If the English colonies were comparatively strong in numbers, their numbers could not be brought into action; while if the French forces were small, they were vigorously commanded, and always ready at a word. It was union confronting division, energy confronting apathy, military centralization opposed to industrial democracy; and, for a time, the advantage was all on one side.
The demands of the French were sufficiently comprehensive. They repented of their enforced concessions at the Treaty of Utrecht, and in spite of that compact, maintained that, with a few local and trivial exceptions, the whole North American continent, except Mexico, was theirs of right; while their opponents seemed neither to understand the situation, nor see the greatness of the stakes at issue.
In 1720 Father Bobé, priest of the Congregation of Missions, drew up a paper in which he sets forth the claims of France with much distinctness, beginning with the declaration that "England has usurped from France nearly everything that she possesses in America," and adding that the plenipotentiaries at Utrecht did not know what they were about when they made such concessions to the enemy; that, among other blunders, they gave Port Royal to England when it belonged to France, who should "insist vigorously" on its being given back to her.
He maintains that the voyages of Verrazzano and Ribaut made France owner of the whole continent, from Florida northward; that England was an interloper in planting colonies along the Atlantic coast, and will admit as much if she is honest, since all that country is certainly a part of New France. In this modest assumption of the point at issue, he ignores John Cabot and his son Sebastian, who discovered North America more than twenty-five years before the voyage of Verrazzano, and more than sixty years before that of Ribaut.
When the English, proceeds Father Bobé, have restored Port Royal to us, which they are bound to do, though we ceded it by the treaty, a French governor should be at once set over it, with a commission to command as far as Cape Cod, which would include Boston. We should also fortify ourselves, "in a way to stop the English, who have long tried to seize on French America, of which they know the importance, and of which," he observes with much candor, "they would make a better use than the French do…The Atlantic coast, as far as Florida, was usurped from the French, to whom it belonged then, and to whom it belongs now." [Footnote: "De maniere qu'on puisse arreter les Anglois, qui depuis longtems tachent de s'emparer de l'Amerique françoise, dont ils conoissent l'importance et dont ils feroient un meillieur usage que celuy qui les françois en font.">[ England, as he thinks, is bound in honor to give back these countries to their true owner; and it is also the part of wisdom to do so, since by grasping at too much, one often loses all. But France, out of her love of peace, will cede to England the countries along the Atlantic, from the Kennebec in New France to the Jordan [Footnote: On the river Jordan, so named by Vasquez de Ayllon, see Pioneers of France in the New World, pp. 11, 39 (revised edition) note. It was probably the Broad River of South Carolina.] in Carolina, on condition that England will restore to her all that she gave up by the Treaty of Utrecht. When this is done, France, always generous, will consent to accept as boundary a line drawn from the mouth of the Kennebec, passing thence midway between Schenectady and Lake Champlain and along the ridge of the Alleghanies to the river Jordan, the country between this line and the sea to belong to England, and the rest of the continent to France.
If England does not accept this generous offer, she is to be told that the King will give to the Compagnie des Indes (Law's Mississippi Company) full authority to occupy "all the countries which the English have usurped from France;" and, pursues Father Bobé, "it is certain that the fear of having to do with so powerful a company will bring the English to our terms." The company that was thus to strike the British heart with terror was the same which all the tonics and stimulants of the government could not save from predestined ruin. But, concludes this ingenious writer, whether England accepts our offers or not, France ought not only to take a high tone (parler avec hauteur), but also to fortify diligently, and make good her right by force of arms. [Footnote: Second Mémoire concernant les Limites des Colonies présenté en 1720 par Bobé, prêtre de la Congrégation de la Mission (Archives Nationales).]
Three years later we have another document, this time of an official character, and still more radical in its demands. It admits that Port Royal and a part of the Nova Scotian peninsula, under the name of Acadia, were ceded to England by the treaty, and consents that she shall keep them, but requires her to restore the part of New France that she has wrongfully seized,—namely, the whole Atlantic coast from the Kennebec to Florida; since France never gave England this country, which is hers by the discovery of Verrazzano in 1524. Here, again, the voyages of the Cabots, in 1497 and 1498, are completely ignored.
"It will be seen," pursues this curious document, "that our kings have always preserved sovereignty over the countries between the 30th and the 50th degrees of north latitude. A time will come when they will be in a position to assert their rights, and then it will be seen that the dominions of a king of France cannot be usurped with impunity. What we demand now is that the English make immediate restitution." No doubt, the paper goes on to say, they will pretend to have prescriptive rights, because they have settled the country and built towns and cities in it; but this plea is of no avail, because all that country is a part of New France, and because England rightfully owns nothing in America except what we, the French, gave her by the Treaty of Utrecht, which is merely Port Royal and Acadia. She is bound in honor to give back all the vast countries she has usurped; but, continues the paper, "the King loves the English nation too much, and wishes too much to do her kindness, and is too generous to exact such a restitution. Therefore, provided that England will give us back Port Royal, Acadia, and everything else that France gave her by the Treaty of Utrecht, the King will forego his rights, and grant to England the whole Atlantic coast from the 32d degree of latitude to the Kennebec, to the extent inland of twenty French leagues [about fifty miles], on condition that she will solemnly bind herself never to overstep these limits or encroach in the least on French ground."
Thus, through the beneficence of France, England, provided that she renounced all pretension to the rest of the continent, would become the rightful owner of an attenuated strip of land reaching southward from the Kennebec along the Atlantic seaboard. The document containing this magnanimous proposal was preserved in the Château St. Louis at Quebec till the middle of the eighteenth century, when, the boundary dispute having reached a crisis, and commissioners of the two powers having been appointed to settle it, a certified copy of the paper was sent to France for their instruction. [Footnote: Demandes de la France, 1723 (Archives des Affaires Etrangères).]
Father Bobé had advised that France should not trust solely to the justice of her claims, but should back right with might, and build forts on the Niagara, the Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Alabama, as well as at other commanding points, to shut out the English from the West. Of these positions, Niagara was the most important, for the possession of it would close the access to the Upper Lakes, and stop the Western tribes on their way to trade at Albany. The Five Nations and the Governor of New York were jealous of the French designs, which, however, were likely enough to succeed, through the prevailing apathy and divisions in the British colonies. "If those not immediately concerned," writes a member of the New York council, "only stand gazing on while the wolff is murthering other parts of the flock, it will come to every one's turn at last." The warning was well founded, but it was not heeded. Again: "It is the policy of the French to attack one colony at a time, and the others are so besotted as to sit still." [Footnote: Colonel Heathcote to Governor Hunter, 8 July, 1715. Ibid, to Townshend, 12 July, 1715.]