Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/331

Rh refusing the oath of allegiance to Britain, though at times threatening to remove from their lands. The evidence is sufficient and undeniable that they were under the influence of a priest, Le Loutre; and it was but to be expected that he should exercise that influence in the French interest. This priest was to the English especially odious, as not only intermeddling with civil affairs out of his clerical province, — as did all his brethren, much to the disgust and annoyance even of the French magistrates when they controlled Acadia, — but as a most crafty and treacherous and vicious man, engaged also in profitable trade. He was Vicar-General of Acadia under the ecclesiastical rule of Quebec, and was the agent of all disaffection and mischief. He threatened to withhold the sacraments from all his flock who succumbed to the English, and to set the Indians upon them.

Orders came from the English Government that these Neutrals who would not come under allegiance should be removed. We all know how romance and poetry invest them. What were they in condition, character, temper, and naked reality to those who had to deal with them in earnest?

The Abbé Raynal seems to have been the first to introduce into literature the ideal view of the Acadians, as a gentle, loving, peaceful, pastoral people, in sweet innocence and home delights sharing the joys and prosperity of a simple, guileless life. He mistook Acadia for Arcadia. He had a purpose in his essay: it was to set in contrast the prosperity and happy condition of these transatlantic villagers with that of the peasants of France before the Revolution. So he heightens every element and coloring of that contrast. He says the Acadians had no quarrels, no lawsuits, no poverty. Their loved and unworldly priests settled all their variances, made their wills, and guided their affairs. With mutual sympathy and generosity they relieved each other's misfortunes. Early marriages averted celibacy and