Loe raamatut: «America. A history», lehekülg 23

CHAPTER VI
COLONIZATION BY FRANCE AND BY ENGLAND

A century and a half had elapsed since Champlain laid the foundations of French empire among the forests of the St. Lawrence valley. During those years the nations of Western Europe were possessed by an eager desire to extend their authority over the territories which recent discovery had opened. On the shores of the Northern Atlantic there were a New France, a New Scotland, a New England, a New Netherlands, a New Sweden. Southwards stretched the vast domain for whose future the occupation by Spain had already prepared deadly and enduring blight. France and England contended for possession of the great Indian peninsula. Holland and Portugal, with a vigour which their later years do not exhibit, founded settlements alike in Eastern and in Western seas, gaining thus expanded trade and vast increase of wealth.

France had shared the prevailing impulse, and put forth her strength to establish in Canada a dominion worthy to bear her name. The wise minister Colbert perceived the greatness of the opportunity, and spared neither labour nor outlay to foster the growth of colonies which would secure to France a firm hold of this magnificent territory. Successive Kings lent aid in every form. Well-chosen Governors brought to the colony every advantage which honest and able guidance could afford. Soldiers were furnished for defence; food was supplied in seasons of scarcity. A fertile soil and trading opportunities which were not surpassed in any part of the continent, offered inducements fitted to attract crowds of the enterprising and the needy. But under every encouragement New France remained feeble and unprogressive. When she passed under British rule, her population was scarcely over sixty thousand, and had been for several years actually diminishing. Quebec, her chief city, had barely seven thousand inhabitants; Montreal had only four thousand. The rest of the people cultivated, thriftlessly, patches of land along the shores of the great river and its affluents; or found, like the savages around them, a rude and precarious subsistence by the chase. The revenue of the colony was no more than £14,000 – a sum insufficient to meet the expenditure. Its exports were only £115,000.

While France was striving thus vainly to plant in Canada colonies which should bear her name and reinforce her greatness, some Englishmen who were dissatisfied with the conditions of their life at home, began to settle a few hundred miles away on the shores of the same great continent. They had no encouragement from Kings or statesmen; the only boon they gained, and even that with difficulty, was permission to be gone. When famine came upon them, they suffered its pains without relief; their own brave hearts and strong arms were their sufficient defence. But their rise to strength and greatness was rapid. Within a period of ten years twenty thousand Englishmen had found homes in the American settlements. Before the seventeenth century closed, Virginia alone contained a population larger than that of all Canada. When the final struggle opened, the thirteen English colonies contained a population of between two and three million to contrast with the poor sixty thousand Frenchmen who were their neighbours on the north. The greatness of the colonies can be best measured by a comparison with the mother country. England was then a country of less than six million; Scotland of one million; Ireland of two million.

The explanation of this vast difference of result between the efforts of the English and those of the French to colonize the American continent is to be found mainly in the widely different quality of the two nations. England, in the words of Adam Smith, “bred and formed men capable of achieving such great actions and laying the foundation of so great an empire.” France bred no such men; or if she did so, they remained at home unconcerned with the founding of empires abroad. The Englishman who took up the work of colonizing, came of his own free choice to make for himself a home; he brought with him a free and bold spirit; a purpose and capacity to direct his own public affairs. The Frenchman came reluctantly, thrust forth from the home he preferred, and to which he hoped to return. He came, submissive to the tyranny which he had not learned to hate. He was part of the following of a great lord, to whom he owed absolute obedience. He did not care to till the ground: he would hunt or traffic with the Indians in furs till the happy day when he was permitted to go back to France. Great empires are not founded with materials such as these.

But France was unfortunate in her system no less than in her men. Feudalism was still in its unbroken strength. The soil of France was still parcelled out among great lords, who rendered military service to the King; and was still cultivated by peasants, who rendered military service to the great lord. Feudalism was now carried into the Canadian wilderness. Vast tracts of land were bestowed upon persons of influence, who undertook to provide settlers. The seigneur established his own abode in a strong, defensible position, and settled his peasantry around him. They paid a small rent and were bound to follow him to such wars as he thought good to wage, whether against the Indians or the English. He reserved for his own benefit, or sold to any who would purchase, the right to fish and to trade in furs; he ground the corn of his tenantry at rates which he himself fixed. He administered justice and punished all crimes excepting treason and murder. When the feudal system was about to enter on its period of decay in Europe, France began to lay upon that unstable basis the foundation of her colonial empire.

