THE MAKING OF CANADA. B 



frequent divisions, coteries and disputes. One governor, Menneval, said his existence 

 among them was an enfer; another thought he used kinguage almost as bad when he called 

 them half-repiiblicans. The English rulers, after the conquest, regarded them as ungov- 

 ernable. Religion, says M. Rameau, alone can make such a people manageable, and yet 

 even the priests themselves, who had spiritual charge over them, more than once complained 

 of a character so hard to deal with. Laurent Molin, a cordelier, who served the Acadians 

 in IGYO and carried out for M. de Grrandfontaine the census of that year, a mild and patient 

 man, speaks, simply as a matter of fact, of the manner in which he was received while 

 discharging his duty, of the anger and suspicion with which his rc(|uests for information 

 were resented as an intrusion. This objection to census-takers is not conlined to the 

 Acadians. M. Molin said that, when under the influence of their better feelings, the Aca- 

 dians were kind and obliging and full of sorrow for whatever faults they might have 

 committed, M. Rameau adds that their faults, which were French faults, were such as 

 needed peculiarly the services of the priests, whose mission, he thinks, is nowhere more 

 useful than when they are engaged in counselling and advising the French people. 



"We may now take leave of the Acadians, whom it is necessary to study carefully in 

 making any analysis of the constituents of our Dominion popiilation. As the French 

 Canadians were the original settlers of Quebec and of Outario in part, so were the Aca- 

 dians of the maritime provinces. Acadia and Canada together formed la Nouvelle France. 



The Canadian Colonies. 



Let us now return for a little to the consideration of the colonies of Champlain and 

 Villeneuve. It is usual for historians to busy themselves with great events only, the 

 sayings and doings of kings and rulers and ministers of state. Such personages have, 

 undoubtedly, much influence in guiding the destinies of a nation, but it is the character 

 and conduct of the people themselves, after all, that build it up or pull it down. 



"Whether by a policy of timely conciliation Champlain might have avoided all the 

 devastations and bloodshed and other evil consequences of long-continued Indian wars, it 

 boots not to inquire. He probably knew his own business as well as most of those who 

 have undertaken, after the event, to advise him. If he made the Iroquois inveterately 

 hostile by joining the Hurons in attacking them so soon after his organization of the colony, 

 he certainly produced so wholesome a terror in their minds as made his peaceful explora- 

 tions possible and protected the colony, in its very infancy, from total destruction. The 

 rivalry for a while between the Dutch, and during the whole of the old régime, between the 

 English and the French colonists, necessarily implied on both sides the use of Indian allies. 

 That not merely somebody, but almost everybody, blundered in the matter of Indian policy 

 at the outset of colonization on this continent is only too true and much to be deplored. 

 Successes of the Jesuit and other missions prove that some of the native tribes were not 

 unsusceptible of being won over by kindly treatment. Justice, gentleness and firmness, 

 with a constant eSbrt to allay their inter-tribal ferocity, might have been as fruitful of good 

 as the opposite course was of evil. And yet, but for the hostility of the Indians to civili- 

 zation, Christianity and each other, Canada would be deprived of some of the most glorious 

 instances of heroic courage and heroic meekness which the annals of war and martyrdom 

 can furnish. A people that could produce such characters as those of Brebœuf and Lalle- 



