In short,
it required the utmost art of the missionaries, and even a kind of
coercion from the military power, to keep them from accepting the
English offers. For when they presented a petition to Mons. _de Vergor_,
for leave to return to the English district, this commander, after
having remonstrated to them that he could not grant their request, nor
decide any thing of himself in a matter of that importance, was forced,
at length, to declare to them, that he would _shoot_ any man who should
attempt to go over to the English. [It should here be remarked, that
these very people had taken the oath of allegiance to the crown of
England, agreeable to the tenor of the treaty of Utrecht. But the
French, not content with harbouring these causeless malecontents, that
were actually deserters over to them, kept continually, by means of the
priests, plying such as staid behind with exhortations, promises,
menaces, in short, with every art of seduction, to engage them to
withdraw their sworn allegiance to their now lawful sovereign. In short,
if all the transactions of the French in those parts were thrown into a
history, it would lay open to the world such a scene of complicated
villainy, rebellion, perjury, subornation of perjury, perfidiousness,
and cruelty, as would for ever take from that nation the power of
pluming itself, as it now so impudently does, on its sincerity,
fairness, and moderation.
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