rilous Questions.--Louisbourg founded.--Annapolis
attacked.--Position of the Acadians.--Weakness of the British
Garrison.--Apathy of the Ministry.--French Intrigue.--Clerical
Politicians.--The Oath of Allegiance.--Acadians refuse it: their
Expulsion proposed; they take the Oath.

The great European war was drawing to an end, and with it the American
war, which was but its echo. An avalanche of defeat and disaster had
fallen upon the old age of Louis XIV., and France was burdened with an
insupportable load of debt. The political changes in England came to her
relief. Fifty years later, when the elder Pitt went out of office and
Bute came in, France had cause to be grateful; for the peace of 1763 was
far more favorable to her than it would have been under the imperious
war minister. It was the same in 1712. The Whigs who had fallen from
power would have wrung every advantage from France; the triumphant
Tories were eager to close with her on any terms not so easy as to
excite popular indignation. The result was the Treaty of Utrecht, which
satisfied none of the allies of England, and gave to France conditions
more favorable than she had herself proposed two years before. The fall
of Godolphin and the disgrace of Marlborough were a godsend to her.

Yet in America Louis XIV. made important concessions. The Five Nations
of the Iroquois were acknowledged to be British subjects; and this
became in future the preposterous foundation for vast territorial claims
of England. Hudson Bay, Newfoundland, and Acadia, "according to its
ancient limits," were also given over by France to her successful rival;
though the King parted from Acadia with a reluctance shown by the great
offers he made for permission to retain it.[185]

But while the Treaty of Utrecht seemed to yield so much, and yielded so
much in fact, it staved off the settlement of questions absolutely
necessary for future peace. The limits of Acadia, the boundary line
between Canada and the British colonies, and the boundary between those
colonies and the great western wilderness claimed by France, were all
left unsettled, since the attempt to settle them would have rekindled
the war. The peace left the embers of war still smouldering, sure, when
the time should come, to burst into flame. The next thirty years were
years of chronic, smothered war, disguised, but never quite at rest.
The standing subjects of dispute were three, very different in
importance. First, the ques