CHAPTER XI
GENERAL SUMMARY
In order to sum up the story of New France, it is proposed in the present chapter to try to answer the four following questions. What effect had geography on the history of Canada down to the year 1763? Why did France lose Canada? What were the respective merits and defects of the French and English systems and policies in North America? And lastly, was the contest between the two powers and the victory of one inevitable, and was it beneficial? These four questions overlap each other, and the answers involve considerable repetition of what has gone before; but a short general summary may be useful to those who care to study the earlier history of Canada in reference to the general history of colonization.
| Position of the French among colonizing nations. |
From the time of Columbus down to the middle of the nineteenth century, five nations, all on the western side of Europe, were mainly concerned in carrying European trade, conquest, and settlement into other parts of the world. They were the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the English. Of these five nations, the Spaniards had what may be called a continental career. They overran and mastered an immense area of mainland. The Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English, on the other hand, while they differed from each other in many points, were alike in this, that they were traders and seafarers, not so much attempting an inland dominion, as securing footholds on sea coasts, peninsulas, and islands. The French stood midway between the Spaniards and the other three nations. They were not continental conquerors to the same extent as the Spaniards, they did not confine themselves to the fringes of the land to the same extent as the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English. They were what France made them to be.
| Twofold character of France and the French. |
France is an integral part of the continent of Europe; but it is also, with the exception of the Spanish peninsula, the westernmost province of that continent; and it has a long indented seaboard open to the Atlantic. The country has a double outlook, its people have had a twofold character and a double history. It is noteworthy that, while the French, to judge from the greatest event in their history—the French Revolution—and to judge from their writing and thought, have been the most thorough and logical, the most uncompromising of peoples, their record has yet been in a sense one of continual compromise, or at least one of perpetual combination of opposite extremes. The northern and southern races, the northern and southern religions, have had their meeting-ground in France. France, which has been notable for violent political changes, had and has the strongest element of conservatism in its population. No nation is more quick-witted than the French, yet in none is there more plodding industry.
| Canada well suited to be a sphere of French colonization. |
In the fullness of time, the French people had their call to take part in the over-sea expansion of Europe, and they found their way to Canada. They entered the New World at its widest point, where the American continent extends furthest from west to east; but they entered it also at the point where the interior of the continent is most accessible from the sea by means of a great navigable river and a group of lakes. Thus the advent of the French into Canada meant the coming of a people, who in their old home were partly continental, partly sea-going, into a sphere of colonization, which was a vast extent of continent, but which at the same time was more intersected and more dominated by water than perhaps any other portion of the mainland of the globe. Like came to like when the French came to Canada. Their old home had given them at once the instincts of land conquerors, and the knowledge of men whose way is on the waters. Quick to move and loving motion, they found the route into the New World to be one which invited and facilitated quick movement; for, important as is inland water communication at the present day, it was all important before the days of railways. The great highroad of North America was the St. Lawrence, and that highroad became owned by a quick, ambitious people, who were not content to remain as traders by the side of the sea.
| Greatness of the St. Lawrence water system. |
The combination of accessibility from the open sea, of length of navigable waters, and of volume of waters, makes the St. Lawrence basin almost, if not quite unique. Up to Three Rivers, 330 miles from the sea, the St. Lawrence is a tidal river. Up to the Falls of Niagara, 600 miles from the sea—nearly as far as London is from Berlin—there is no break of navigation. From the westernmost point of Lake Superior to the Atlantic is a distance of 2,000 miles—much further than is the distance from London to St. Petersburg. Lake Superior alone is larger in size than Scotland.
| It is almost connected with the basin of the Mississippi, of Hudson Bay, and of the Hudson river. Colonization in Canada was colonization by water. |
Further, this wonderful chain of waters, as has been pointed out, is nearly continuous with the Mississippi basin on the southern side, and on the north-western side with the lakes and rivers which drain into Hudson Bay; while one of the smaller affluents of the St. Lawrence, the Richelieu river, carries into the St. Lawrence the waters of Lake Champlain and Lake George, the southern end of Lake George being but very few miles distant from the upper waters of the Hudson river, which flows into the Atlantic. In short, Canada, within its ancient limits, was a network of inland waters. Here was a continent to be conquered and settled by water rather than by land, and the congenial task of conquering and attempting to settle it was allotted by Providence to the French.
