Discovery of Acadia (1604).—Foundation of Port Royal (1605).— Brief Summary of the Colony’s History under the French Regime until its Cession to England in 1710.

With the discovery of a new continent a new era had begun for the civilized world. Columbus had been that providential man who, braving prejudices, breaking through obstacles, had dowered the Old World with these unknown lands.

The horizon opened out by this discovery to the eyes of wondering Europe was too immense, too dazzling in its novelty to be clearly pictured in the mind. Great must have been the sensation produced; but it were difficult to realize how far the consequences that should flow therefrom were understood. It is possible that the enthusiasm of the moment gave a glimpse of the. prodigious development we are witnessing to day. That enthusiasm, which suddenly bursts forth from a great discovery, is often the best guide to the grasping of the remote consequences it implies. All at once, under its influence, the mind is illumined like the horizon aflame with the lightning flash that cleaves the clouds of a summer’s night. In that brief moment, swifter than thought, the eye has followed the line of light tearing through space: it has seen clouds heaped up, strange forms, contours vividly outlined; yet, the mind has retained scarcely anything of this magnificent panorama, for the view was too sudden and too rapid to engrave on the retina the multitudinous details. The background alone of this dazzling scene was visible for a moment; all the foreground was overlooked. Such, likely, was the case with Columbus’s discovery, The enthusiasm of the moment afforded a glimpse of the far-off scene which the new Continent was to lay before Europe. It was a scene of treasures heaped up, of numberless ships ploughing the main to bring to Europe the wealth of this unknown world, of new gatherings of men, of cities springing up in the wilderness. Kings foresaw empires to found, men of wealth and station domains to acquire, the poor man a plot of land to live on.

That was, perhaps, the background of the picture; but the eye had caught nothing of the vague space between. That space must soon be crossed by whoever longed to reach what was promised by the iridescent vision of the transient scene. Then were to ease difficulties unnumbered and ever-recurring, unforeseen obstacles which would cast doubts on the reality of that vision. Nevertheless, the eye had not deceived, enthusiasm had not warped the judgment. Only, four centuries will barely suffice to reach the brilliant future of which that scene had afforded a glimpse.

We marvel to-day that more than a century was needed to take final possession of the beautiful continent we inhabit. To understand this fact, we must take into account the numberless difficulties encountered by the tirst explorers. Not less then sixteen regular expeditions were organized by England, France and Portugal in the course of a century, either to discover a northwest passage to China, or to explore the North American continent itself, or for purposes of immediate settlement. Not one of these attempts had any practical result. Some of them, rather more fortunate than the others, first gave rise to great hopes; but they were invariably followed by some other expeditions so disastrous as to remove, for several years, from the nation that had suffered, all idea of founding a colony. Then, again, a little later, some other nation had its turn. One, two, and sometimes even three expeditions followed in quick succession, to end in a new disaster, and the game was given up. Disgust took the place of enthusiasm; but as often also, enthusiasm, sharpened by greed, ambition or jealousy, was rekindled only to issue in disheartening results. Each nation hoped to do better than its rival, each expedition hoped to avoid the faults of its predecessors ; and the sum total of them all was uniform failure. Tempting, indeed, must have been the prize, since men -were not utterly repelled by the danger and sterility of so many efforts.

Of these numerous expeditions four were lost in the depths of the ocean, some others were scattered by storms and partly destroyed, and almost all were decimated by disease and destitution, so that any fresh attempt was discouraged for a time.

The expedition which came nearest to lasting success was undertaken in 1541 by Roberval, whom Frauds I. had appointed Viceroy of New France, with Jacques Cartier as Captain General of the fleet. The enterprise was on a larger scale than any of those which had preceded it; but it failed because the .ships did not start together and because of misunderstandings. Roberval was to perish with his entire fleet in a fresh attempt; and thus success was delayed for sixty-three years more.

It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that, besides these official expeditions, America was not at all, or was not often visited. As early as 1504 its coasts were frequented by Basque, Breton and Norman fishermen very regularly. “Sometimes,” says Hackluyt, “there were not less than a hundred boats fishing there.” Lescarbot mentions a man called Savalet who had made forty-two voyages to the coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

These annual and regular voyages, repeated during a whole century, had made the public, of the maritime towns both in France and England familiar with this part of America. France was the first to resume, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the projects of colonization formed and so often abandoned in the preceding century. This time, if the success was not yet equal to the hopes entertained, the founding of a colony was to be definitive; and the example was soon to be followed by England and other nations.

De Monts, a nobleman of Henry IV.’s court, organized this expedition. He set out from Havre de Grace March 7,1604, accompanied by de Pontgravd, the Baron de Poutrincourt. de Champlain, d’Orville, Champdore, and others. Their destination was the peninsula of Nova Scotia, then called la Codie or Mcarfie, and the place definitively chosen for the colony was Port Royal, of which, with the adjacent territory, de Monts made a grant to his friend Poutrincourt. In the course of the following summer a few dwelling-houses, a store, and a palisade enclosing the whole, were put up. Thus was Fort Royal founded on the very site now occupied by the city of Annapolis. This 'was the first permanent settlement by Europeans in these northern climes.

As J have undertaken that epoch only which begins in 1710, when Port Royal was taken and Acadia was ceded to England by the treaty of Utrecht.

I have no intention of dwelling at any length on the events that marked the stormy beginnings of Acadia’s history. I will merely sum up in a few pages a whole century of facts, so as to make it easier to understand what followed the cession of the country to England. Not that the earlier history is uninteresting,—far from it; it were impossible to find on this continent any other spot so interesting, at that very time, as Acadia was. The most thrilling dramas of America in the seventeenth century were played in the waters of the Bay of Fundy (Baie Francaise).

Exposed as was this feeble colony, separated from Canada by vast distances and impenetrable forests, left to its own resources, without immigration, without assistance proportionate to the dangers of its situation, it was the theatre of perhaps greater vicissitudes of war than have fallen to the lot of any other country in the world. While, on the one hand, it was, or might have been, highly useful to France; on the other, it was a constant menace to the commerce and tranquility of the English colonies. It is there that expeditions of adventurers were organized against the New England colonies; there, too, attacks were made upon the French. If it was a fine field for organizing, it was equally open to attack. Whether the two nations were at war oi in peace, it was often w&r anyhow in these parts. A grievance or a mere pretext was enough to determine disastrous hostilities. Boston and Acadia sometimes waged war on each other bn their own account, in spite of temporary peace and amity between the two crowns; and, what is more, on certain occasions, Acadia was the scene of prolonged hostilities between Frenchmen who claimed the right to govern the country.

Nothing, to my mind, is more captivating than the story of this province from 1604 to 1710. It is to America what Greece once was to Europe, and the Bay of Fundy evokes almost as many memories as the AEgean Sea. The scenes there enacted have been so various and so dramatic, the actors thereof give one such an impression of heroism and of half-savage grandeur, that one can hardly refrain from treating them as legendary, as if they belonged to an epoch that is lost in the mists of anticpity. Biencourt, d'Aulnay, the two de la Tours, Saint-Castin, Denys, Subercase, Morpain, are so many legendary heroes whose names are still re-echoed by forest and rock from New Hampshire to the inmost recesses of the Bay of Fundy.

