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When Count Frontenac landed in Quebec in the
month of September 1672, to administer the government of Canada or,
as it was then more generally called, New France, the country had
been for a period of a little over sixty years under continuous
French rule. The period may, indeed, be limited to exactly sixty
years if we take as the starting-point the commission issued to
Samuel de Champlain on the 15th of October 1612 as "Commander in New
France," under the authority of the Count de Soissons, who had been
appointed by the queen regent, Marie de Medicis, as -
lieutenant-general of that territory. What had been accomplished
during those sixty odd years ? How had the country developed, and
what were the elements of the situation which confronted Frontenac
on his arrival ? Answers to these questions may be gathered, it is
hoped, from the following brief introductory narrative.
The territorial claims of France in the gulf and
valley of the St. Lawrence were founded on the discoveries made in
the name of the French king, Francis I, by that brave Breton
mariner, Jacques Cartier, in the celebrated voyages undertaken by
him in the years 1534 and 1535. An
attempt at colonization made in the latter year, the site chosen
being the left bank of the St. Charles near Quebec, failed
miserably; nor were the similar attempts made in 1541 by Cartier and
in 1542 by Roberval any more successful. Cartier did not again
return to Canada, and all efforts in the direction of colonization
were suspended for sixty years, though French fishermen continued to
visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the year 1603 a notable figure
appears upon the scene, Samuel Champlain, the true founder of French
power on the continent of America. A few years previously a certain
naval captain named Chauvin, who enjoyed considerable influence at
court, had applied for and obtained from King Henry IV a patent
granting him exclusive trading privileges in the St. Lawrence. This
he had done at the instance of one Pontgrave, a leading merchant of
St. Halo, well acquainted with the St. Lawrence trade, whose
business instinct had led him to see that the fur trade alone of
that region might be a source of vast wealth to any single company
controlling it. One condition of the grant was that not less than
five hundred persons should be settled in the country, and another
that provision should be made for the religious instruction both of
the settlers and of the natives. Having obtained the patent, neither
Chauvin nor Pontgrave,. whom he appointed as his lieutenant, seems
to have thought of anything but the conversion of their privilege
into money. They sailed to the St. Lawrence, but proceeded no
further than Tadousac, where they set up a trading establishment. At
the end of the first summer season they returned to France, leaving
some sixteen men behind them so ill provided for that eleven died
during the winter of disease and hardship. The rest would have died
of starvation had not friendly Indians supplied them with food.
Chauvin made two more trips to the St. Lawrence without doing
anything to redeem his engagements, and in the year 1601 he died.
The death of Chauvin having voided his patent,
the king was moved to constitute Knight Commander de Chastes,
Governor of Dieppe, his representative in the western world. A
company was formed, and an expedition was organized and placed under
the command of Pontgrave, as a man having special knowledge of the
St. Lawrence navigation. By request of de Chastes, Cham-plain was
associated with him. At this time Champlain was thirty-six years of
age, and had already distinguished himself as soldier, sailor,
explorer, and geographer. His chief work in the two latter
characters had been done in connection with a voyage which he had
made to the West Indies and Mexico in one of the vessels of the King
of Spain. On his return he described the places he had visited in a
work, still extant, illustrated by curious maps and pictures of his
own drawing. Champlain had higher views than mere money making and
no more valuable man could have been assigned to the expedition.
Setting sail with Pontgrave from Honfleur on the 15th March 1603, he
arrived at Tadousac on the 24th May. How earnestly he was bent on
carrying the Catholic faith into the wilds of Canada is shown by a
conversation he reports having had with an Algonquin chief, into
whose mind he was trying to instil correct views as to the origin of
things, and particularly of the human race. The Algonquin had been
under the impression that the Creator had placed arrows in the
ground, and then turned them into men. Champlain assured him that
this was an error, man having been made in the first place out of
clay, and woman from a rib taken from his side while he slept. He
dwelt somewhat also on the propriety and duty of the invocation of
saints, with a view, as the Abbe Faillon hints,1 to
counteracting any prejudice against that doctrine which Chauvin and
his companions, who were Calvinists, might have endeavoured to
create in the savage mind. Judging, however, by the Algonquin's
replies to Champlain's catechising, his mental attitude was one of
admirable neutrality, securely founded on nescience, regarding any
or all of the doctrines in debate between Rome and
Geneva. Chauvin had attended strictly to
business.