| The geography of Canada favoured motion. |
Canada then suited the French, and the French suited Canada; but the effect of the geography of Canada on an incoming race, with the instincts and the characteristics of the French, was to stimulate their natural inclination to attempt too much and to go too fast and too far. The incomers moved quickly along the lines of communication, and went into the heart of the continent; but permanent settlement lagged behind, and was confined to the edges of the inland waters. For, while nature had given to Canada, in her rivers and lakes, the best of roads, away from those rivers and lakes the land was difficult to penetrate. Thus Canada was colonized only by the water side, and what settlement there was, was characterized by length without breadth; while, beyond the point where continuous settlement ended, the very easiness of movement carried forward enterprising French officers, priests, and traders, until there was a skeleton outline of French dominion, which was never filled in, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.
| Settlement held close to the water side. Two distinct kinds of colonists in Canada. |
Geography, too, had this effect upon the population. The rivers were so entirely all in all, that they made the settled portion of the French Canadians very settled, and the fluid portion very fluid. Those who wished to stay in one place stayed by the river bank, which was the roadside, because it was the roadside, and because behind and away from the river there was not open ground but dense forest. Those, on the other hand, who were inclined to roam, were carried by the waters wheresoever they wished, with the backwoods at hand, should hiding-places be required. Thus Canada bred two distinct species of colonists, the habitans of the central St. Lawrence, and the voyageurs or coureurs de bois. As in their old home, so still more in their new, the French race comprised contradictory elements.
| Effect of the Canadian climate on colonization. It made against continuity |
Climate counts for much in the formation of a people, and in determining its history. The climate of Eastern Canada inclines to extremes. It favours quickness but not continuity of action. The summer is short, but very hot and bright; the winter is long and severe, but again not unfavourable to movement over the frozen surface of water and ground. Eastern Canada is not by nature a land open all the year round to steady work, but one in which settlers have a limited time wherein to till the ground, followed by a long, close season; while wanderers can in summer and winter alike indulge their vagrant instincts. The tendency therefore of the Canadian climate, as regards its influence on an incoming race, with a restless and impatient element in its character, was to stimulate the restlessness, and to discourage colonization in the sense of attachment to the soil.
| and against the policy of the French Government. |
In winter, the St. Lawrence is closed to shipping. Consequently New France was for several months in each year cut off from all communication with the mother country. Here again the effect of climate was to break continuity of colonization; and, moreover, the forces of nature were employed against the policy of the French Government, for the effect of long breaks in communication must have been to develop a separate life in New France, evidence of which is to be found in the jealousy existing, in Vaudreuil's and Montcalm's time, between natives of France and natives of Canada; whereas the unaltering aim of French Kings and ministers was simply to reproduce France in America, and to keep the colony under constant and rigid control from home. The effects of the summer, therefore, on Canada were counteracted by winter isolation; and one more element of contradiction was introduced into French history in North America.
| Canada had no minerals. This was one cause of the small population. |
The natural products of a country are an important factor in making its people. Canada, as compared with most other fields of colonization, with Spanish America for instance, or the East Indies, was a poor land. It had practically no mineral wealth, though traces of iron and copper were found in the region of Lake Superior. In the earlier part of the eighteenth century Charlevoix wrote: 'The first source of the ill fortune of this country, which is honoured with the name of New France, was the report which was at first spread through the kingdom that it had no mines; and they did not enough consider that the greatest advantage that can be drawn from a colony is the increase of trade. And to accomplish this, it requires people, and these peoplings must be made by degrees, so that it will not appear in such a kingdom as France.'1 The great weakness of Canada was the paucity of the white population. Had mines been discovered, the colony would no doubt have been much stronger, for a far greater number of colonists would have come out from France; and, while the character of the people would have been, in a sense, at least as restless as it actually was, the restlessness would have been localized in the mining areas, which would have become large centres of population.