To the many difficulties which Poutrincourt and his son Biencourt experienced in solidly founding their colony of Port Royal, there was added another of a far more serious kind. During the whole of the sixteenth century, inexperience, stress of weather and disease had been the principal causes of the failure of colonization in the New World; now came the turn of human passions, ambition, jealousy, cupidity. This continent was not vast enough to satisfy the covetousness of many nations. To Samuel Argali, whose record in Virginia was so bad, belongs the honor of having begun the conflict for this immense territory, if, indeed, the acts of piracy which he committed eaii' be ranked as warfare. His first attempt was the destruction of the colony of Saint-Sau veur in Mount Desert Island, on the coast of Maine; the pretext of this outrage was Cabot’s voyage, one hundred and sixteen years before, and priority of discovery on that account. Emboldened by this easy victory, he made another attempt and this time destroyed Port Royal.

By- this one fell stroke was annihilated all Poutrin-court’s outlay of time and money; and France must have been strangely careless of her colony, to say nothing of her honor, since she made no move to demand reparation for the outrage committed by Argali. And, indeed, for twenty' years afterwards, Acadia is hardly mentioned at all, so little, in fact, that, in 1621, it was ceded by the King of England to Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. And yet the colonists whom Poutrincourt had brought with him were still in the country; some of them contrived to till the soil of the upper reaches of the river, a few miles from the old fort; others had sought employment from Biencourt and de la Tour.

Seeing their hopes ruined by the destruction of Port Royal, Biencourt and his companions, taking advantage of the friendship of the Indians, had become wood-rangers (coureurs de bois), hunters, trappers. This state of things continued till the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye in 1.632, by which Acadia was restored to France. Of the Scotch colony founded by Sir William at Port Royal, there remained only three or four families which were soon merged in the French population : for instance, the Colsons, the Paisleys, and the Mellanson family, which became very numerous and important in the Acadian colony under the French form of Melaugon.

After this retrocession, France once more turned her attention to Acadia. A company was formed having at its head Isaac de Razilly, his kinsman d’Aulimy de Charnisay, and Nicolas Denys de la Ronde. As their object was trade rather than colonization, they settled with their immigrants at La Heve, which was considered more suitable foi traffic than Port Royal. As Governor, Razilly bestowed upon Denys in fief all the Gnlf coast from the Bay des Chaleurs to Canso, and upon La Tour the old post of Cape Sable and the river St. John. In this latter place, at a spot called Jemsek, La Tour built a fort to which lie gave his own name. Thanks to his long experience and his activity, thanks also to the sense of security then pervading the country, he made this a most important trading post.

De Razilly died in 1G36 without having been able to accomplish all the great projects lie had in view. D’Aulnay and de la Tour were both named Lieutenant-Governors; but the limits of their respective territories and jurisdiction were so badly defined as to lead to hostilities that long paralyzed the development of the colony. Whatever may have been d’ Aulnay’s faults, it seems certain that he projected a great agricultural establishment and the progress of the colony. With this object he abandoned La Heve to settle at Port Royal, which was much better suited for a colonial settlement. After gathering about him the people that had first settled at La Heve, he went to France, whence he returned with a score of colonists. It was he also who inaugurated that system of dikes which was afterwards to become so widespread. Unfortunately, the incessant quarrels provoked by bis pugnacious humor made his efforts well-nigh fruitless.

When France made no protest against the destruction of Port Royal, when she refrained from putting a stop to the armed contentions of La Tour and d’Aulnay, of La Tour and Le Borgne, of Le Borgne and Denys, all fighting for the possession of the country, she showed so little care for her honor that Cromwell, in spite of the peaceful relations between the two kingdoms, conceived the idea of seizing Acadia. As war was then waging between England and Holland, he gave instructions for the capture of New Holland, and, the fleet being in these waters, for the subsequent capture of Acadia. Peace was signed before New Holland could be taken; but Acadia, unable to offer serious resistance, was seized (1654).

In 1667, it was again returned to France by the treaty of Breda, and in 1670 M. de Grandfontaine came to assume official possession.

As may be supposed, these dissensions, these repeated attacks, the indifference of France, all this put together scarcely favored the establishment of a colony on a firm basis; and so the census of the following j'ear, under M. de Grandfontaine, tells a sad tale. After so many sacrifices of time and money, the population showed only about 400 souls, more than three-fourths of whom were at Port Royal. There must have been, in various places, a nomadic population proportionately pretty numerous, which does not enter into this census ; but it was made up chiefly of a few half-breed families settled on the coast, especially at La Iltve, and of those families which, having intermarried with the Indians, had adopted their mode of life. This census, as well as the following ones, is confined to the population of purely French origin; and it is chiefly from this little group of 47 families that the Acadians spring. Here are the names: Bourgeois, Gaudet, Kessy, de For St, HShert, Babin, Daigle, Blanchard, Aucoin, Ihtpeux, Terri au, Savoie, Corporon, Martin, Pelleriri, Morin, Brim, Gauterot, Trahan, Cyr, Thihaudeau, Petitpas, Bourg, Boudreau, Guilbaut, Granger, Landry, Doucet, Gir-ouard, Vincent, Brcaiu Le Blanc, Poirier, Comeau, Pitre, Belliveau. Cormier, Bimbaut, Dugasy,.Richard, Mdaiifon, liobichau, Lanoue, d' Entremont, de la Tour, Bertrand, de BeUisle. These are the main heads of branches, ‘and several of these families were already divided into two or more branches, as was the case for those whose names are subjoined: Boudrot, Girouard, Gaudet, TTebert, Bourg, Martin, Terri.au, Blanchard, Aucoin, Briiv., Commeaux, de la Tour. Each family averaged six children, and the descendants of each of them now run up into the thousands.

The census of 1686 exhibits a population of about 800 souls, of whom 461 were at Port Royal, 164 at Mines,' 78 at Beaubassin, 90 in other places mentioned, and the remainder scattered here and there on the coast: thus the population had about doubled in 15 years. In 1671 60 persons, 5 of whom were women, had arrived ; but, as the census of 1(586 registers only 36 new names, some of these persons may have either gone to Canada or taken service in the garrison and gone back to France afterwards. These are the new names : Le Prince, Brassard, Douaron, Levron, Lort, Arsenaut, Bergeron, Beliefontaine, Tourangeau, Barillot, Godin dit Chatillon, Renoit, Prejean, Bastarache, Fardel, Henry, Gareau, Laperriere, Michel, Gourdeau, La Bauve, La Pierre dit

Laroche, Pinet, Rivet, Mirande, La Bar re, Aubirv-Mignault, Oochu, Oottard, Merrier, Lavallee, Lagasse, Blou, Dexoreix, Martel, Dubretiil. The three last named, I think, must have gone to Canada, and Cochu, Cottard and Fardel to France; at any rate their names do not appear in any subsequent census. From 1(386 to 1710, 85 new colonists, at most, came, and these were, to a great extent, soldiers disbanded from the small garrison which the Government maintained at Port Royal.

