] The true
inhabitants are those who cultivate a country, and thereby acquire a
real permanent situation. The property of ground is to them who clear,
plant, and improve it. The English had done nothing in this way to it
till the year 1710. They never came there, but on schemes of incursion
or trade; and in all the wars they had with the French, on being
superior to them, they contented themselves with putting them to ransom;
and though they sometimes took their fortified places, they did not
settle in them. As all their pretension in Acadia was trade, they
sometimes indeed detained such French as they could take prisoners; but
that was only for the greater security of their traffic in the mean
while with the savages. Traders, continually obliged to follow the
savages in their vagabond journeys, could not be supposed to have time
or inclination for agriculture. This title then the French settlers had;
and in short, the whole body of the inhabitants of Acadia, from time
immemorial, may be averred to have been French, since a few families of
English, and other Europeans, cannot be said to form an exception, and
those, as I have before observed, soon became frenchified.
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