1 Charlevoix's Letters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières, giving an account of a voyage to Canada (Eng. translation, 1763, p. 31). The letters began in 1720.
| Agriculture, fisheries, and fur-trading. |
In the absence of minerals Canada depended on agriculture, fisheries, and fur-trading. Of these three industries, agriculture alone conduced to permanent settlement. The fisheries did not directly much concern the life of the colony up the St. Lawrence river, for the fishing-grounds were mainly in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the coasts of Newfoundland and Acadia; nor did fishing, when the fishermen found their principal market in Europe, and were in great measure domiciled in Europe, contribute much to the colonization of North America. Fur-trading again, the great speciality of Canada, made for movement and for wandering life, not for colonization. This is pointed out by Charlevoix, who dwells upon the evil results of giving licences to trade, as encouraging vagabondism, and notes as the second cause of the ill fortune of Canada, the want of resolution in its people, and their constant moving from place to place, instead of carefully selecting a place for settlement and staying there.2
2 Charlevoix (as above), pp. 31-5.
The real wealth of Eastern Canada was, as it still is, agricultural; but the history of colonization proves that agricultural colonies, while very sound and sure, progress very slowly; and to the impatient, enterprising Frenchman, who was inclined to seek fortune over the seas, farming in Canada, with a Canadian winter to face, offered little attraction. It is true that the English North American colonies were also agricultural colonies; but they had a great advantage over New France, in that their coasts were open all the year round, resulting in a maritime trade, which could never be enjoyed by Canada. Moreover New England, at any rate, was peopled by colonists who went out, not to make their fortunes, and not to build up a dominion for their King, but to make their homes, and their children's homes, on the agricultural pattern, in as kindly a soil as, and in a kindlier climate than, that of Canada.
| Canada better suited for war than peace. |
New France then was a country where movement was easy, and where the incentives to settlement were not great; and in its white population, or at any rate in a large proportion of that population, there was a strong element of restlessness, added to great power of conciliating and assimilating savages; while the religious and political policy of its rulers was, in the main, a forward policy. The result was that the Canadians were more successful in motion than at rest, in making war than in keeping peace. 'The English Americans,' writes Charlevoix, 'are entirely averse to war because they have much to lose; they do not regard the savages, because they think they have no occasion for them. The youth of the French, for the contrary reasons, hate peace, and live well with the savages, whose esteem they gain during a war and have their friendship at all times.3
3 Charlevoix (as above), p. 27.
| The Canadians as fighters. |
The Canadians were to the English settlers in New England or New York, very much what the Highlanders of Scotland, in past centuries, were to the dwellers in the Lowlands. Their forte was in raiding their English rivals; and, as they were better qualified to excel in war than in peace, so in war they were more capable of quick, spasmodic action, than of bearing continuous and steady strain. 'They seem not to be masters of a certain impetuosity, which makes them fitter for a coup de main, or a sudden expedition, than for the regular and settled operations of a campaign. It has also been remarked, that amongst a great number of brave men, who have distinguished themselves in the late war, there have been few found who had talents to command. This was perhaps because they had not sufficiently learnt how to obey.'4 On the other hand, it must be remembered that Canada also contained a stationary population on the banks of the St. Lawrence, who more and more, as years went on, learnt what war meant and preferred peace; and that the colony was not devoid of trading centres, the largest of which were Quebec and Montreal, and all of which, including for instance, Niagara, Detroit, and Michillimackinac, were inland ports.
4 Charlevoix (as above), p. 104.
| The English had the better position in North America, larger numbers, and command of the sea. |
If the above was the effect of geography on the history of France in North America, it is not difficult to answer the question, Why did the French lose Canada? They lost it because the English had the better position in North America; because the English population in North America largely outnumbered the French; because, when the crisis came, the English made their main effort in North America, whereas the French devoted their resources and their energies primarily to continental war in Europe; and lastly, because the English secured command of the sea, and in consequence command of the St. Lawrence also. But then the further question arises: What produced this balance of advantage on the English side?
| There is no valid reason why the English originally secured the better geographical position in North America. |
It is not easy to determine why the better lot in North America, as regards geography, fell to Great Britain and not to France. It was hardly a question of prior discovery. The first pioneer for England, Cabot, struck the New World at Newfoundland or Cape Breton, far north of what became the main sphere of British colonization. The first authenticated pioneer on behalf of France, Verrazano, found his way to the present shores of the United States. The French connexion with the St. Lawrence dated from Cartier's voyages; but those voyages, though they gave the right of discovery, did not result at the time in effective occupation. It was little more than an accident that the English settled in Virginia and New England, and the French in Acadia and on the St. Lawrence; though the fact of having found the St. Lawrence, and the attraction of a great river, which might be the long-wished-for, and long-dreamt-of, highroad to the far East, may well have dictated to French instincts where New France should be. At any rate, the English gained the great initial advantage of a far larger seaboard, open at all times of the year, and a climate which was more favourable to European colonization. 'Along the continent of America which we possess,' wrote Wolfe from Louisbourg in 1758, 'there is a variety of climate, and, for the most part, healthy and pleasant.... Such is our extent of territory upon this fine continent, that an inhabitant may enjoy the kind influence of moderate warmth all the year round.'5