From 1671. the agricultural population confined itself more and more to its land; every immigrant, every disbanded soldier became a farmer. When, after a few years’ growth, families found themselves pinched for room at Port Royal, they sought settlements elsewhere for their children. Tlius it is that, one after the other, Beaubassin (Amherst), les Mines (Horton, Wolfeville, Windsor, etc.), Cobequid (Truro), Chipody, Peticodiac, Memramcook sprang up. Frequently, whole families migrated to these new settlements, which had the double advantage of being freer from the vexations uf a government that was often too troublesome, and safer from the oft-repeated attacks of the English.

From the treaty of Breda till 1710, a space of 40 years, Port Royal was besieged no less than five times, whereas, barring a raid on Beaubassin and Mines by Church in 1696, the settlers in these latter places were fairly sheltered from the perils that beset Port Royal.

All the names that figure at Beaubassin and Mines (Grand Prior, Riviere aux Canards, Pigiguit, etc.) art? the same as at Port Royal. So it was, somewhat later, at Oobequid, Peticodiac, Chipody and Memramcook to the north of the Bay of Fundy.

As the census was taken many times during the French period, it is easy to follow up the development of these different groups, and to get a pretty fail idea of the number of new colonists that came to swell the original stock. These were, for by far the most part, unmarried men who were obliged by force of circumstances to marry the daughters of the oldest settlers, of the 47 heads of families that had settled in the country before 1671. Thus we see that there were only five women among the 60 immigrants that arrived at Port Royal in 1671. Whence we conclude that, 30 or 40 years later, the entire population was linked together in bonds of kinship that must have powerfully contributed to remove dissensions and to produce that social condition with which we are familiar.

Some modern writers have treated the picture of Acadian manners as a creation of the fervid fancy. It has been held that the imagination was author of much of it, that this ideal society was incompatible with what we know of human nature. I am willing to grant, indeed, I have no doubt, that the conventional picture has been embellished by fancy; yet I hold that a close study of the circumstances of this people makes one understand better how a state of things clearly proven to have existed was possible. The defects common to all Frenchmen, particularly those which spring from their too great sociability, such as jealousy, backbiting, idle gossip, existed there as everywhere else, but toned down by the exceptional status of the people. Nor was their condition always enviable; it certainly was not so in the early days of the colony, when these families were strangers to each other, and probably also during the greater part of the French occupation.

The destruction of Port Royal by Argali, France’s neglect, the frequent raids of Anglo-Americans had forced a certain number of the first colonists to become adventurers, forest rangers (coitreurx de hois'), fishermen in the train of Biencourt, Denys, La Tour. • This roving element could not be expected to show as high morality as the first followers of Poutrincourt, or as the society that was afterward formed when all these separate units coalesced. But here, as in all other lands, given the time to form new habits of order and economy, given a sedentary life in the midst of a sober and hardworking people, given a comfortable competence drawn from a most fertile soil, a gradual purification of morals was sure to result. At the same time, an adventurous life had steeled many men for the ceaseless struggles they had to face before the final conquest of the country. On the other hand, the abandonment in which France had so long left them, the habit of living beyond the sphere of action and the regulations of a government jealous of its authority, bred in the Acadians a spirit of independence that would ill consort with the restrictions put upon them in after years by the French governors. In fact, when, after the treaty of Breda, France took firm hold of the administration in Acadia, there arose much grumbling and murmuring against a government that took pleasure in throwing around the people the complicated net-work of Old World formalism. Of this we find proofs in the correspondence of the governors : M. de Brouillan, in one of his letters, calls the Acadians half-republicans. However, these difficulties were very rare among them, and were as nothing compared to the troubles that arose among the sharers of authority.

Necessity had taught the people to govern themselves, to hold meetings, to consult together, to settle their differences amicably or according to simple rules quite sufficient for their local needs. They had thus acquired a habit of liberty and a taste therefor. They knew by experience that they could dispense with an authority that was only irksome, that did not improve their condition, that ensured them no additional security in their relations with one another. Hence it was that, under English rule, they got rid, as much as possible, of official regulations and ruled themselves.

Certain it is that, in their special situation, better results could be hoped for from this method, from the laisser faire, than from the vexatious interference of an uncontrolled authority. Matters of public interest were decided at public meetings; men worked all together at works of public utility, as when they completed a vast system of dikes, which were built in so short a time as to point to unusual harmony and good-will among the workers. Their reward came in an abundance of all that could meet their needs and their simple tastes, beyond which they had no ambition and were therefore easily satis-lied. Nor had they any anxiety about the future of their children : the custom had been early established that the community was to provide them with all things needs-sary for a homestead, and a few years sufficed to make them as well off as their parents. The good understanding must, surely, have been remarkable, since, even under English rule, there is not on record a single case m which the people disagreed in their decisions upon matters of general interest; whatever the decision might be, it was always, as far as can be gathered, unanimous.

When all these exceptional circumstances are understood and taken into account, the familiar picture of their simplicity of life, morality, abundance, harmony, and social happiness has nothing, it seems, that should provoke wonder; the same circumstances would, I believe, have brought about elsewhere somewhat similar results. For a century they were strangers to France and Canada; they had formed habits and built up traditions that made them a separate people. They were Acadians. And, if the increase by immigration was almost nil, quite otherwise was it with the multiplication of families, since, eighty years later, this small nation counted 18,000 souls.

From 1690 to 1710 was one uninterrupted series of hostilities between New England on the one hand and Canada and Acadia on the other, the object being either to capture vessels fishing in French waters, or to destroy some fort on the badly defined frontier between Acadia and Maine. In 1690 Port Royal was taken and sacked by Admiral Phips; M. de Menneval, Governor of Acadia, was carred off a prisoner to Boston, together with his garrison; but Phips, too much engrossed with the expedition he was preparing against Quebec, neglected to establish himself solidly in Port Royal, which was, accordingly, soon reoccupied by the French.

This period, from 1690 to 1710, was probably the darkest in tbe annals of these colonies, and the most disastrous for British colonization. For twenty years, without truce or respite, on sea as well as on land, there was, in these parts of America, nothing but devastation, pillage, ambushes and surprises. Sometimes a fort was attacked by France’s Indian allies, and, if it was taken, the inmates were massacred; most frequently, some defenceless settlement was raided by night, and, if answere made prisoners, they were held for exchange or ransom. By seductive advantages offered to lillibusters and alluring bounties on Indian scalps, the greed of gain was so keenly excited that organisations sprang up in the bordering settlements of New England for the sole purpose of marauding, plundering and butchery. It was a life of danger, often ending in terrible reprisals; still, bold men were never wanting to replace those who disappeared. In such conditions, civilized man often surpasses in cruelty the most cruel savages ; there were acts of base treachery and barbarity that have never been exceeded nor perhaps equalled by any savage tribe in America. Very great, no doubt, must have been the provocation for the English colonists: all the Indians in these parts were allied to the French, so that retaliation, if any, had to come from the colonists themselves. A violent impulse born of anger, grief, pecuniary loss and insecurity, may have shaped itself, with many, into the misconceived idea that adopting the cruel methods of those barbarians would inspire such terror, such fear of annihilation, that they would relent from their bloody raids. At the same time it was hard not to make those answerable who urged them to their bloody raids; nevertheless, though these barbarous allies were acknowledged to be necessary in the struggle between the two nations, both of whom made use of them when they could, yet nothing could justify the use of their cruel methods and the infringement of all the laws of honor.

