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had the direction of their consciences, improved every opportunity to confirm their aversion to the English. For almost a whole century they were continually changing masters, being compelled to transfer their allegiance from one dominion to another, and under both crowns they were generally destitute of countenance and protection.

After the peace of Utrecht they were subject to the British Empire without more favorable circumstances of security and encouragement, for they became either neglected and exposed to the insulting violence of the savages, or else were always suspected as traytors, and frequently treated as rebels. Yet, after suffering so many political mutations and embarrassments in their own country, the conclusion of their fate was truly deplorable. They were seduced by their religious guides, in whom they placed the most entire confidence, into error and guilt, and finally fell victims to a barbarous and cruel policy.

In 1755 they were invaded by forces chiefly from New England which completed their destruction. They beheld their possessions demolished by licentious soldiers, their houses, furniture and provisions consumed by the devouring flames, and themselves carried away into captivity and dispersed among a people whose language, manners and religion were extremely different from their own; a people who imagined they performed an acceptable service to their Maker by treating them with indignity and contempt, where, after being exposed to the curiosity of the idle, the ridicule of the vain, the scorn of the opulent, and the indignation of the bigot, they were committed to the miseries of nakedness and hunger. Some were sent to form plantations in the Southern colonies, where the climate quickly finished their existence. A few returned to the land of their nativity, mortified to find their paternal inheritances in the possession of their enemies, destitute of all property and subjected to servitude for a present subsistence. Some escaped to France, the residence of their remote