Before returning to France, Champlain explored
the river St. Lawrence as far as the Lachine Rapids. On the way up
he anchored before Quebec, the situation of which he describes;
doubtless he recognized it as the place
near which Jacques Cartier and his men had spent their terrible
winter. In passing Three Rivers he noticed how advantageously it was
situated both for trade and for defence. He explored the country in
the vicinity of the Lachine Rapids sufficiently to recognize that
the land to his right, as he ascended, was an island (Montreal). Of
the rapids themselves he says that never had he seen a torrent
rushing with such impetuosity. Returning to Tadousac he proceeded
down the river to Gaspe and Percd and entered the Baie des Chaleurs.
After making, according to his custom, as many observations and
inquiries as possible in regard to the character and outlines of the
country, he returned to Tadousac, and, gathering his party, which
had meanwhile been doing some profitable trading with the natives,
set sail for France, where he arrived on the 20th September. M. de
Chastes, under whose authority he and Pontgrave were acting, had
died in the month of May. Champlain, therefore, went alone to court,
exhibited to the king a map he had made of the country, and gave
such information as to its resources and capabilities as he had
personally gathered. The king was much interested; and, desiring
that the work so well begun should be vigorously prosecuted, he
issued a patent to a Huguenot gentleman, PierreDugas, Sieurde Monts
and Governor of Pons conferring upon him exclusive trading
privileges for a period of ten years not only in Canada, but in
Acadia. The essential condition of this
grant, it has been said, was the establishment in the countries
mentioned of the "Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith"; but, if
such was the case, the terms of the document seem a little lacking
in precision, as they speak only of instructing the natives in the
principles of Christianity and the knowledge of God, and thus
bringing them to the light of faith and the practice of the
Christian religion. As de Monts was a Huguenot the generality of
these terms may not have been without significance.
De Monts had been in Canada before, having
accompanied Chauvin on one or two of his voyages to Tadousac. He had
also some knowledge of Acadia, and had conceived a preference for
that region, as being more favourably situated and milder in climate
than Canada so far as he knew it. To that quarter, therefore, he
directed the expedition, which left Havre under his command in March
1604. The
result was complete failure owing to causes into which it is
impossible in this hasty narrative to enter. Suffice it to say that,
opposition having been raised to the privileges enjoyed by de Monts,
the king, who was an accomplished politician—it was he who had
thought Paris "well worth a mass "—cancelled his patent, and thus
destroyed all the expectations which he and his business associates,
who had incurred great expense in equipping the expedition, had
founded thereon. Some progress had been made in settlement at Port
Royal, and excellent relations had been
established with the natives, when in the fall of 1607 the whole
colony was recalled to France. Champlain, who had accompanied this
expedition, turned it to good account in increasing his stores of
geographical knowledge. In the following year, 1608, de Monts
succeeded in obtaining a renewal of his patent for one year. After
consultation with Champlain he decided that Quebec would be the best
place at which to attempt a settlement. He accordingly equipped two
vessels for the enterprise, and placed them under the command of
Champlain, whom he appointed as his lieutenant with full powers of
control over the whole expedition. He himself remained behind in
Paris to watch over his interests, which were subject at every
moment to attack. His lieutenant sailed from Honfleur on the 13th
April 1608, and arrived at Tadousac on the 3rd of June, and at
Quebec on the 3rd of July. Having disembarked his men, Champlain set
them to work at once to clear the level piece of land at the base of
the rock, erect a storehouse and dwellings, and surround the whole
with a palisade and ditch. Thus in the summer of 1608 was the city
of Quebec founded, and the power of France formally established on
the North American continent.
The first event of note in the annals of the new
colony was certainly not an auspicious one: a plot that was formed
by some of the men of the expedition against the life of their
commander. Had the designs of the conspirators not been brought to
light in time, the course of Canadian history, as we know it, might
have been seriously turned aside. Four men were found guilty, and
sentenced to death; the ringleader only, a Norman named Jean Duval,
was executed, the others were sent to France where their sentences
were commuted. Lescarbot, a contemporary writer, to whom we are
indebted for much information respecting the events of the period,
states that the men were dissatisfied with their food; but from
Champlain's own narrative it appears that the plot was formed, if
not before the expedition left France, at least before it reached
Quebec, and that the whole motive of the conspirators was gain,
their intention being to deliver over all Champlain's goods to the
Basques and Spaniards fishing and trading at Tadousac, and to escape
on their vessels with the proceeds of their treason. This danger,
however, having been happily averted, work was proceeded with on
what Champlain in his narrative calls the "habitation," and by the
time winter set in the dwellings were in readiness. The winter was
destined to be a most unhappy one. As before, when Cartier took up
his quarters on the banks of the St. Charles in the winter of
1535-6, scurvy broke out, and twenty men out of a company of
twenty-eight died.