This state of affairs could not last long. Acadia was too weak to be thus left as a perpetual menace to the trade and the security of the New England settlements. Driven to extremities by the disasters inflicted on their commerce, the Anglo-Americans resolved upon the greatest efforts to emerge from a situation that was daily becoming intolerable. The final issue was not doubtful. The disparity in the numbers was enormous; France was too careless or too busy elsewhere to succor her colony; yet, the conflict was longer and more desperate. successes and reverses more evenly balanced than might have been expected. No less than four expeditions were required before Port Royal was taken, and there the intrepid Subercase, powerfully seconded by the Baron de Saint-Cast in and by other Captains at the head of Indian troops, wrought prodigies of valor. The first of these expeditions was undertaken by Church, the famous “Squaw-kiiler;” but, moved by the desire of plunder and of easy exploits, he made no serious attack on Port Royal, and was satisfied with invading Mines and Beaubassin, where he carried off all the cattle he could seize, after opening the dikes, burning houses and doing all the damage he could.

A second expedition under Colonel March was much more serious. Rhode Island and New Hampshire had united with Massachusetts for this decisive onslaught; but, after a seige of eleven days, March, repulsed at every point, had to re-embark, and, instead of returning to Boston, where lie dreaded censure, he took refuge at Casco. Thence he wrote of his failure to Governor Dudley, attributing it to his officers and soldiers, who, he said, had refused to second him. Immense was the chagrin of Boston; so little was this result anticipated that preparations had actually been made for a pompous celebration of the taking of Port Roval.

Humbled but not discouraged, Governor Dudley, who could not resign himself to disband the troops he had organized with such fine hopes, sent orders to March to keep 011 board the ships his soldiers, willing or unwilling, and to return immediately to Port Royal with the reinforcement now setting sail. At the same time Dudley appointed three commissioners to superintend, the operations of the siege. March, unable to overcome the sadness and dejection to which he was a prey, declined the honor of commanding this new expedition. Wainwright, second in command, had to take charge of it; but, after another siege and a long one, lie also reembarked without effecting anything. This was in August, 1707.

Thus far, at least, Port Royal had been revictualled and assisted by France, though inadequately. Subercase had been able to satisfy the Indians by some gifts and still more by promises. His kindliness to all had sufficed to inspire the courage and ardor that were absolute^ necessary in the situation of inferiority in which he was left. All the Captains of Indians', d'Amours d’Echauffours, Saint Aubin, Bellefontaine, de Saillan, Denys de la Ronde, de Saint Castin, de la Tour; the French corsairs, Francis Guyon, Pierre Maisonnat, de Morpaiy, had gathered under him and had helped him with a will. With these and the inhabitants he had enough men to manoeuvre outside, to harass the enemy without weakening his garrison, -which numbered only about 160 soldiers, three fourths of whom were undisciplined young men picked up on the quays of Paris.

Having heard that a fresh attack was preparing, still more formidable than the preceding ones, Subercase repeatedly urged the Home Government to send reinforcements ; but nothing could rouse the apathy of France’s rulers. For three long years the colony, destitute of everything, subsisted almost entirely on the booty of the corsairs. As a crowring misfortune, in 1710 the harvest failed, and the corsairs, so numerous the preceding year, were driven from Acadia by an epidemic.; so, when in September a large fleet with 3,400 landing forces appeared before Port Royal, there was but one voice in the garrison and colony in favor of immediate surrender.

Though fully* aware of his weakness and feeling that he could not come out once more victorious from a conflict in which all the odds were against him, Subercase resolved to tempt fortune, and, without hearkening to the proposals of General Nieholson, commander of the fleet, he prepared to withstand the enemy*. The English, on tlieir part, taught circumspection by* the unexpected and repeated defeats of past years, set to work with extreme prudence. Several times they were repulsed or had to desist from their investing operations; but Subercase no longer had a body of troops to sally forth from the fortifications and worry the besiegers. The fleet had arrived before Port Royal September 24th, and it was not till October 12th that the capitulation was signed on quite honorable terms, so honorable indeed, that Nicholson expressed his regret at having accepted them, when he beheld the destitution of the garrison. Provisions were so scarce that Nicholson had to provide the French soldiers with rations before they embarked for France.

Port Royal had become, and this time for good and all, an English town; the destiny of the whole of Acadia was soon to be the same. In the course of a century Port Royal had gone through more vicissitudes than any other American town, more even, than any other from its foundation to our own day. It had been taken, sacked, destroyed, abandoned, retaken; and meanwhile France, seemingly unaware of its importance, untaught by the lessons of experience, unmoved by its hazardous position or by the unjust and cruel fate of its faithful subjects, never thought of ensuring its permanent possession by making such efforts as were called for by the risks and advantages of this stronghold.

Such criminal neglect might seem astounding, were it not repeated elsewhere, and everywhere. This bit of exposed territory had only 2,000 inhabitants when the provinces of New England alone had 150,000. Was it because the sovereigns that governed France, the governors that represented them in Canada or Acadia, did not realize the importance of the colonies they owned? Was it because, as has been said, Frenchmen are not colonizers? No; this is not the true answer. We have plenty of documents proving that the governors of these provinces generally realized, with great perspicacity, the value of these colonies and the way to make them prosperous, powerful and useful to the Home Government. We have also some proof, though rarer, that the sovereigns or their ministers saw things in the same light. We have likewise proofs that the spirit of enterprise, boldness and activity were not at all lacking in the French colonist. We know that, in spite of the way in which he was forsaken by France, his activity had familiarized him with the whole interior of the continent, at a time when the English had not yet lost sight of the Atlantic coast. But the colonists needed backing, at least by numbers ; they needed a helping hand from the mother country- In an absolute government, which claims all powers and all initiative, which rules and regulates everything, even the peopling of its colonies must be initiated by authority. The expression of a wish or instructions from the throne would have been enough to create an unflagging movement of emigration that would have compared favorably with the emigration from the British Isles. The entire blame lies, I believe, with the throne ; not so much because it did not understand the importance of colonizing this country, as because of forgetfulness and neglect begotten of that thoughtlessness and inconstancy that marked all its acts.

“When I compare the result of European wars in the last fifty years,” wrote M. d’Avaugour in 1063, “and the progress that may be made in ten years here, not only does mv duty oblige me, but it urges me to speak out boldly.....France can, in ten years and with less outlay, secure more real power in America than all its European wars could win for it.”

“Who can undertake,” said Vauban, “anything greater and more useful than a colony? Is it not by this means, rather than by any other, that one can obtain, with all possible justice, aggrandizement and increase?”

