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 same
matters.
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