after three years of
vain attempts to overcome their reluctance, he writes that every effort
has failed to induce them to migrate.

From this time forward the state of affairs in Acadia was a peculiar
one. By the Treaty of Utrecht it was a British province, and the nominal
sovereignty resided at Annapolis, in the keeping of the miserable
little fort and the puny garrison, which as late as 1743 consisted of
but five companies, counting, when the ranks were full, thirty-one men
each.[206] More troops were often asked for, and once or twice were
promised; but they were never sent. "This has been hitherto no more than
a mock government, its authority never yet having extended beyond
cannon-shot of the fort," wrote Governor Philipps in 1720. "It would be
more for the honour of the Crown, and profit also, to give back the
country to the French, than to be contented with the name only of
government."[207] Philipps repaired the fort, which, as the engineer
Mascarene says, "had lain tumbling down" before his arrival; but
Annapolis and the whole province remained totally neglected and almost
forgotten by England till the middle of the century. At one time the
soldiers were in so ragged a plight that Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong
was forced to clothe them at his own expense.[208]

While this seat of British sovereignty remained in unchanging feebleness
for more than forty years, the French Acadians were multiplying apace.
Before 1749 they were the only white inhabitants of the province,
except ten or twelve English families who, about the year 1720, lived
under the guns of Annapolis. At the time of the cession the French
population seems not to have exceeded two thousand souls, about five
hundred of whom lived within the _banlieue_ of Annapolis, and were
therefore more or less under English control. They were all alike a
simple and ignorant peasantry, prosperous in their humble way, and happy
when rival masters ceased from troubling, though vexed with incessant
quarrels among themselves, arising from the unsettled boundaries of
their lands, which had never been properly surveyed. Their mental
horizon was of the narrowest, their wants were few, no military service
was asked of them by the English authorities, and they paid no taxes to
the government. They could even indulge their strong appetite for
litigation free of cost; for when, as often happened, they brought their
land disputes before the Council at Annapolis, the cases were