The infant commerce of the colony was strangled by monopolies. Great trading companies purchased at court, or favourites obtained gratuitously, exclusive right to buy furs from the Indians and to import all foreign goods used in the colonies – fixing at their own discretion the prices which they were to pay and to receive. Occasionally in a hard season they bought up the crops and sold them at famine prices. The violation of these monopolies by unlicensed persons was punishable by death. The colonists had no thought of self-government; they were a light-hearted, submissive race, who were contented with what the King was pleased to send them. Their officials plundered them, and with base avarice wasted their scanty stores. The people had no power for their own protection, and their cry of suffering was slow to gain from the distant King that justice which they were not able to enforce.

The priest came with his people to guard their orthodoxy in this new land – to preserve that profound ignorance in which lay the roots of their devotion. Government discouraged the printing-press; scarcely any of the peasantry could so much as read. At a time when Connecticut expended one-fourth of its revenues upon the common school, the Canadian peasant was wholly uninstructed. In Quebec there had been, almost from the days of Champlain, a college for the training of priests. There and at Montreal were Jesuit seminaries, in which children of the well-to-do classes received a little instruction. A feeble attempt had been made to educate the children of the Indians; but for the children of the ordinary working Frenchmen settled in Canada no provision whatever had been made.

The influences which surrounded the infancy of the English colonies were eminently favourable to robust growth. Coming of their own free choice, the colonists brought with them none of the injurious restraints which in the Old World still impeded human progress. The burdensome observances of feudalism were not admitted within the new empire. Every colonist was a landowner. In some States the settlers divided among themselves the lands which they found unoccupied, waiting no consent of King or of noble. In others, they received, for prices which were almost nominal, grants of land from persons – as William Penn, who had received large territorial rights from the sovereign. In all cases, whether by purchase or by appropriation, they became the independent owners of the lands which they tilled. At the beginning, they were too insignificant to be regarded by the Government at home: favoured by this beneficent neglect, they were allowed to conduct in peace their own public affairs. As their importance increased, the Crown asserted its right of control; but their exercise of the privilege of self-government was scarcely ever interfered with. The men who founded the New England States carried with them into the wilderness a deep conviction that universal education was indispensable to the success of their enterprise. While the French Canadian, despising agriculture, roamed the forest in pursuit of game, ignorant himself, and the father of ignorant children, the thoughtful New England farmer was helping with all his might to build up a system of common schools by which every child born on that free soil should be effectively taught. Thus widely dissimilar were the methods according to which France and England sought to colonize the lately-discovered continent. An equally wide dissimilarity of result was inevitable.

It was in the closing years of the great experiment that France devised the bold conception of establishing a line of military settlements on the Mississippi as well as on the St. Lawrence,¹⁶ and thus confining the English between the Alleghany Mountains and the sea. In view of the extreme inferiority of her strength, the project seems extravagant. It was utterly impossible to restrain, by any forces which France could command, the expansive energy of the English colonies. There were sixty thousand Frenchmen proposing to imprison on the sea-coast two million Englishmen. But the constitution of the French settlements, while it enfeebled them and unfitted them to cope with their rivals in peaceful growth, made them formidable beyond their real strength for purposes of aggression. Canada was a military settlement; every Canadian was a soldier, bound to follow to the field his feudal lord. The English colonists were peaceful farmers or traders; they were widely scattered, and living as they did under many independent governments, their combination for any common warlike purpose was almost impossible. That they should ultimately overthrow the dominion of their rivals was inevitable; but if the French King had been able to reinforce more liberally the arms of his Canadian subjects, the contest must have been prolonged and bloody. Happily, his resources were taxed to the utmost by the complications which surrounded him at home. The question as to which race should be supreme on the American continent was helped to a speedy solution on the battle-fields of the Seven Years’ War.

CHAPTER VII
AFTER THE CONQUEST

The condition of the Canadian people at the time of the conquest by the English was exceedingly miserable. Every man was in the ranks, and the fields on which their maintenance depended lay untilled. The lucrative fur trade had ceased, for the Indian hunter and the French trader were fighting against the English. The scanty revenues of the colony no longer yielded support to the officers of the Government, who plundered the wretched people without restraint of pity or of shame. Famine prevailed, and found many victims among the women and children, who were now the occupants of the neglected clearings along the river-banks.

