were looked on with equal horror. It was the day when the actual association did exist, and when within three hundred miles of Philadelphia and two from New York, French and Indians were advancing in victorious array. General Braddock was defeated in July, 1755, and every English settlement on the seaboard trembled for its existence. The English language and the Reformed Religion, for a time, seemed to be in danger all over the world, in America and in India. This was the actual state of things, and yet it may well be doubted whether even the hostile Frenchmen of those days had not worse designs attributed to them than they deserved. « May God, » writes a gentleman in Philadelphia after the panic had subsided, « be pleased to give us success against all our copper-colored cannibals and French savages, equally cruel and perfidious in their natures. » (Shippen Papers, page 93).
Yet, when, in 1756, Washington, then a Provincial colonel, defeated a party of French and Indians and obtained possession of the French commander’s Instructions, they were found to contain these explicit words : « Le Sieur Douville employera tous ses Talents et tout son crédit a empêcher les Sauvages d’user d’aucune Cruauté, sur ceux qui tombent entre leurs mains. L’Honneur et l’Humanité doivent en cela nous servir de guide : » (Penn’a Archives, p. 600) ; and again, later in 1757, in the instructions found in the pocket of a French Cadet, killed near Fort Cumberland : « Supposé qu’il fasse des Prisonniers il empêchera que les Sauvages de son Détachement n’exercent à leur Égard Aucune Cruauté de Fait » One pauses pleasantly over these dissinterred memorials of kind and merciful feeling so little looked for, softening the hideous front of savage warfare ; but it must be recollected our terrified and excited ancestors knew nothing of them. What they knew, and were made to know, of Frenchmen and French Papists is very clear from the exaggerated public documents and messages of the Colonial Governors, who found no language strong enough wherewith to stir the sluggish liberality of the assemblies who raised money grudgingly, even when most frightened — or from pulpit oratory, never more acrimonious than then — or from such rumors as this, which I cut from a Philadelphia Paper of September, 1755, a short time before the Roman Catholic exiles arrived, under date of Halifax. « A few days since three Frenchmen were taken up and imprisoned on suspicion of having poisoned some wells in this neighborhood.
« They are not tried yet, and it’s imagined if they are convicted thereof, they will have but a few hours to live after they are once condemned. » And the first rumor of the intention forcibly to remove the Acadians from their country, was accompanied with the statement that, from among them « three Priests or Jesuits had been taken and sent to Halifax, and put on board the Admiral’s ship for security. » (Penna. Gazette, Sept. 4, 1755.) Admiral Boscawen’s great armament of ships of the line and frigates, was employed in awing unarmed peasants and capturing fugitive Jesuits ! It was to an atmosphere of public feeling thus excited, that the poor exiles came. Lot us see how
