ibid., 174, where the answer is printed.]

[Footnote 79:  Cornwallis to the Board of Trade, 11 Sept. 1749.]

The refusal of the Acadians to take the required oath was not wholly spontaneous, but was mainly due to influence from without.  The French officials of Cape Breton and Isle St. Jean, now Prince Edward Island, exerted themselves to the utmost, chiefly through the agency of the priests, to excite the people to refuse any oath that should commit them fully to British allegiance.  At the same time means were used to induce them to migrate to the neighboring islands under French rule, and efforts were also made to set on the Indians to attack the English.  But the plans of the French will best appear in a despatch sent by La Jonquiere to the Colonial Minister in the autumn of 1749.