And Louis XIV. himself, who for a time seemed to take a serious interest in his colonies, entirely concurred in this view, when he so wisely Avrote in 1876 to M. de Champigny, “Intendant” of Canada: “Be thoroughly convinced of this maxim, that it is bettei to occupy less territory and to people it entirely, than to spread out indefinitely and to have weak colonies at the mercy of the slightest accident.”

That was, perhaps, for the great monarch, only a passing thought between two pleasures. Successfully to carry out these fine projects, France was in need of calm and peace ; but, ever carried away by the pride, ambition or caprice of her sovereigns, she always lacked the restfulness that alone would have enabled her to give to these designs the sustained attention they demanded. She must dazzle, she must have glory,' and, assuredly, not in those lowly hamlets lost in the forests of America could Louis XIV. attain this end. And yet there, more than in aught else, was the future of France. True, it was slow, plodding work, the fruits of which were far distant ; but in return what a rich harvest, what solid glory, what lasting greatness was thus cheaply to be earned by France!

There is no more striking proof of her carelessness than the way in which she deserted Acadia. In the course of an entire century this province received barely two hundred colonists, whereas its dangerous situation and its importance would have called for fifty times as many. This was less immigration in a century than the smallest English colony received in one year. In the single summer of 1620 the colony of Virginia welcomed 1261 colonists, and it already trad GOO. In 1G25 there came another thousand, and as early as 1646 it had a population of 20,000 souls. Before 1640, 298 ships crowded with immigrants had cast anchor in the port of Boston. On the other hand, it is clear that, unassisted and unencouraged, immigration must have been a negative quantity in a country so helplessly exposed as was Acadia. That it possessed natural advantages was not enough; over and above this there was needed, at the outset, vigorous encouragement to a body of colonists immigrating all together in sufficient numbers to ensure their being able to protect themselves, and thus make up by theii multitude for the insecurity of their position. This province, which would thus have been a source of strength to France, really became, on the contrary, a cause of weakness, an ever menacing danger. Very different, indeed, was the reality from the wise maxims which Louis XIV. recommended to his Intendant in Canada.

But what is more inconceivable still, is that, at the very time when Acadia was fighting heroic battles decisive of its fate, Louis XIV., easily seduced by great projects, was seized with a new infatuation for Louisiana and the inland regions leading up to the Great Lakes and to Canada: a great and noble project in truth, which his habitual inconstancy was to reduce to a costly chimera, furnishing fuel foi jealousy and hastening the ruin of his colonial empire.

If France can find in the study of her history, as she undoubtedly can, matter for self-glorification, it is surely not in her colonial policy. The wonder is, not that her colonies ended in misfortune, but that they held out so long against such fearful odds. Courage, energy and well-directed efforts were not lacking in the colonists themselves; this is proved to evidence by their struggles, both in the direction of self-development and extension of French power, and in the way of resistance for so long a time and with such marked success against an enemy that outnumbered them sixteen to one. Here is cause for naught but glorification and astonishment. The shame of failure falls entirely upon that unskilful administration, that witty incapacity, that proud impotence which stamped the policy of France.

The national character, in its good qualities as well as in its defects, had already become well-nigh fixed, and Louis XII. was its most brilliant expression. Generally speaking, the character of a nation is the result of apparently insignificant circumstances, scarcely noticed when first they appear. Later on, however, and sometimes much later, they make themselves felt. For a long time, and especially during all the middle ages, the most salient points of divergence in the respective characteristics of the nations of Western Europe were, after all, only shades of difference. England differed little from France, France from Spain; all three had acquired the germs of liberty, and it was the expansion or contraction of that liberty which was to have a dominant influence in fixing the special character of each nation, and in stamping each with its essential differentiation. These distinctive qualities were also to influence the future destiny of each nation.

At that remote period France and England were like two streamlets lazily meandering on the same table-land, coming near to each other, then winding further apart, then winding in again; their general trend seems the same ; are they going to unite? Perhaps ; but, at any rate, when they have grown by the tribute of many affluents into mighty rivers, they will surely empty into the same ocean. Yet facts belie this forecast: a very slight rise in the land will be enough to change their course anti make them flow in opposite directions ; one to the east, the other to the west; this one toward one ocean, that one toward another. One was to keep on majestically and peacefully flowing through rich meadows; the other was to leap wildly through narrow gorges, then spread out into a lake, then again narrow into a torrent, crossing now enchanting scenery, now desolate burning deserts. A little bit of a hill had been the insurmountable wall that had decided their respective fates and the flow of their waters. The expansion of the liberties of England, the contraction of those of France was that little hill that sent them in opposite directions through experiences so dissimilar. Had it not been for a seeming trifle, the course followed by the one might have been followed by the other with reversed results.

While the English nobility shut themselves up in their demesnes, thus preserving a certain independence in respect of the sovereign, and some interest in consorting with the people for the conservation and increase of their common liberties, in France all the nobles rushed to court, drawn thither by royal favor and the fascination of pleasure. However insignificant this slender historic detail may seem, it prepared France for the abandonment of the germs of liberty it then possessed; this was the little hill that altered its course and its destiny.

These men, who had become courtiers in quest of honors and favors, athirst for pleasure, held their peace before the encroachments of the king. Deprived of its defenders, the people could not withstand the clipping of their hard-won privileges. Thus it was that, one after another, the conquests of liberty, both for nobles and commoners, disappeared. When Louis XIV. decided to be his own prime minister; when, waited upon, after the death of Cardinal Mazarin, by the functionaries of state, and asked to whom the}' must in future apply on questions of public business, he replied, much to their astonishment, “To myself,” then was liberty undone. There remained only the precarious splendor of the throne and the doubtful prestige of the past, until the day should come when the state would be the Pompadour or any other favorite courtesan, until, sinking still lower, Louis XV. should be shameless enough to say, “After me the deluge.” Nor was this deluge long delayed; a deluge of blood, the prelude of frequent fruitless efforts and violent reactions, of scenes of anger and hatred, glory and humiliation.

England alone escaped the wreck of her liberties. If she was saved from disaster, it was probably not because she had acquired, in that seventeenth century, more wisdom and maturity than other nations, but because of her insular position, because of some insignificant details resulting rather from an apparently fortuitous combination of circumstances than from her own foresight. “England,” says Macaulay, “escaped from absolutism, but she escaped very narrowly.” It is well for mankind that this exception arose. Those liberties, preserved and increased, constitute England’s greatness; her example has set her up as a beacon light to guide the nations in the proper channel.

Viewing the results, men have ascended to the cause thereof and traced out the methods that produced them.

They have imitated England; they have also imitated the nation that sprang from England, built up by her on this continent out of suitable elements, conditions, taates and tendencies, in a new land freed from Old World ties. Instead of one model now there are two. With regard to England, the evolution was the work of seeming chance, n answer to the necessities of the moment, in order to escape from the ruinous caprice of a despot, to satisfy that desire of liberty which we all feel more or less; but by little and little the mists were lifted, the consequences, if not of the future, at least of the past and the present, were better and better understood. It soon became evident that the growth of liberty must be accompanied by the growth of education, that the one was the reason of the other, and that the two, working together, were the fountain-head of all the material progress which our century enjoys.

