rence has sent to remain in this Province, and I am at a very great loss to know what to do with them. The people here, as there is no military force of any kind, are very uneasy at the thought of having a number of enemy’s scattered in the very bowels of the country, who may go off from time to time with intelligence and joyn their countrymen now employed against us, or foment some intestine commotion in conjunction with the Irish and German Catholics, in this and neighboring province. I, therefore, must beg your particular instructions in what manner I may best dispose of those people, as I am desirous of doing anything that may contribute to his majesty’s service. I have, in the mean time, put a guard out of the recruting partys now in town, on board of each vessel, and ordered these neutrals to be supplied with provisions, which must be at the expense of the crown, as I have no Provincial money in my hands ; for this service I have prevailed on Capt. Morris, who is recruting here for Col. Dunbar’s Regiment, to postpone the sending of his recruits till I could hear from you upon the head, which I hope to do by the return of the post. » — Penn’a. Archives, 506 ; Col. Record, 712.
We have not Shirley’s answer, but there is some correspondence accidentally extant which shows that Governor Morris found at least one response to his anxieties and alarms at the sudden incursions of the poor exiles. The Chief Magistrate of the neighboring province of New Jersey was Jonathan Belcher, the father of him who, as Chief Justice of Nova Scotia, according to Mr. Bancroft, had by his stern opinion thet they were « rebels », and « recusants », fixed the doom of the Acadians. Father and son seem to have had harsh sympathies. On the 22nd of November, Morris writes to Belcher very much to the same effect as he had to Shirley, and the day but one after (25th) Belcher replies : « I am truly surprised how it could ever enter the thoughts of those who had the ordering of the French Neutrals, or rather Traitors and Rebels to the crown of Great Britain, to direct any of them into these Provinces, where we have already too great a number of foreigners for our own good and safety. I think they should have been transported directly to old France, and I entirely coincide with your honor that these people would readily join with the Irish Papists, &c., to the ruin and destruction of the King’s Colonies, and should any attempt to land here, I should think, in duty to the King and to his good people under my care, to do all in my power to crush an attempt. » — Pena. Archives, 574.
It is well none of the exiles wandered as far as Elizabethtown. They would have been effectually « crushed out » there.
On the 24th November, Gov. Morris made the arrival of the Neutrals the subject of a special message to the Assembly, informing them he did not think it safe to permit them to land ; that he had ordered guards to be placed on the vessels below the town, and that in consequence of an alarm of sickness amongst the crowded sufferers, some of them had been landed at Province Island.