5 Wolfe to his mother, Aug. 11, 1758 (Wright, p. 454).
| English superiority in numbers mainly due to French policy towards the Huguenots. |
With this advantage, it was natural that there should be greater immigration into the English colonies than into Canada. But this was not the only, or the main, cause of the superior numbers in the English colonies. The main cause was the policy of the French Government, and especially its religious policy. The most fatal mistake made by the French in regard to North America was the exclusion of the Huguenots. The men who wished to leave England went to the present United States. The men who wished to leave France were not allowed to go to Canada, and went in considerable numbers to England and her colonies. The effect, therefore, of Roman Catholic exclusiveness was that, though France had a far greater population than England, the greatest French colony failed for want of colonists. Nor was it only a matter of quantity, but a matter of quality also. The Huguenots were the type of men who would make homes, create business, and build up communities beyond the seas. They were of the same strong fibre as the New England Puritans. In the competition of the coming time, New France was doomed in consequence of being closed to the French Protestants.
| Numerical superiority of the English forces in North America in the Seven Years' War. Canada was conquered by Great Britain, not by the English colonies. |
When the Seven Years' War came, the English colonists in North America outnumbered the French by thirteen to one; but, at the moment, superiority in numbers was largely counterbalanced by the want of union in the English colonies, whereas Canada was one. Therefore the issue largely depended on the forces and the leaders sent out by the two mother countries respectively. England, inspired by Pitt, sent out abundant troops. France, inspired by Madame de Pompadour, kept nearly all her troops to fight Frederick of Prussia, with his few English and Hanoverian allies. The result was the defeat of the French in North America, and the British conquest of Canada. Whatever might have been the result if the crisis had been postponed, it was not the British colonists but the troops from England, who, in 1758-60, decided the fate of North America. It is customary, in writing accounts of the colonial wars of Great Britain, to emphasize the merits of the colonial soldiers, who have the advantage of knowing the country and the mode of fighting appropriate to it; and to depreciate the regulars sent from home. Reverses, like that of Braddock, are written and read from a colonial point of view; and in America, more especially, the colonists' side has been emphasized in consequence of the results of the subsequent War of Independence. But, as a matter of fact, excellent as were some of the colonial troops, such as Robert Rogers' Rangers, Canada was conquered by soldiers from England under able English generals like Wolfe and Amherst; and similarly the burden of the defence of Canada fell mainly on Montcalm and the few regiments which had been spared to him from France.
| The English command of the water. |
As the French kept for war on the continent of Europe the troops which should have been sent to North America, so they allowed the English to gain control of the water, over which alone troops and supplies could be sent to New France. 'The possession of Canada,' writes Captain Mahan, 'depended upon sea power.'6 After the victory of Hawke in Quiberon Bay, and other English successes on sea, Burke, in the Annual Register for 1760,7 wrote that France 'was obliged to sit, the impotent spectator of the ruin of her colonies, without being able to send them the slightest succour. It was then she found what it was to be inferior at sea.' Especially important was the command of the water to those who would hold Canada, for two reasons; because Canada, poor and undeveloped, was dependent on supplies from Europe, to a greater extent than the English colonies8 in North America; and because she could and must be attacked by the St. Lawrence.
6 Influence of Sea Power upon History (6th ed.), p. 294.
7 p. 9.
8 Thus Charlevoix (as above, p. 38) says Canada 'has always had more from France than it could pay.'
The command of the sea meant the command of the St. Lawrence; and the command of the St. Lawrence was indispensable for the reduction of Quebec and Montreal. The downfall of New France began when the Treaty of Utrecht took from her, in Acadia, the best part of her scanty seaboard; the downward process was arrested when Louisbourg, taken by Massachusetts, was restored to the French; it began again with the second capture of Louisbourg. The seaport was taken in one year; in the next the river port, Quebec, was lost also. This would not have happened had the French not divided their energies so completely as to give Great Britain superiority on the water. They attempted too much at home, and the same fault, if we turn to consider their system and policy in North America, was carried into the New World.
| French and English systems and policies in North America compared. |
It is roughly true to say that in North America the French had a definite policy and a definite system; but the policy, though brilliant in conception, was quite impracticable, and the system was radically unsound. The English in North America, on the other hand, had rarely any policy and never any system.