To study the effects of liberty one must not stop at abstract theory, but must go on to examine methods and facts. Excellent as liberty is in itself, it may be the source of many evils. The study of actual methods teaches that solid results are obtained only by agitation, i. e., by a continual, thoughtful, calm effort leaning on public opinion which it first creates, advancing methodically step by step, by legitimate means on what we might call an easy upward gradient. One reform, one new franchise, becomes a solid and permanent acquisition, as well as a step to other reforms. It is a process of building up and consolidating rather than of destruction.

This method, more even than the liberty it won, is what gives to British institutions that progressive stability which all the world admires. The most important effect of this method is the moulding of the nation’s character. It is this “broadening from precedent to precedent” that has imparted to the English character that calmness, moderation, firmness and dignity which insure its superiority in great undertakings and in its differences with other nations. It is this, too, that has made respect for law and authority almost an instinct with Englishmen. What lias been acquired by dint of patient effort is loved and revered; nor are such conquests any longer open to attack. Hitlers themselves will respect what is only one step more, one slight sacrifice to the will of the nation freely expressed by ite legitimate representatives.

However tardy was sometimes the advent of long-looked-for reforms, no one ever dreamt of imposing them by force against the will of the' majority, when experience showed that constitutional agitation and argument gave the best chance of success and the most solid guarantees, provided one were on the side of right and justice. Under these circumstances it was to be expected that the debates of contending parties would necessarily be stamped with calmness and dignity, which were, besides, conducive to success.

One of the results of this well-ordered march from liberty to liberty, from reform to reform, was that parties were generally separated only by shades of difference; essential harmony was rarely marred. When a scarcely perceptible line of demarcation parts us from an adversary, it is possible to come to an understanding with him. The separation was, so to speak, a movable fence that might be shoved back and forth. Instead of living in two distinct camps, quite estranged from one another, there was a certain amount of intercourse, proposals and concessions were in order. Self-possession, moderation, peaceful and courteous discussion were obviously called for in order to husband or to increase one’s strength. The distance between one party and the other was sometimes so slight that a little cautious diplomacy was often enough to secure either consent or a majority.

Because she was deprived of these liberties and thrown violently backward, France rushed into revolution. Not being allowed legitimate freedom of evolution, she went into revolution, and overthrew law and order. Perhaps it was her only way out of the chaos and ruin that threatened her. When Louis XIV. confiscated the liberties of France and thus threw her back, he little dreamt that he was preparing the ruin of his dynasty Ati,d the death of his second successor. He had himself charged the mine that was to blow up his throne. He was called great because he knew how to dazzle ; but, if greatness be measured by the solidity of one’s structures and the clear view of consequences, he was very small and very fatal to his country.

This confiscation of the liberties of France is responsible for the momentous events of which she has since been the scene, and these events in their turn have intensified both her own native defects and those which she shared with other nations governed as she was. Had she slowly developed along the lines of freedom, she would, by the very force of circumstances, have not only kept her own good qualities, bat also acquired most of those which have accrued to England. For want of this wisdom, she has rushed into a series of revolutions of which the end is probably not yet. Freedom forced upon people by bloodshed cannot be true freedom ; it will always be odious to many and therefore of uncertain tenure. If imposed by revolution, the same means will be employed to destroy it: hence contempt of law and of one’s adversaries, rancor, injustices, conspiracies ; hence a special tendency of the national character that stiffens into a fixed habit of mind. Between the man that desires a republic and the man that deserves return to the old order of things yawns a gulf that is very hard to bridge. They have no points of contact: even socially, they are stranger, and if they have any knowledge of each other, it will be mostly founded on slander. Their natural weapons will be violence and insult.

Thus the slight divergences of three or four centuries ago have become strong contrasts through the choice of different methods. This we realize to-days but our forefathers did not. It whs not in view of an ideal dream or according to a preconceived plan that liberty gradually was introduced into England. Men acted merely according to the exigencies of the moment in order to supply fresh wants. Yet. experience has set great store by these liberties thus acquired. People were gradually educated up to an intelligent comprehension of what is called the theory of social evolution, a theory which, in France, has recently been styled opportunism. Thus it is that we are ever advancing toward new horizons that should be studied and, if possible, foreseen; thus it is that events are ever occurring the tendency and ultimate significance of which we cannot' so much as conjecture.

Whilst England, by her steady progress in the widening field of liberty, grew greater and greater, France, tending towards absolutism, was, amidst bursts of dazzling glory, gradually losing as much as her rival gained. The time came when the latter sought not only to recover what she had lost, what it had cost England three hundred years to maintain and develop, but also to take a forward leap of several centuries. Then a useful experience proved that the social edifice has no stability unless it be built up slowly, stone upon stone, with plumb-line and cement carefully applied to each. When, however, the edifice has been raised without these precautions, and consequently threatens to fall, it may be necessary to pull it down.

All the teachings of the past lead to the belief that England followed the true, the better course. But, in such matters, error is always possible, because, to the immediate and visible results, must be added others that are invisible and distant, and sometimes very different from those which seem startlingly clear. We are witnesses, on the one hand, of the first consequences of evolution; on the other, of revolution; or rather of slow evolution and rapid evolution. For this century, lit least, the advantage is clearly on the side of slow evolution. But who can foretell with certainty the remote consequences in future ages? It is the secret of Providence. In all social questions this principle holds: immediate or proximate results may be very different from remote consequences. The human mind is, after all, despairingly limited. It often happens that what is practical wisdom in the long run conies from reputed fools. Statues are erected in honor of those who have foreseen immediate or proximate effects. Those who have had intuitions of more distant results are sometimes locked up.

It may be for the interest of mankind at large that nations work out theii destinies in various ways. Human progress is a congeries of acquired experiences.

The doings of one people are noted by another, matured, weighed, accepted or rejected entirely or partially; the residuum of good becomes the property of the civilized world.

One thing seems quite certain: England lias won the first game. Her methods of success Lave been studied; they have been and still are useful to all nations. Shall she lose the next innings? It is the secret of the future, the secret which statesmen are striving to discover. All nations may have special hopes and consoling forecasts; but, at any rate, it is undeniable that England, by opening up the path, has got a start that she may very well be proud of. Some may question if her advance has not been too slow, if the habits thus formed may not be some day a source of danger. For her that slowness was a necessity; she was feeling her way from the known to the unknown. Now that the territory is mostly mapped out, it is easy for other nations to take a short cut and suppress some of the old, painful, roundabout tramping. But England's traditional wisdom gives us every reason to trust she will always be willing to move on in time to avoid any dangers that may threaten her.

