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Extract from a letter of Govr. Wilmot to the Earl of Halifax, Dated Halifax, NS., 29th August, 1764.
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My LORD, —
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I have lately had information that several families of the Acadians to the amount of One Hundred and fifty persons, residing about Cansoe, had applied to the Magistrates there, for leave to transport themselves to the Island of St. Peter, and having met with a refusal, immediately departed for that Island.
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By the enclosed Copy of a Paper dispersed about here in the name of the Governor General of the French Leward Islands in the West Indies, your Lordships will perceive the method made use of to withdraw these people from His Majesty's Dominions. What effect it will have on them I can't tell, as great numbers of them have lately died at Cape Françoise who went there from Philadelphia, and the Report of that mortality has had a great effect on their Countrymen here.
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Governor Wilmot to Earl of Halifax.
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HALIFAX, 9th Novemr. 1764.
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My LORD, —
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* * * * * * *
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In obedience to the King's pleasure signified to me by your Lordship's letter of the 9th of June, and His Majesty's Instructions of 20th July, for admitting the French Acadians to take an oath of Allegiance, and permitting them to make a settlement in this Country, I proposed both these matters to the consideration of the Council, who accordingly drew up the form of such an oath in terms least liable to an equivocal sense, and also assigned such places in the Province for their settlement, as might be most out of the way of any intercourse for ill purposes; but My Lord, these people have been too long misled and devoted to the French King and their religion, to be soon weaned from such attachments, and when even those objects are hung out to them, their infatuation runs very high. Some prisoners taken in the course of the War and residing here have much fomented this spirit, and thence and from the invitation dispersed amongst them as they say from the Governor of the French Leeward Islands, of which I lately transmitted your Lordship a copy in my letter of 29th August, I apprehend that all those people who
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