| Hopelessness of the French scheme for dominion in North America. |
The French policy was an imperial policy. It was clear, consistent, and far-reaching. The object aimed at was a French dominion in North America, the lines of communication being the two great rivers, the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. Canada and Louisiana were to be joined; the English were to be kept between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic; the French King was to be lord of all; the French religion was to be supreme; the Indians were to be converted and made French in sympathies and interests. The scheme was brilliant, but it was impossible; and it is difficult to understand why it is considered by historians to have been so dangerous to the future of the British colonies. White men of one race, sparsely scattered over two sides of a gigantic triangle, were to control white men of another but equally masculine race, thirteen times as numerous, who held the base of the triangle, the base being the seaboard. The attempt became more impracticable every year, for every year the actual preponderance of numbers on the English side increased, and every year the white men gained on the red men, who alone could make the realization of the French dream even conceivably possible.
| French native policy. Its merits. |
Ample reference has already been made to the dealings of the French with the Indians. There is much to praise and much to blame in what may be called the native policy of France in North America. The object of the French Government was, as Charlevoix points out, to 'frenchify' the savages;9 and, as an instance of the value of the Indians to the cause of France in America, he cites 'the Abenaquis, who, though few in numbers, were during the two last wars the principal bulwark of New France against New England.'9 With the exception of the Five Nation Indians, the natives of North America were almost wholly on the side of the French as against the English, in spite of the fact that the English offered them a better market and sold them better wares. The reason was that the French relations to the Indians were more human than those of the English. No doubt, among the English colonists were Quakers and Moravians, whose tenets bade them deal gently with the people of the soil; and on the New York frontier, from Dutch times, there had been friendship, sometimes warmer sometimes cooler, between the Dutch and the English colonists on the one hand, and the Iroquois on the other. But the ordinary English colonist's view of the red man was the Old Testament view—hard, exclusive, and often cruel. The Puritan New Englander took the land of the heathen in possession, and from his standpoint there was not room in it for him and them. Widely different was the French view. The Indians were not to be excluded from, but incorporated in, the French dominion. The King of France, and his representative the Governor of Canada, were to be the fathers, and the Indians were to be the obedient and trusting children. The missions taught the same lesson. The Indians were not to be exterminated, but to be fruitful and multiply as dutiful children of France and of the Roman Catholic Church. On these lines the French acted consistently from first to last; and their unaltering policy contrasted favourably with the halting, uncertain dealings of the English, which changed from year to year, and were different in the different colonies. The way to win a black man's or a red man's affections is to treat him, if not as an equal, at least as a man, and to be constant in the treatment. For this reason, the Indians loved the French better than the English. Very rarely on the English side appeared a man, like Sir William Johnson, who possessed the mixture of firmness and sympathy which attracted and conciliated the Indians, and which was common among the French.
9 Charlevoix (as above), pp. 34, 35.
| Its defects. |
But there was a very dark side to the French policy and system in regard to the North American Indians. In the first place, as has been abundantly shown in the preceding pages, the French authorities, temporal and spiritual, kept the savages on their side by sanctioning, or at least not repressing, their savagery; and notably the mission Indians of Canada, the special protégés of the priests, were foremost in barbarous warfare against white Christians of a different shade of religion. In the second place, the political system of Canada, which indirectly created the Canadian vagrants, the coureurs de bois, produced, in doing so, indianized Frenchmen, differing little from frenchified Indians. Here again we can take Charlevoix's testimony. He writes that 'some vagabonds, who had taken a liking to independency and a wandering life, had remained among the savages, from whom they could not be distinguished but by their vices.'10 If the French were more human than the English in their dealings with the Indians, they were more human for evil as well as for good; and, whatever was the result on the Indians, there is no question as to the result on the French and English respectively, of their different lines of action towards the red men. The English race gained greatly in the end in soundness and in progress, from keeping outside the Indian circle and not coming down to the Indian level.
