France founded a state in Canada. She established a feudal and ecclesiastical frame-work for the young nation, and into that Procrustean bed the growth of population and the proportions of society were forced. The state fixed governments at Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec; there towns arose. She divided the rich banks of the St. Lawrence and of the Richelieu into seigneuries; there population spread. She placed posts on the lakes and rivers of the Far West; there the fur-traders congregated. She divided the land into dioceses and parishes, and appointed bishops and curates; a portion of all produce of the soil was exacted for their support. She sent out the people at her own cost, and acknowledged no shadow of popular rights. She organized the inhabitants by an unsparing conscription, and placed over them officers either from the Old Country or from the favored class of seigneurs. She grasped a monopoly of every valuable production of the country, and yet forced upon it her own manufactures to the exclusion of all others. She squandered her resources and treasures on the colony, but violated all principles of justice in a vain endeavor to make that colony a source of wealth. She sent out the ablest and best of her officers to govern on the falsest and worst of systems. Her energy absorbed all individual energy; her perpetual and minute interference aspired to shape and direct all will and motive of her subjects. The state was every thing, the people nothing. Finally, when the power of the state was broken by a foreign foe, there remained no power of the people to supply its place. On the day that the French armies ceased to resist, Canada was a peaceful province of British America.
A few years after the French crown had founded a state in Canada, a handful of Puritan refugees founded a people in New England. They bore with them from the mother country little beside a bitter hatred of the existing government, and a stern resolve to perish or be free. One small vessel—the Mayflower—held them, their wives, their children, and their scanty stores. So ignorant were they of the country of their adoption, that they sought its shores in the depth of winter, when nothing but a snowy desert met their sight. Dire hardships assailed them; many sickened and died, but those who lived still strove bravely. And bitter was their trial; the scowling sky above their heads, the frozen earth under their feet, and sorest of all, deep in their strong hearts the unacknowledged love of that venerable land which they had abandoned forever.
But brighter times soon came; the snowy desert changed into a fair scene of life and vegetation. The woods rang with the cheerful sound of the ax; the fields were tilled hopefully, the harvest gathered gratefully. Other vessels arrived bearing more settlers, men, for the most part, like those who had first landed. Their numbers swelled to hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. They formed themselves into a community; they decreed laws, stern and quaint, but suited to their condition. They had neither rich nor poor; they admitted of no superiority save in their own gloomy estimate of merit; they persecuted all forms of faith different from that which they themselves held, and yet they would have died rather than suffer the religious interference of others. Far from seeking or accepting aid from the government of England, they patiently tolerated their nominal dependence only because they were virtually independent. For protection against the savage; for relief in pestilence or famine; for help to plenty and prosperity, they trusted alone to God in heaven, and to their own right hand on earth.
Such, in the main, were the ancestors of the men of New England, and, in spite of all subsequent admixture, such, in the main, were they themselves. In the other British colonies also, hampered though they were by charters, and proprietary rights, and alloyed by a Babel congregation of French Huguenots, Dutch, Swedes, Quakers, Nobles, Roundheads, Canadians, rogues, zealots, infidels, enthusiasts, and felons, a general prosperity had created individual self-reliance, and self-reliance had engendered the desire of self-government. Each colony contained a separate vitality within itself. They commenced under a variety of systems; more or less practicable, more or less liberal, and more or less dependent on the parent state. But the spirit of adventure, the disaffection, and the disappointed ambition which had so rapidly recruited their population, gave a general bias to their political feelings which no arbitrary authority could restrain, and no institutions counteract. They were less intolerant and morose, but at the same time, also, less industrious and moral than their Puritan neighbors. Like them, however, they resented all interference from England as far as they dared, and constantly strove for the acquisition or retention of popular rights.
The British colonists, left at first, in a great measure, to themselves, settled on the most fertile lands, built their towns upon the most convenient harbors, directed their industry to the most profitable commerce, raised the most valuable productions. The trading spirit of the mother country became almost a passion when transferred to the New World. Enterprise and industry were stimulated to incredible activity by brilliant success and ample reward. As wealth and the means of subsistence increased, so multiplied the population. Early marriages were universal; a numerous family was the riches of the parent. Thousands of immigrants, also, from year to year swelled the living flood that poured over the wilderness. In a century and a half the inhabitants of British America exceeded nearly twenty-fold the people of New France. The relative superiority of the first over the last was even greater in wealth and resources than in population. The merchant navy of the English colonies was already larger than that of many European nations, and known in almost every port in the world where men bought and sold. New France had none.
The French colonies were founded and fostered by the state, with the real object of extending the dominion, increasing the power, and illustrating the glory of France. The ostensible object of settlement, at least that holding the most prominent place in all Acts and Charters, was to extend the true religion, and to minister to the glory of God. From the earliest time the ecclesiastical establishments of Canada were formed on a scale suited to these professed views. Not only was ample provision made for the spiritual wants of the European population, but the labors of many earnest and devoted men were directed to the enlightenment of the heathen Indians. At first the Church and the civil government leaned upon each other for mutual support and assistance, but after a time, when neither of these powers found themselves troubled with popular opposition, their union grew less intimate; their interests differed, jealousies ensued, and finally they became antagonistic orders in the community. The mass of the people, more devout than intelligent, sympathized with the priesthood; this sympathy did not, however, interfere with unqualified submission to the government.
The Canadians were trained to implicit obedience to their rulers, spiritual and temporal: these rulers ventured not to imperil their absolute authority by educating their vassals. It is true there were a few seminaries and schools under the zealous administration of the Jesuits; but even that instruction was unattainable by the general population; those who walked in the moonlight which such reflected rays afforded, were not likely to become troublesome as sectarians or politicians. Much credit for sincerity can not be given to those who professed to promote the education of the people, when no printing-press was ever permitted in Canada during the government of France.
Canada, unprovoked by Dissent, was altogether free from the stain of religious persecution: hopelessly fettered in the chains of metropolitan power, she was also undisturbed by political agitation. But this calm was more the stillness of stagnation than the tranquillity of content. Without a press, without any semblance of popular representation, there hardly remained other alternatives than tame submission or open mutiny. By hereditary habit and superstition the Canadians were trained to the first, and by weakness and want of energy they were incapacitated for the last.
Although the original charter of New England asserted the king's supremacy in matters of religion, a full understanding existed that on this head ample latitude should be allowed; ample latitude was accordingly taken. She set up a system of faith of her own, and enforced conformity. But the same spirit that had excited the colonists to dissent from the Church of England, and to sacrifice home and friends in the cause, soon raised up among them a host of dissenters from their own stern and peculiar creed. Their clergy had sacrificed much for conscience' sake, and were generally "faithful, watchful, painful, serving their flock daily with prayers and tears," some among them, also, men of high European repute. They had often, however, the mortification of seeing their congregations crowding to hear the ravings of any knave or enthusiast who broached a new doctrine. Most of these mischievous fanatics were given the advantage of that interest and sympathy which a cruel and unnecessary persecution invariably excites. All this time freedom of individual judgment was the watch-word of the persecutors. There is no doubt that strong measures were necessary to curb the furious and profane absurdities of many of the seceders, who were the very outcasts of religion. On considering the criminal laws of the time, it would also appear that not a few of the outcasts of society, also, had found their way to New England. The code of Massachusetts contained the description of the most extraordinary collection of crimes that ever defaced a statute-book, and the various punishments allotted to each.
In one grand point the pre-eminent merit of the Puritans must be acknowledged: they strove earnestly and conscientiously for what they held to be the truth. For this they endured with unshaken constancy, and persecuted with unremitting zeal.