Highly as I value the good points which liberty and the struggle therefor have brought out in the institutions and character of England. I am far from admiring everything English or blaming everything French. The scope of this work does not admit of insisting on the defects of the picture. Else I might point to a series of shameful acts very often far worse than the worst deeds of France. Taking all in all. not only was England’s seventeenth century no better than the same period in France; but, in many respects, it was worse than the eighteenth in France. Nevertheless, in the midst of her deepest humiliations England was collecting materials for future greatness. If deeds of shame were, in a sense, an outcome of the struggle for liberty, it was the stubbornness and encroachments of the crown that provoked them; they were the offspring of absolutism and of those who sacrificed to it the interests of the nation, nor can they be fathered on the valiant defenders of liberty. Courage and disinterestedness were needed to expose one’s self to the royal displeasure, to persecutions, to ruin, to decapitation. No wonder most of the high functionaries sacrificed, when the sacrifice was an essential condition, honor, principles and humanity in order to preserve or obtain royal favors. Those men, who seem to us bereft of all honorable feeling, might have been, under other circumstances, the ornament of their race; in fact their only fault, perhaps, was rating ambition above virtue.

In this world of ours there is no such thing as unmixed good. The purest joys are the reward of suffering. This is true of liberty, and still more true of the struggle to obtain and preserve it. Tins struggle was necessary, and the defections, treachery and crime were unavoidable. Would liberty have given to England such favorable results, had it been acquired without resistance? Would it be as highly valued? Would it have taken on that stability which has hitherto secured it from all vicissitudes ? Probably not.

So long as England was in the painful period of incubation, so long as the nations of Europe could see only the evils accompanying those conflicts for liberty, it was perhaps impossible for them to grasp the good result that was to follow. The very bitterness of the contest for freedom must necessarily have produced special crimes from which the undisputed absolutism of the French monarchy was exempt. The fruits of liberty could not be tasted and appreciated until the conflict had cooled down by the final triumph of Parliamentary supremacy. No wonder, then, that Louis XIV., or even the French nobility, seeing contemporary facts, judged that the absolute rate of the sovereign was the only means of ensuring unity of action, stability, order, harmony and the elements of greatness. What they witnessed in their own day must have convinced them that they were right. Very likely they saw. in those intestine struggles, only the attempt of a few to gratify their passions or further their own interests at the expense of the nation’s weal. Could they then descry the far-off effects of this liberty on the national character, effects that were only as yet dimly outlined in a maze of striking disadvantages? So long as France was in tie hands of a sovereign like Louis XIV., who dazzled her by his greatness, she could delude herself with the fancy that things would remain ever thus. It needed the follies of the Regency and of Louis XV.; it needed fum and humiliation to rouse her from her torpor, to make her realize that she was at the meroy of the infrequent virtues and very frequent vices of her kings.

France has had many severe lessons. Will she profit by them ? We must hope so. Will she get back what she has lost? This again we may hope for: one or two centuries are of small account in the life of a nation. We may hope that she will at length reach a state of equilibrium, anil, having secured that, will advance with constant and measured steps. She will always be, we hope, great in her genius, in her activity of mind, in noble and generous ideas, in science, in the love of the beautiful. But, what she will never regain is the high place she has lost, the port she once played in the civilizing and peopling of the globe. If France has declined somewhat, or rather if she has not advanced as timely as was to be expected; if she be destined to decline still more, she can trace this decline to her want of expansion, to her lack of colonies. "When France and England were contending for the possession of North America, the latter had only thirteen millions of inhabitants, whereas the former had twenty-seven millions. Look at the situation to-day. The United Kingdom has thirty-seven millions, France only thirty eight millions, while in North' America alone there are almost seventy millions of men that speak the language and are impregnated with the ideas and special characteristics of Britain. How shall it be in one, two or three centuries, when England will have developed mighty empires in the vast colonies under her sway? It matters little that these colonies should become independent of the mother country, even when her daughters leave her, their influence and prestige s none the less traceable to their fruitful parent.

Yet, not to the unfruitfulness of the French race is this contrast to be attributed. Any doubt on this question would be set aside by the prodigious expansion of the Canadians and Acadians, an expansion the only equal of which perhaps is that of the Boers.

When European governments, in the last two centuries, strove to found colonies, they did not, as far as we can judge, reckon with this increase and spread of population. They were naturally inclined to think their colonising movements would weaken the mother country. They simply yielded to the pressure of com mercial interest. But experience has since proved that the increase of population was largely due to increased space and to the elbow-room thus afforded. Here, again, is one of those far-off consequences, invisible to one generation and yet visible to another, to which I alluded a moment ago.

It is highly probable that British statesmen did not foresee, any better than those of France, the future of their colonies. Neither did they create and develop these colonies according to a set plan and on fixed principles, foreseeing, arranging and maturing everything. The contrary of all this would be nearer the truth. In this respect the English government was not more active, nor more provident than the French. True, British immigration was considerable from the outset; but it was mostly all due to private initiative. As for the Puritans and the Quakers, it was an asylum from intolerance. They wanted and hoped to govern themselves, or at least to be free from hindrances to freedom of conscience. France never held out similar hopes to the Huguenots. All other immigrants were either traders or colonists pure and simple.

While the pernicious influence of the French court was weakening the nobility, in England the gentry and the rich merchants were eager for distant enterprises. In this latter country it was enough to let that private initiative have its way which in France was excluded and paralyzed by the habit of waiting in all things for the orders and regulations of royalty. Had the Huguenots been allowed the same freedom of action as the Puritans, they would have been only too glad to set up for themselves outside of France in her colonies; so would the religious orders; but, for the latter as well as for the former, it was feared that they might acquire too much independence and power. Thus, between inaction on the one hand and obstacles on the other, the colonies were left to struggle on in their impotent way. I am not aware that the English Government made more efforts at the outset for the peopling of her colonies than France did. The obstacles the latter opposed to the Huguenots the former also opposed to the Puritans; hut—here comes in an important difference, on which perhaps depended the fate of the English colonies —England yielded to entreaties, and less than a century later that flourishing colony of the Puritans numbered. 10,000 souls, four times the entire population of New France. So true is it that the fate of empires frequently turns on apparently insignificant events.

Nor did England govern her colonies mucli better than France did hers. Like France, England granted ridiculous charters which handed over and confiscated vast domains, ill-defined charters which annulled each other or which were annulled according to caprice. Not’, again, were the British immigrants any better than the French. Quite the contrary: when France undertook to send colonists, she was too fastidious, while England was perhaps not sufficiently painstaking in her choice.

Here the Puritans are not included: they were not sent to the colonies; having left England, they had taken refuge in Holland, and they succeeded in effecting a colonial settlement in America only by dint of begging for permission to do so. Their motives were of the most exalted kind. Most praiseworthy were the morals of those families .seeking an asylum where they might live according to their convictions. They sought neither riches nor pleasure, nor the satisfactions of vanity and ambition; yet they found, together with the asylum they had desired, all that frugality, orderliness, economy and intelligence could procure. It was this undesired emigration that turned out best for the strength of England.