10 Charlevoix (as above), p. 34.
| Merits of French settlement in Canada. |
It has been said above that the French system in North America was radically unsound. It was unsound, in that it was based on political and religious exclusiveness. There was the one great fundamental mistake of excluding the Huguenots, and there were various other important defects. But, on the hypothesis that the most independent and most progressive element in France was to have no place in New France, it is open to question whether the system of colonization, which Louis XIV, Colbert, and Talon devised, and which remained the basis of the colony, deserves the somewhat severe criticism which it has received at the hands of historians. It is true that the system was most artificial, that it contained no element of freedom or self-government, and that when, long years after it came into being, many of the restrictions were removed in consequence of the English conquest of Canada, the colonists were deeply sensible of the relief. It is true, too, that reaction against these restrictions, while still in existence, produced the semi-savage race of coureurs de bois, and that, through placing the power in the hands of a few individuals, without providing any check of local representation or local public opinion, an atmosphere of wholesale corruption and intrigue was produced. But none the less there was an undoubted element of soundness and strength in the settlement of New France; and a considerable amount of shrewdness was shown in taking a certain material from the old country and placing it in the New World, under familiar conditions. The military side of the colonization was skilfully handled; and the peasants, who had been in tutelage in France to lord, to King, and to Church, found themselves in their new homes under similar guidance, instead of being turned into strange ways, for which by bringing up they were not fitted. The system, artificial as it was, produced permanent settlement of considerable strength and great tenacity, which, under a more liberal régime, has resulted in the French-speaking Canadian people of the present day.
| Canada, as compared with the English colonies, was one. The English colonies were separate from the mother country, and from each other. |
There were divisions in Canada, and various contradictory elements in its history; but, as against foreign rivals and for purposes of offence and defence, the colony was one, under one Government and one Church, and in line with the mother country. Widely different was the case of the English colonies. They were rarely in harmony with the mother country, or with each other. They had little or no instinct of imperialism. They had the instinct of self-preservation, and if seriously attacked were to some extent prepared, unless Quaker influence was dominant, to protect themselves, and to accept aid from the mother country. But their traditions and their inclinations made for peace, not for war; for isolation, not for union. Their forefathers' aim and object had been to create and maintain separate and self-dependent communities, not to be in substance amenable to home control. Here is a French view of the New Englanders given by the anonymous eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745: 'These singular people have a system of laws and protection peculiar to themselves, and their Governor carries himself like a monarch.'11 If the fault of the Canadian system was too rigid uniformity and too complete subordination to the mother country, the English colonies suffered from the opposite extreme, from utter want of uniformity and complete absence of system. Different constitutions, different shades of religious beliefs, different phases of settlement—all created disunion. Common origin made a bond with the mother country, but the Governors sent from England could tell those who sent them how deficient was the habit of obedience to the British Crown.
11 Professor Wrong's translation, p. 37.
| The English colonists alone no match for Canada. Shortcomings of the home Government. |
Common danger alone produced occasional signs of common action. The New England colonies, whose borders were most within reach of French raids, and whose shores reached to Acadia, showed far the most public spirit, and far the most power of combination. The southern colonies awoke only when the French in the Ohio valley did them active and present hurt; but, with many times the numbers of the Canadian population, the English colonies as a rule showed themselves to be no match for Canada. The first decisive treaty in North America—the Peace of Utrecht, which gave Acadia to Great Britain—was the result of fighting by English, not colonial soldiers, and not in America, but in Flanders under Marlborough. The second decisive treaty, the Peace of Paris in 1763, was the result of fighting in America, but mainly by British not colonial troops, and under British generals. The 'Bostonnais' alone among the English colonists were objects of apprehension to the French; and, if it were not for the record of Massachusetts and her smaller neighbours, the English colonies in North America before the year 1763 would in manhood and public spirit compare poorly with Canada. With equal truth it may be said that, in the matter of having a clear and consistent policy in North America, Great Britain compared very poorly with France; and the apathy of the colonies may fairly be attributed in large measure to their uncertainty as to what on any particular occasion might be the attitude of the King and the ministers in England; whether support would be forthcoming or withheld, and whether, if forthcoming, it would involve some sacrifice in return. It is very noticeable how often a promised force from home either was never sent or sent too late; it is noticeable too how difficult it was for Governors who opposed French claims and pretensions, such as Dongan of New York, in the seventeenth century, and William Shirley of Massachusetts, in the eighteenth, to persuade the home Government of the justice of their views. Like her colonies, England was as a rule averse to war; and as her colonies were inclined to keep her at arm's length, so she was inclined to leave them, within limits, to take care of themselves.
