settled
and the litigants paid no fees. Their communication with the English
officials was carried on through deputies chosen by themselves, and
often as ignorant as their constituents, for a remarkable equality
prevailed through this primitive little society.

Except the standing garrison at Annapolis, Acadia was as completely let
alone by the British government as Rhode Island or Connecticut.
Unfortunately, the traditional British policy of inaction towards her
colonies was not applicable in the case of a newly conquered province
with a disaffected population and active, enterprising, and martial
neighbors bent on recovering what they had lost. Yet it might be
supposed that a neglect so invigorating in other cases might have
developed among the Acadians habits of self-reliance and faculties of
self-care. The reverse took place; for if England neglected Acadia,
France did not; and though she had renounced her title to it, she still
did her best to master it and make it hers again. The chief instrument
of her aggressive policy was the governor of Isle Royale, whose station
was the fortress of Louisbourg, and who was charged with the management
of Acadian affairs. At all the Acadian settlements he had zealous and
efficient agents in the missionary priests, who were sent into the
province by the Bishop of Quebec, or in a few cases by their immediate
ecclesiastical superiors in Isle Royale.

The Treaty of Utrecht secured freedom of worship to the Acadians under
certain conditions. These were that they should accept the sovereignty
of the British Crown, and that they and their pastors should keep within
the limits of British law.[209] Even supposing that by swearing
allegiance to Queen Anne the Acadians had acquired the freedom of
worship which the treaty gave them on condition of their becoming
British subjects, it would have been an abuse of this freedom to use it
for subverting the power that had granted it. Yet this is what the
missionaries did. They were not only priests of the Roman Church, they
were also agents of the King of France; and from first to last they
labored against the British government in the country that France had
ceded to the British Crown. So confident were they, and with so much
reason, of the weakness of their opponents that they openly avowed that
their object was to keep the Acadians faithful to King Louis. When two
of their number, Saint-Poncy and Chevereaux, were summoned before the
Council