At length the conquest was accomplished, and those sad years of bloodshed closed. The French soldiers, the rapacious officials, were sent home to France, where some of the worst offenders, it is gratifying to know, found their way quickly to the Bastile. The colonists laid down their arms, and returned gladly to their long-disused industries. At first the simple people feared the severities of the new authority into whose power they had fallen. Some of them went home to France; but these were chiefly the colonial aristocracy, whose presence had always been a misfortune. The apprehensions of the settlers were soon allayed. They had been accustomed to arbitrary and cruel government. The rack was in regular use. Accused persons were habitually subjected to torture. Trials were conducted in secret, and without opportunity of defence. The personal liberty of every man depended upon the pleasure of his superiors. English rule brought at once the termination of these wrongs, and bestowed upon the submissive Canadians the unexpected blessings of peace, security of person and property, and a pure administration of justice. It had been feared that the great mass of the population would leave the province and return to France. But the leniency of the Government, and the open-handed kindness with which the urgent necessities of the poor were relieved, averted any such calamity; and the Frenchmen accepted, without repining, the new sovereignty which the sword had imposed upon them.

The English Government naturally desired to foster the settlement of an English population in Canada. It was not, at first, without hesitation that Britain made up her mind to retain the territory for whose possession she had fought so stoutly. The opinion was widely entertained, especially among the trading class, that united North America would quickly become too powerful to continue in dependence on the mother country; that the subjection of our existing colonies would be guaranteed by the wholesome presence of a rival and hostile power on their northern frontier. But wiser views prevailed, and Britain resolved to keep the splendid prize which she had won. Every effort was made to introduce a British element which should envelop and ultimately absorb the unprogressive French. Large inducements were offered to traders, and to the fighting men whose services were no longer required. Many of these accepted the lands which were offered to them, and made their homes in Canada. The novelty of the acquisition, and the interest which attached to the conquest, brought a considerable number of settlers from the old country. The years immediately succeeding the conquest were years of more rapid growth than Canada had experienced under French rule. In twelve years the population had increased to one hundred thousand. The clearings along the shores of the St. Lawrence increased in number and in area, and stretched backward from the river into the forest. The influx of merchants caused a notable increase of the towns. Thus far no printing-press had been permitted on Canadian soil; for despotism here, as well as elsewhere, demanded popular ignorance as a condition of its existence. But scarcely had the French officials departed when two enterprising men of Philadelphia arrived in Quebec with a printing-press, and began the publication of a newspaper.

The war in Europe continued for upwards of three years after the expulsion of the French from Canada. Wearied at length with the brutal strife, the exhausted nations desired peace. France had suffered enormous territorial losses. The disasters which had fallen on Spain humbled her haughty spirit, and hastened the decay which was already in progress. Austria and Prussia desired rest from a wasteful contest, in the advantages of which they scarcely participated. The enormous gains which Britain had secured satisfied for the time the ambition of her people, and she was contented now that the sword should be sheathed. 1763 A.D. Peace was concluded. Britain added to her dominions several islands of the West Indies, the Floridas, Louisiana to the Mississippi, Canada, and the islands in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, as well as Senegal. “Never,” said the lately-crowned George III., “did England, nor, I believe, any other power in Europe, sign such a peace.”

While the war still lasted, a military Government ruled Canada, and justice was administered by councils of officers. When peace was restored, and the transference of Canada was formally complete, arrangements of a more permanent character became necessary. The situation was full of difficulty. The colony was substantially French and Roman Catholic; only a small minority of its people were English and Protestant. These, however, looked with the pride of conquerors upon the old settlers, and claimed that the institutions of the colony should be framed wholly on English models. Wise statesmanship in this eventful hour would have averted enfeebling divisions, wasteful strifes, discontents swelling at length into rebellion. But wise statesmanship was denied to Canada. October, 1763 A.D. There came a Proclamation in the King’s name, promising to the people self-government such as the Americans enjoyed, so soon as the circumstances of the colony permitted; briefly intimating that for the present the laws of England were the laws of Canada. It was a revolution scarcely surpassed in its violence and injustice; and in its results it delayed for generations the progress of the colony. At one stroke the laws which had been in force for a century and a half were swept away. A new code of laws, entirely new methods of judicial procedure, of which the people knew nothing, were now administered in a language which scarcely any one understood. In their haste the Government did not pause to consider that the laws which they had thus suddenly imposed upon this Roman Catholic colony included severe penal statutes against Catholics. It was desired that the laws, the language and the customs of England should displace those of France, and that the French settlers should become absorbed in the mass of anticipated English immigration. In course of years, by wise and conciliatory treatment, these results would have been gained; but the unredeemed injustice of this assault upon the rights of the colonists postponed for generations the hope of the desirable reconciliation. The French took up at once the position of an oppressed people – holding themselves studiously separate from their oppressors, cherishing feelings of jealousy and antagonism. To uphold French customs, to reject the English tongue, and if possible the English law – these were now the evidences of true patriotism. Henceforth, and for many long and unquiet years, there were two distinct and hostile nations dwelling side by side in the valley of the St. Lawrence.