In the spring of 1609
a reinforcement for the shrunken colony
was brought out by Pontgrave It was in the summer of that year that
Champlain, with little thought of the consequences his action
would entail, carried out a promise previously
made to the Algonquins and Hurons to assist them in their feud with
the Iroquois. Taking eleven Frenchmen with him in a ship's boat, and
accompanied by about three hundred savages in their canoes, he
proceeded as far as the mouth of the Richelieu River. There most of
the savages changed their minds, and deserted the party. Finding
that the boat was not suited to the navigation of the Richelieu
River up which the route to the enemy's country lay, Champlain sent
it back to Quebec and nine men with it. He with two Frenchmen and
sixty Indians proceeded in canoes, and on the 30th of July a band of
Iroquois on the war-path was encountered on the shore of what has
since been known as Lake Champlain. The story is briefly told.
Champlain, who had loaded his arquebus with four balls, brought down
at the first shot three Iroquois chiefs, two instantly killed, and
the third mortally wounded. His men did further execution. The
Iroquois, astounded at such swift death, turned and fled. In the
pursuit others were killed. Commenting on .this campaign, and a
somewhat similar one of the year following, the Abbe Faillon
observes that if Champlain, instead of siding with the Algonquins
and Hurons against the Iroquois, had declared himself the friend of
all the tribes, he would not only have done more honour to the
French name, but would have gained access for himself and for the
missionaries who were to follow him to all the Indian communities.
By the course he actually followed he inspired
the most powerful and best organized of the Indian tribes with a
hatred for the French race and for the religion they professed,
which during a long series of years wreaked itself in countless
deeds of blood, and more than once brought the colony of New France
to the verge of extinction. The massacre of Lachine (1689) was a
late harvest of the blood sown on the shores of Lake Champlain
eighty years before.
The vessels which brought out recruits brought
also the news that the exclusive privilege of trade granted to de
Monts had been cancelled, or at least had not been renewed, though
de Monts still retained his position as the king's lieutenant in
New France.
Champlain was therefore obliged to return to France in the autumn
and discuss matters. Leaving Quebec on the 5th September he reached
Honfleur on the 14th October. He saw the king, reported progress,
and showed him some of the products of the country.
De Monts renewed his efforts to be
reinstated in his privileges, but without success. In the end it was
arranged that Champlain should return to Canada, which he did,
leaving Honfleur on the 8th April 1610, and arriving at Quebec early
in May. We
pass over the second attack on the Iroquois, made in the month of
June of this year, in which Champlain was slightly wounded. It is
interesting, however, to learn that, on returning from his campaign,
he found a piece of land near his "habitation" at Quebec, which he
had brought under cultivation, yielding good crops of vegetables,
Indian corn, wheat, rye, and barley. He had been much annoyed on
reaching Quebec in the spring to find that no care had been taken of
some grape vines that he had carefully laid down the previous fall.
This was but one example of an indolent neglect only too
characteristic, unhappily, of the Quebec colonists in after years.
Towards the end of this summer grave news
arrived. The king, Henry IV, had fallen under the dagger of an
assassin. Champlain and Pontgrav£ both thought it desirable to
return to France without delay, as it was impossible to say how
their interests might be affected by the change of government. The
only incident of importance, so far as is known, which happened
during Champlain's stay in France on this occasion, was his marriage
to a Protestant young lady named Helen Boulle, whom, on account of
her tender years—she was only twelve years old—he left to grow up
under her father's roof, but who brought him as her dowry a much
needed subsidy of six thousand francs. Thus financially reinforced
he sailed again for Canada in the spring of 1611. He had an
appointment to keep, made the previous year, with certain Indians to
meet them at the Grand Saut (Lachine Rapids) to discuss matters of
trade and war. He arrived there on the 28th May, a few days later
than he had said, but found no Indians. Not being a man to waste
time he employed himself while waiting in
prospecting the Island of Montreal and erecting a wall, as the
commencement of a fort, almost on the very spot selected thirty-one
years afterwards by Maisonneuve for the same purpose. It has been
conjectured that, if Champlain had known all the advantages
possessed by Montreal, as compared with Quebec, before he began to
construct buildings at the latter place, Montreal would probably
have been the first capital of New France. This, however, seems
hardly probable. It was important that the capital should be a place
naturally strong in a military point of view—"natura fortis," as the
motto of the city of Quebec has it—and of comparatively easy access
from the sea; and these obvious advantages Quebec possessed in a
much higher degree than Montreal.