Not so .with the colony of Virginia. At picked families were sent thither; hut soon recruits came from all quarters, and immigration, lapsing into a commercial venture, gradually deteriorated till it became altogether bad. High bounties made the recruiting of clerks and servants for the great colonizing companies a matter of money grabbing. Boys of 14 and 15 and even sickly youths, says Rameau,* were kidnapped from sea-porLs | agents embarked all the vagabonds and jail-birds that felt the need of going far away from places where they were too well known. A still more revolting spectacle on the shores of the New "World was the sale of contracts which were often wholly fictitious. In truth this was the organizing of a white slave trade with slavery for a term of years; from that to the negro slave trade with indefinite slavery was only a step, and that step was soon taken.

“As early as 1619,” says Hildreth, “1,200 immigrants came to Virginia; among them were 100 vagabonds or old offenders, who were sold like the rest, and also 20 negroes, who were brought thither and sold by a certain Dutch captain "those were the first.”

The British Government, taking the hint thus given, saw its way to getting rid of all its prisoners: transportation, in fact, saved the expenses of their maintenance at home, while the sale of their services actually brought in money. These living consignments became frequent: nor was the transportation confined to criminals: it was soon extended to. political prisoners, and thus the civil dissensions of England became a fruitful source of English emigration to Virginia, and afterwaid gradually to the other colonies, even to New England.

“This traffic in men of British race became so common* that not only the Scotch who had been made prisoners at the battle of Dunbar, were shipped to America to be there made slaves, but also the royalists that fell into the power of the Parliamentary party at the battle of Worcester, as well as the leaders of the revolt of Penruddor were embarked for the colonies. In Ireland the transportations of Irish Catholics were numerous and frequent, and accompanied with such cruel treatment as to be scarcely better than the atrocities of the African slave trade. In 1685 nearly a thousand prisoners, compromised in the rebellion of Monmouth, were condemned to deportation, and forthwith many of the men that were influential at Court wrangled over this prey as over a most profitable merchandise.”

Thus the British Government had but a small share in the peopling of the colonies, and this share is perhaps not very creditable. However, for one reason or another, the blunders of England were not so grave as those of France, with this further difference that the very blunders of England became ultimately profitable. Pwliaps it was better to be less exacting in the choice of emigrants and to till up the colonies than to remain inactive and especially to hinder emigration. Those criminals must live somewhere, and it may have been preferable to suffer them to settle in a new country, where, finding more numerous and varied advantages, they might become moral and prosperous subjects. The original population was moral and numerous enough to absorb without too much harm to itself those outcasts of society. Nevertheless, if the facts themselves are excusable, the method of operation was not so: nothing can excuse the British Government for having, not only tolerated, but originated that hateful white slave trade which was soon to issue in the regular negro slave trade and to taint in their very fountain-head the really excellent qualities of an infant nation.

France made another mistake in not colonizing, as she might have done, the Atlantic coast from Virginia northward, 01 at least a considerable portion of that coast, so as to secure a greater variety of climate. Trade was, of course, the motive power at the time the colonies were founded. France made the first choice, and, as regards the fur trade and the fisheries, that choice must have been considered, at least for the first half century, the best. Similarly, it was the gold craze that first led multitudes to California in 1849; yet, in the long run, the soil and the climate were found to be greater sources of prosperity than the richest mines. This climatic blunder may have contributed more than anything else to keep France in a state of great numerical inferiority in America. People did not care to emigrate to Acadia because it was too much exposed to attacks, nor to Canada because the climate was too severe or not sufficiently varied. Probably it was to repair this mistake that Louis XIV. had conceived the project of colonizing the Illinois country and the Upper Mississsipii but it was then too late. Voltaire gave expression to this idea, when, with his witty flippancy, he said that, after all, France wa.s giving up “ only a few acres of snow.”

It has become the fashion to say that the Frenchman is no colonizer. No doubt he has now no great reputation in that line; but the reason is that France has no longer a single colony favorably situated as home for the white race. The Frenchman is no longer a colonizer, because, amid the turmoil of revolutions and counter-revolutions, amid constant struggles with his European neighbors, he never has had leisure to take a serious interest in his colonies. But I cannot admit that the Frenchman, in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, was not quite! as good at colonizing as the Englishman, the Spaniard or the Dutchman. The only things that handicapped the Frenchman were his paternalism in government and the disadvantages of his position in Europe. As to Frenchmen themselves, what they achieved here on American soil seems utterly to contradict the assertion that they did not know how to colonize.

Having explained their numerical inferiority by causes that do not imply an absence of the colonizing spirit, I find that those who settled in Canada gave proofs of physical aptitude, of energy, of skill, of courage, which, in many respects, seem superioi to anything of the sort the British colonists could show. Else, how could the French have held their own during a century and a half against an enemy that outnumbered them sixteen to one? What wonderful achievements would have been theirs, had they been, I will not say sixteen times as numerous as the English, but fairly matched in point of numbers? Were they not singularly gifted, those men who penetrated into the interior of the continent and founded settlements and outposts in countries that were as yet unknown to the American colonist? The settlements of Frontenac, Detroit, Green Bay, Vincennes,-and other colonies in Illinois date back as far as 1680. So great was the activity and boldness of the inhabitants of Detroit that they offered to throw three thousand colonists into the adjoining territory, so as to command the whole interior of the continent, provided the French Government would till up the void by encouraging a strong emigration to Canada.

Forsaken by the mother country, without direction or assistance, the colonists faced the difficulties of their position with a courage and an intelligence that were seldom at fault. By the .superiority of their methods and by their wise forecasts they acquired a great ascendancy over the minds of the Indians. It is remarkable that the French never had to fight the Indians of the countries they occupied, nay, that they made them their faithful allies even in the most critical junctures. Everybody knows that it fared quite otherwise with the British colonies. Whether through acts of injustice, or haughty and arbitrary measures, or for some other cause, they did not know how to make friends of the Indians : hence terrible deeds of vengeance provoking the British settlers to exterminate the savage in self-defence against dangers that they had not the wisdom to avert.

‘‘In fine,” says Rameau, “the point in which the intelligence of the French colonists shone forth with especial brilliancy was their keen appreciation of topography and of their local environment, of which they unfailingly made an excellent use. This it was that enabled them to maintain the defensive and to succeed in attack. Their quickness and sureness in seizing the main point, their skill in planning, their promptness in deciding, their energy in acting were no whit inferior to their robustness of constitution, suppleness of body, sobriety and austerity of habit.

When finally they succumbed, it was only because they seemed exhausted by tlieii victories after having for a long time and repeatedly gained advantages that made the ultimate result doubtful. When Port Royal fell, it had twice resisted an army that was more numerous than the entire population of Acadia. And, when Canada in its turn was forced to yield to the invader, it had only five or six thousand soldiers left to withstand the sixty thousand of the enemy. Canada had then but sixty thousand souls, whereas the British provinces had more than a million.

I have not the slightest wish to depreciate the English colonists, nor to extol unduly the French, nor even to institute comparisons; both had their good qualities and their defects, rather difficult to estimate satisfactorily; but, to any one who will put away from him the glamour of success and view the question on its merits, it will appear evident that, minor differences apart, the Frenchman was, at that time, as good a colonizer as any other European. The failure of French colonization is traceable entirely to the faults I have pointed out, all of which are to be imputed to the Home Government and to an untoward combination of events.