IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. 1.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
82 CLIFF STREET.
1850.
England and France started in a fair race for the magnificent prize ofsupremacy in America. The advantages and difficulties of each were muchalike, but the systems by which they improved those advantages and metthose difficulties were essentially different. New France was colonizedby a government, New England by a people. In Canada the men ofintellect, influence, and wealth were only the agents of the mothercountry; they fulfilled, it is true, their colonial duties with zeal andability, but they ever looked to France for honor and approbation, andlonged for a return to her shores as their best reward. They were in thecolony, but not of it. They strove vigorously to repel invasion, toimprove agriculture, and to encourage commerce, for the sake of France,but not for Canada.
The mass of the population of New France were descended from settlerssent out within a short time after the first occupation of the country,and who were not selected for any peculiar qualifications. They were notled to emigrate from the spirit of adventure, disappointed ambition, orpolitical discontent; by far the larger proportion left their nativecountry under the pressure of extreme want or in blind obedience to thewill of their superiors. They were then established in points bestsuited to the interests of France, not those best suited to their own.The physical condition of the humbler emigrant, however, became betterthan that of his countrymen in the Old World; the fertile soil repaidhis labor with competence; independence fostered self-reliance, and theunchecked range of forest and prairie inspired him with thoughts offreedom. But all these elevating tendencies were fatally counteracted bythe blighting influence of feudal organization. Restrictions,humiliating as well as injurious, pressed upon the person and propertyof the Canadian. Every avenue to wealth and influence was closed to himand thrown open to the children of Old France. He saw whole tracts ofthe magnificent country lavished upon the favorites and militaryfollowers of the court, and, through corrupt or capricious influences,the privilege of exclusive trade granted for the aggrandizement ofstrangers at his expense.
France founded a state in Canada. She established a feudal andecclesiastical frame-work for the young nation, and into thatProcrustean bed the growth of population and the proportions of societywere forced. The state fixed governments at Montreal, Three Rivers, andQuebec; there towns arose. She divided the rich banks of the St.Lawrence and of the Richelieu into seigneuries; there population spread.She placed posts on the lakes and rivers of the Far West; there thefur-traders congregated. She divided the land into dioceses andparishes, and appointed bishops and curates; a portion of all produce ofthe soil was exacted for their support. She sent out the people at herown cost, and acknowledged no shadow of popular rights. She organizedthe inhabitants by an unsparing conscription, and placed over themofficers either from the Old Country or from the favored class ofseigneurs. She grasped a monopoly of every valuable production of thecountry, and yet forced upon it her own manufactures to the exclusion ofall others. She squandered her resources and treasures on the colony,but violated all principles of justice in a vain endeavor to make thatcolony a source of wealth. She sent out the ablest and best of herofficers to govern on the falsest and worst of systems. Her energyabsorbed a