De Monts was at last convinced that, under
existing conditions, there was no money in the enterprise to which
he was committed. Others could engage in the fur trade as freely as
he, without having any establishments in Canada to keep up; so he
willingly resigned his empty honours as lieutenant-general, in order
to see what he could do as a private trader, or private member of a
trading company. The office of lieutenant-general passed into the
hands of a more powerful person, the Duke of Conde, who wisely made
Champlain his lieutenant, and under whose auspices a powerful
company was formed, consisting of all the traders of Rouen and St.
Malo who wished to join it. The merchants of La Rochelle
had also been invited to take a share in the
enterprise, but they held off, and were consequently left out of the
arrangement. Champlain had returned to France in September 1611, and
the difficulties and oppositions of one kind and another to which
the organization of the new company gave rise kept him there till
the spring of 1613, when, again setting sail for Canada, he arrived
at Quebec about the 1st of May. It was in the early summer of this
year that he made his celebrated trip up the Ottawa River as far as
Allumette Island, about one hundred miles above the city of Ottawa,
after which he again returned to France.
Up to this time nothing had been done by the
various trading companies that had been formed towards the
evangelization of the native tribes, nor even for meeting the
spiritual necessities of the Europeans settled or trading in
New France. Champlain, who remained in
France during the whole of the following year (1614), thought it
time to take the matter in hand. He therefore arranged with the
Provincial of the Récollet Fathers, a suborder of the
Franciscans, that six of their members
should go out to New France as missionaries, their maintenance and
lodging to be provided by the company. Four of the fathers sailed
with him from France in the ship
St. Etienne of three hundred and fifty
tons, on the 24th April 1615, and arrived at Quebec about the 1st of
June. They were received with many tokens
of satisfaction, but the good fathers were not long in discovering
that there was very little zeal for
religion in the colony, and that their work was going to be beset
with the most serious difficulties and discouragements. A Rd-collet
writer, Thdodat Sagard, who came to Canada a year or two later, and
who wrote a most interesting record of his experiences, says that
the French themselves, who were supposed to be Christians, were by
their scandalous lives the greatest impediment to the conversion of
the Indians. We gather from Champlain's narrative that the first
celebration of the mass took place at Rivi&re des Prairies, a few
miles below Montreal, before a few French and a large number of
Indians, "who were full of admiration at the ceremonies practised,
and the ornaments used, the latter in particular seeming to them,
unaccustomed as they were to such things, very beautiful and
interesting."
Champlain himself was present on this solemn
occasion, and it is a cause of regret to know that he was at the
moment under a promise to join the Huron Indians in another attack
on the Iroquois. It was in connection with this expedition that some
of his most interesting geographical discoveries were made. The
point of rendezvous for the warriors was a Huron village to the west
of Lake Simcoe called Cahiagud. To reach it Champlain's Indian
guides took the route by the Ottawa River to Lake Nipissing, thence
by the French River into the Georgian Bay, and down through the
clustering islands on its eastern coast to some point not far from
Penetanguishene. Beyond Allumette Island
on the Ottawa all was new to Champlain. He now saw for the first
time Lake Simcoe, Sturgeon Lake, Rice Lake, and finally Lake
Ontario. He describes the country he passed through as most
beautiful. The expedition, however, was fated to be unsuccessful,
and came very near to proving most disastrous. The attack made on a
fortified position of the enemy was repelled; Champlain himself
received two painful arrow wounds; and if the Iroquois had only sent
a party to capture and destroy the canoes of the Hurons, the whole
invading force might easily have been annihilated. It was about the
middle of October that the fight took place. Champlain, as soon as
his wounds were healed, was anxious to be conducted back to the
Grand Saut, whence he might make his way to Quebec; but his allies
pleaded the impossibility of sparing men and canoes for the purpose,
and he was consequently obliged to spend the winter with them. Not
unnaturally the French at Quebec had almost given him up for lost,
when he made his appearance among them some time in the month of
June 1616.
