With the help of these and some collateral lights, it is not
difficult to make a correct diagnosis of the political disease that
ravaged this miserable country. Of a multitude of proofs, only a few can
be given here; but these will suffice.
It was not that the Acadians had been ill-used by the English; the
reverse was the case. They had been left in free exercise of their
worship, as stipulated by treaty. It is true that, from time to time,
there were loud complaints from French officials that religion was in
danger, because certain priests had been rebuked, arrested, brought
before the Council at Halifax, suspended from their functions, or
required, on pain of banishment, to swear that they would do nothing
against the interests of King George. Yet such action on the part of the
provincial authorities seems, without a single exception, to have been
the consequence of misconduct on the part of the priest, in opposing the
Government and stirring his flock to disaffection. La Jonquiere, the
determined adversary of the English, reported to the bishop that they
did not oppose the ecclesiastics in the exercise of their functions, and
an order of Louis XV admits that the Acadians have enjoyed liberty of
religion.[75] In a long document addressed in 1750 to the Colonial
Minister at Versailles, Roma, an officer at Louisbourg, testifies thus
to the mildness of British rule, though he ascribes it to interested
motives.
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