the
province at the eleventh hour. France and her agents took alarm, and
redoubled their efforts to keep their hold on a country which they had
begun to regard as theirs already. The settlement of the English at
Halifax startled the French into those courses of intrigue and violence
which were the immediate cause of the removal of the Acadians in 1755.

At the earlier period which we are now considering, the storm was still
remote. The English made no attempt either to settle the province or to
secure it by sufficient garrisons; they merely tried to bind the
inhabitants by an oath of allegiance which the weakness of the
government would constantly tempt them to break. When George I. came to
the throne, Deputy-Governor Caulfield tried to induce the inhabitants to
swear allegiance to the new monarch. The Acadians asked advice of
Saint-Ovide, governor at Louisbourg, who sent them elaborate directions
how to answer the English demand and remain at the same time faithful
children of France. Neither Caulfield nor his successor could carry
their point. The Treaty of Utrecht, as we have seen, gave the Acadians a
year in which to choose between remaining in the province and becoming
British subjects, or leaving it as subjects of the King of France. The
year had long ago expired, and most of them were still in Acadia,
unwilling to leave it, yet refusing to own King George. In 1720 General
Richard Philipps, the governor of the province, set himself to the task
of getting the oath taken, while the missionaries and the French
officers at Isle Royale strenuously opposed his efforts. He issued a
proclamation ordering the Acadians to swear allegiance to the King of
England or leave the country, without their property, within four
months. In great alarm, they appealed to their priests, and begged the
Recollet, Pere Justinien, cure of Mines, to ask advice and help from
Saint-Ovide, successor of Costebelle at Louisbourg, protesting that they
would abandon all rather than renounce their religion and their
King.[222] At the same time they prepared for a general emigration by
way of the isthmus and Baye Verte, where it would have been impossible
to stop them.[223]

Without the influence of their spiritual and temporal advisers, to whom
they turned in all their troubles, it is clear that the Acadians would
have taken the oath and remained in tranquil enjoyment of their homes;
but it was then thought important to French interests that they sh