Little of interest occurred in the colony, if we
may call it by that name, for several years after this. In 1620
Champlain began the construction of the Chateau St. Louis on a
portion of the ground now covered by Dufferin Terrace; yet at this
date the whole population of Quebec did not exceed fifty persons.
Amongst these there was only one who could be called a settler in
the true sense of the word. This was Louis Hubert who had come to
Canada in 1017 under a contract with the company, the terms of which
do not give us a favourable opinion of the liberality of that
corporation or of their desire to open up the country. Hebert, who
was a chemist and apothecary by profession, was bound to serve the
company for three years for a hundred crowns a year, his wife and
children being also liable to be called upon for any help they could
render. He received an allotment of land; but he could only work on
it at such times as his services were not required by the company.
At the end of three years he might grow crops, but he must sell his
produce to the company at such prices as were current in France.
Notwithstanding these restrictions, Hubert managed in the course of
time to establish himself in comfort, and to become a substantial
bourgeois of the new colony.
The Récollet fathers had now been five years in
the country, yet the interests of religion were not flourishing.
They found that they were not receiving the assistance from the
company that had been promised; and, not only so, but that their
influence with the natives was constantly being undermined by the
company's agents and servants, whose one preoccupation was trade. In
their perplexity and discouragement—for they were really making no
headway at all—it occurred to them that, if they could have the
assistance of a few Jesuit fathers, the situation might be
materially improved, their impression being that the Jesuits, if
they came, would probably have some independent means of their own,
and moreover that the high credit they enjoyed in France would stand
them in good stead in the colony.. They consequently sent home one
of their number to conduct negotiations to that end. The result was
that, in the month of June 1625, three Jesuit fathers and two
coadjutors came out to Quebec, to begin that career of
evangelization and of dauntless, self-sacrificing effort which has
won for their order an imperishable name in the annals of French
colonization in North America.
What may be called the first chapter in the
history of New France was now drawing to a close. In 1621 the Duke
of Conde had, with the royal approval, transferred the
lieutenant-generalship to the Duke of Montmorency for a
consideration of eleven thousand francs. Some changes were at the
same time made in the organization of the trading company. In 1625
Montmorency in turn passed over the office to his nephew, Henri de
Levis, Duke of Ventadour. These changes in no way improved the
situation of the settlement at Quebec which, under all managements,
was consistently starved and kept down to the level of a precarious
trading-post. The French during these years were more and more
losing influence with their Indian allies, the Hurons and
Montagnais, whose attitude at times became very menacing, and who
actually committed several murders for which it was impossible to
bring them to punishment. The chief
reason for the change of temper on the part of the natives was that
they found they were being systematically cheated by the French
traders, who beat them down to the lowest price for their furs, and
charged them the highest price for commodities sold. A Récollet
writer tells a story of an Indian chief which places the character
of the red man in a much more favourable light than that of the
civilized Europeans with whom he was dealing. The chief, at the
request of some of his people, was begging one of the agents of the
company to treat them with a little more fairness and humanity. The
agent, after considerable discussion, offered the chief to do
business with him personally on more liberal terms, but said he
could not make any change as regards the other Indians. "You are
insulting me then," said the chief, " for if I were to consent to
such an arrangement I should deserve to be hanged by my own people.
I am their captain; it is for them I am speaking, not for myself."
Things had reached such a pass that Champlain
thought it necessary to speak very plainly to the home authorities.
Cardinal Richelieu, who was at this time at the head of affairs in
France, and specially in charge of the maritime interests of the
kingdom, determined on what he hoped would be a radical measure of
reform, namely the formation of a company on a much wider basis than
any preceding one, and consisting of persons of higher mark and
responsibility, who should hold their powers directly from himself.