| English compromise. |
In the case of North America, while French and English were competing there, the English through their Government acted as they always have acted, during the whole course of their foreign and colonial history. They did, they undid, they compromised, until at length in Pitt there came a man who gripped the nettle, and the end was reached which might with infinitely greater ease have been attained many years before. When Quebec was in its infancy, the English under Kirke conquered it; the English King gave it back, and then the French dominion in North America took root. After Marlborough's wars the Peace of Utrecht gave Acadia to England, but gave it in terms so vague that the French continued to claim much or most of it; at the same time it left Cape Breton Island to France, and sowed the seeds of an apparently perennial controversy between Great Britain and France with regard to fishing rights on the coast of Newfoundland. There was more war, and the colonists took Cape Breton Island. Under the terms of the next treaty the English Government restored it to France. Then came the final war and the final peace; England gained all Canada, but, with that strange liking which Englishmen seem to have for leaving a frayed end in their treaty arrangements, the British Government confirmed the fishing rights of France on the Newfoundland coast, and added thereto possession of the two small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.
It was not policy, it was not system, which gave North America to the English rather than to the French, and yet there was a certain gain even from the utter absence of both policy and system. Natural forces had more play on the English side than on the French, and in a sense it might be said of the English colonies that their strength was to sit still.
| Was the contest between Great Britain and France in North America inevitable and beneficial? |
The last question to be asked, and if possible to be answered, is: Was the contest between France and Great Britain in North America, and the victory of one of the two powers, inevitable, and was it beneficial? From the English point of view, the answer to part of this question is a foregone conclusion. If there was to be a contest, it seems evident, if we look back on the past, that the English must have in the end prevailed. It is impossible to imagine that the French colony of Canada, with a population at the time of the conquest of considerably under 100,000, could dominate the English colonies with a million and a quarter inhabitants. Equally certain does it appear that to Canada the British conquest was a blessing in disguise, and the Canadians in a very short time realized what they had gained by the change of administration. In Mr. Parkman's words, 'a happier calamity never befell a people than the conquest of Canada by the British arms.'12
12 The Old Régime in Canada (end).
But the question, whether a decisive war between the two races in North America was inevitable, is one which may well be asked and answered, inasmuch as a similar question has in our own day troubled many minds in regard to other parts of the world where colonizing races have been side by side. Surely, it might be said, and probably was said, there was room enough in the great continent of North America for both French and English to work out their national destinies, without trying to supplant each other. In a sense this was no doubt true; and the truth is not vitiated by the fact that the French scheme of policy was not compatible with the presence of the English race in North America, on the supposition that the latter race would be allowed to extend its bounds by natural increase and progressive settlement pari passu with the French.
| No natural frontier between New France and the English colonies. |
The interesting point, however, to notice is that there was no natural frontier between Canada and the English colonies, at the time when they came into serious competition; for the line of the Alleghanies, even if recognized, could fully delimit only the more southerly colonies. To use a modern term, two separate spheres of influence in North America had not been marked out by nature. But in new countries, unless there is some strongly defined natural line of division, it is true to say, however paradoxical it may appear, that there is not room for two incoming white races to colonize as equals side by side. It is precisely when the land is thinly populated, and when therefore the population is in a fluid condition, that collisions will and must occur. Given a continent like Europe at the present day, the geography of which is accurately known, the resources of whose soil in every part have been fully gauged, and whose surface has been for many generations parcelled out in effective occupation, one province to one race, another to another; then, when the peoples are crystallized in their respective moulds, war is not inevitable; and when war arises, it is the artificial result of political naughtiness and ambition, unless indeed it be the effect of some inaccuracy in the map, which needs to be adjusted. In new fields of colonization, on the other hand, wars are not artificial; they are natural, and not only natural but sometimes absolutely necessary to future happiness and welfare. Just as Europe was herself once in the melting-pot, so the lands which Europeans have settled and are settling, if they are to be the homes of strong peoples in days to come, must, when rival races are planted there, be the scenes of armed strife.
Colonial wars which end where they began, with indecisive treaties tending to further bloodshed, may well be the subject of national sorrow and regret; but it is otherwise when a great issue has been achieved, and when it has been decided once for all what lines shall be laid down for the future of a great country, not yet peopled as it will be in the coming time. Then the millions of money, which seem to have been wasted, are found to have been invested for the good of men; and the mourners for the lost sorrow not as without hope, inasmuch as those who have gone have died that others may live. The foundations of peoples are the nameless dead, who have been laid amid North American forests or under the bare veldt of South Africa.