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-1764] French intrigues in Acadia. 121 territorial value and its thin population would suggest. Upon that northern fragment of the province known as Cape Breton Island, the embattled town and great fortress of Louisbourg, restored to France in 1748, frowned over the misty seas. In the ample harbour, beneath its formidable batteries of big cannon, navies could ride securely at anchor, and from such a base could effectually dominate these northern waters. For forty years the Acadians, made famous by Longfellow's pathetic but sadly misleading hexameters, had been British subjects. They had been governed with a leniency so remarkable as to be the despair of the Canadian authorities, lay and clerical, whose interest it was for many urgent reasons to spread discontent among them. The oath of allegiance, indispensable to the good government of alien subjects, had been most tenderly administered. Their religion and their priesthood received full recognition, their lands remained untaxed. The habitants themselves, simple, ignorant and superstitious, were incapable of sacrificing their lands and possessions for any abstract ideas of loyalty to a distant and shadowy monarch. All they asked was to be left unmolested in their village life and peaceful agriculture. But this placid acquiescence did not suit their old masters the French, who hoped some day to recover the province by their assistance, and in the meantime to make its possession as troublesome and as little valuable as possible to the English. To this end the Acadian priesthood, who were under the control of the Bishop of Quebec, were utilised as agents. Their mission was to preach dis- content with English rule and denounce acquiescence in it as a sin against Heaven. Thirty years however of practical experience of King George's rule had been almost too much for the ceaseless thunders of the Church, when the short war of 1744 broke out which witnessed the capture of Louisbourg by Pepperell and Warren. This event rekindled some faint sparks of the old feeling and redoubled the incendiary efforts of the Canadian government. These were inten- sified when the French, having received Louisbourg back in 1748, commenced to make it more formidable than ever, and thus compelled Great Britain to reply by founding to the south of it the town and naval station of Halifax. For now not merely was British officialism, repre- sented by two or three isolated forts, planted in Acadia, but the British axe was sounding in the forests of the eastern sea-board, and the advance of British civilisation threatened the supremacy of the French Acadian. The origin of Halifax differed from that of all other British American settlements. It was purely the work of the government, who landed there in one year nearly 3000 immigrants, of whom the men were mostly soldiers thrown out of occupation by the peace. Cornwallis, uncle of the ill-fated general of Yorktown memory, was governor, an admittedly just and kindly man. He had a difficult task before him. The energies of the Canactian government, the French officials at Louisbourg and their willing tools the priests, now exerted themselves to the utmost to make