The edict establishing the company, the
legal name of which was the Company of New ^France, but which was
afterwards more commonly known as the Company of the Hundred
Associates, bore date the 29th April 1627. The preamble set forth in
forcible terms the lamentable failure of all the previous trading
associations to redeem their pledges in the matter of colonization;
and the new associates were, by the terms of their charter, bound in
the most formal and positive manner, to convey annually to the
colony, beginning in the following year, 1628, from two to three
hundred bona
fide settlers, and in the fifteen
following years to transport thither a total of not less than four
thousand persons male and female. The settlers were to be maintained
for three years, until they could get their land under cultivation,
and then for one season till they had reaped their crops. Provision
was also to be made for the maintenance of a sufficient number of
clergy to meet the spiritual wants both of the settlers and of the
native population. In consideration of these services all French
possessions between Florida and the Arctic Circle, and from
Newfoundland as far west as the company should be able to possess
the land, were handed over to them in absolute sovereignty, saving
only the supreme authority of the French king. They had, of course,
a complete monopoly of trade, with the sole exception of the cod and
whale fisheries which, as before, were to be open to all French
subjects.
A most unexpected event, however, was destined
to delay for some years the carrying out of the plans of the great
cardinal. In the very year in which the new company was formed war
broke out between France and England. The general result of the war
was both disastrous and inglorious for England ; but a notable
incident of it was the capture of Quebec by a small fleet of
privateers under the command of Captain David Kirke, sailing under
letters of marque from the English king, Charles I, authorizing him
to attack the French in Canada, and drive them out of the country if
possible. Kirke's first exploit was to defeat and capture, early in
1628, not far from Gasp£, a French fleet of eighteen vessels
carrying a considerable number of colonists, and also a large
quantity of provisions, goods of all kinds, and munitions of war for
the colony of New France. To what dire extremities the loss of these
supplies reduced the already feeble settlement is movingly described
in Champlain's own narrative. Kirke, after his victory, stripped the
vessels of the enemy of whatever they contained that was valuable,
burnt the smaller ones, and took the larger ones to Newfoundland.
Then, after destroying the French settlements in Acadia, he sailed
for England with his prisoners and a portion of the booty. This gave
the colony at Quebec a year's respite from attack; but owing to a
series of misfortunes no succour was received from France during the
interval. The consequence was that, when Kirke returned in the
following year to the St. Lawrence, and sent two of his brothers,
Louis and Thomas, with three small but well-appointed vessels—he
himself remaining at Tadousac—to demand the surrender of Quebec, the
only course open to Champlain, who not only had no adequate means of
defence, but whose little garrison was on the point of starvation,
was to make an honourable capitulation.
It was agreed that the French should
evacuate the place carrying with them their arms, clothing, and any
furs they might individually own, and should be allowed to return to
France in a vessel of their own providing.
As they had difficulty in procuring a
suitable vessel, Kirke in the end furnished one of two hundred and
fifty tons, manned by seventy of his own sailors, and landed them,
to the number of over a hundred, in England. The preliminary
articles of capitulation were signed on the 19th July 1629, and two
days later the English flag was raised on the Chateau
St. Louis, to the accompaniment of salvos
of artillery, fired both from the ships in the river and the land
batteries, of which the English had now taken possession.
While all this was going on the Kirke brothers
and Champlain were alike unaware that, three months previously,
peace had" been signed between England and France. The
disappointment and chagrin of David Kirke when he landed the Quebec
garrison in England, and learned that the capture had been made in
time of peace and would probably have to be restored, may be
imagined. Champlain made it his business to go at once and see the
French ambassador in London, in order to report what had taken place
and urge the restitution of the colony to France. The matter was
taken up by the French government, and Charles promised to restore
Canada, but made no engagement respecting Acadia. The French king,
Louis XIII, about this time had his" hands full with domestic
sedition and foreign war. His own brother, Gaston de France, with
the sympathy both of the queen and of the queen mother, was in
revolt against him, as well as the Duke of Montmorency, former
lieutenant-general of Canada. The rebellion was crushed through the
vigorous action of Cardinal Richelieu, and Montmorency was brought
to the block; but meantime the negotiations with England had
remained in suspense. Finally they were brought to a conclusion in
1632, Charles agreeing to restore both
Canada and Acadia. The probability is that had lie refused to do so
the matter would not have been pressed—at least not to the point of
war— and that Canada and Acadia would have remained English
possessions. Never, in the course of history, did a country more
distinctly stand at the parting of the ways'; and it is singular to
reflect that, in all probability, it is owing to the restitution of
Canada to France at that time that the Dominion of Canada is to-day
a British possession. |