It was one of the unhappy results of these ill-considered arrangements that no Frenchman could fill any public office, in consequence of his ignorance of the language in which public business was conducted. All such offices were therefore occupied by Englishmen. For the most part the appointments were made in London, with small regard to the fitness of the persons who received them. Men came out to administer the affairs of Canada in absolute ignorance of the country, of the habits of the people, even of the language which they spoke. These officials received no salaries, but were suffered to indemnify themselves by fees, which they exacted rapaciously and ruthlessly. They treated the old inhabitants with harshness and irritating contempt. 1766 A.D. There were even darker charges than these preferred against them, warranting the assertion of the good General Murray, who was then Governor, that “they were the most immoral collection of men he ever knew.” The conduct of these officials aggravated the alienation of the French settlers, and helped to prepare the unquiet future through which the colony was to pass.

But the French Canadians were a submissive people, and although they perceived that they were wronged, they did not on that account turn aside from the path of peaceful industry which opened before them. Trade was prosperous, and steadily increasing; many persons who had left the colony returned to it; agriculture extended; gradually the deep wounds which years of war had inflicted were healed. The people remained long profoundly ignorant. When Volney, the French traveller, visited them towards the close of the century, he found that they knew almost nothing of figures, and were incapable of the simplest calculation. They indicated short distances by telling how many pipes a man could smoke while he walked; a longer distance was that which a man could or could not traverse between sunrise and sunset. But ignorance did not prevent that patient, incessant toil, which year by year added to their possessions and improved their condition.

In course of time a desire for representative institutions sprang up among the English settlers. During all these years they had lived under the despotic sway of a Governor and Council appointed by the Crown. They alone among Englishmen were without part in their own government, and they wished the odious distinction to cease. 1773 A.D. They petitioned for the House of Assembly which the King had promised them ten years before, and for the permanent establishment of English law among them. The French were not sufficiently instructed to care for representative government, but they earnestly desired the restoration of the laws which had been so hastily abolished after the conquest.

It was during a season of anxiety and apprehension that these conflicting opinions were pressed upon the attention of the British Government. The differences which had arisen between England and her American colonies were evidently now incapable of settlement otherwise than by the sword. The men of Boston had already thrown into their harbour the cargoes of taxed tea which England sought to force upon them. All over New England men were hastening to obtain muskets and to accomplish themselves in military drill. A strong English force, which was being steadily increased, held Boston, and waited for the expected strife. In view of impending war, it was the desire of the English Government to satisfy Canada, and gain such support as she was able to afford. The great mass of the Canadians were Frenchmen and Roman Catholics.¹⁷ It was not doubted that in course of years men who were English and Protestant would form the population of Canada. But the danger was present and urgent, and it must be met by conciliating the men who now formed that population. 1774 A.D. An Act was passed by which the Proclamation of 1763 was repealed. The Roman Catholic religion was set free from legal disability, and reinstated in its right to exact tithes and other dues from all persons who owned its sway. French civil law was reimposed, but the barbarous criminal code of England was set up in preference to the milder system of France. The House of Assembly was still denied, and the province – extended now to the Ohio and the Mississippi – was to be ruled by a Governor and Council appointed by the Crown, one-third of the Council being composed of French Canadians. This was the Quebec Act, under which Canada was governed for the next seventeen years. It inflicted many evils upon the colony, but it served well the immediate purpose for which it was intended. It satisfied the old settlers, and held them firmly to the side of England during the years of war which England vainly waged against her alienated children.

Thus far the affairs of the colonies had been administered by the Board of Trade. The administration had been negligent; for the greatness of the colonies was recent, and the importance of the interests involved was not yet fully appreciated. But the variance which was to cost England the greatest of her colonial possessions had already revealed itself. England was impressively reminded of the imperfections of her management, and of the urgent need of a better system. She set up a new but not a better system. 1774 A.D. A Colonial department of Government was created; a Colonial Secretary was appointed; an official regulation of colonial interests began, based upon imperfect knowledge – formal, restrictive, often unreasonable and irritating. For many years, until the growing strength of the colonies enabled them first to modify and then to overthrow it, this strict official government continued to discourage and impede settlements whose prime necessity was wide freedom of action.