The position of the Acadians was deplorable. By the Treaty of Utrecht, France had transferred them to the British Crown; yet French officers denounced them as rebels and threatened them with death if they did not fight at their bidding against England; and English officers threatened them with expulsion from the country if they broke their oath of allegiance to King George. It was the duty of the British ministry to occupy the province with a force sufficient to protect the inhabitants against French terrorism, and leave no doubt that the King of England was master of Acadia in fact as well as in name. This alone could have averted the danger of Acadian revolt, and the harsh measures to which it afterwards gave rise. The ministry sent no aid, 204 but left to Shirley and Massachusetts the task of keeping the province for King George. Shirley and Massachusetts did what they could; but they could not do all that the emergency demanded. Shirley courageously spoke his mind to the ministry, on whose favor he was dependent. “The fluctuating state of the inhabitants of Acadia,” he wrote to Newcastle, “seems, my lord, naturally to arise from their finding a want of due protection from his Majesty’s Government.”[223] [191] _Journal de Beaujeu_, in _Le Canada Français, Documents_, 53 [192] _Shirley to Newcastle, 29 October, 1745._ [193] _Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 12 Septembre, 1745._ [194] _Beauharnois et Hocquart au Ministre, 12 Septembre, 1745._ [195] _Ibid._ [196] _Admiral Knowles à----1746._ Mascarene in _Le Canada Français, Documents_, 82. [197] Mascarene, in _Le Canada Français, Documents, 81_. [198] Moïse des Derniers, in _Le Canada Français_, i. 118. [199] _Journal de Franquet_, Part II. [200] _Description de l’Acadie, avec le Nom des Paroisses et le Nombre des Habitants, 1748._ [201] _Shirreff to K. Gould, agent of Philips’s Regiment, March, 1745._ [202] _Shirley to Newcastle, 14 December, 1745._ [203] _Ibid., 10 May, 1746._ [204] _Ibid., 8 July, 1747._ [205] _Bedford to Newcastle, 11 September, 1747._ [206] _Knowles to Newcastle, 8 November, 1746._