[BOCEiNOTJ CANADA DUEING THE VICTORIAN ERA 7 



govern themselves in accordance with the free instincts of Englishmen, 

 was in decided contrast with the subserviency of the French colonists, 

 kept constantly in trammels by the King and his ministers who were 

 always opposed to the merest semblance of local self-government. Under 

 the influence of the freedom they enjoyed, and of the energy and enter- 

 prise pecuHar to a commercial and maritime people, the English colonists, 

 who inhabited a relatively narrow strip of territory from Maine to 

 Carolina, soon outnumbered the population of the struggling community 

 on the banks of the St. Lawrence. 



In the history of the French Canadian there is much to interest us. 

 His patient endurance, his fidelity to his country, his adventurous life in 

 the wilderness of the "West affords scenes for poetry, history, and 

 romance. The struggles of Champlain, the adventures of La Salle in 

 the valley of the Mississippi, the exploits of the coureurs de hois and 

 gentlemen-adventurers on the rivers and among the forests, the efforts of 

 Frontenac and other French governors to found a New France on the 

 continent, have already found in Francis Parkman an eloquent and 

 faithful historian. France dreamed once of founding a mighty empire 

 which should stretch from the Island of Cape Breton or He Royale 

 through the valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Ohio, and the Mississippi to 

 the Gulf of Mexico and of eventually having the supremacy in North 

 America ; but the genius of Pitt relieved the English colonists of the 

 fears they entertained with reason when they saw a cordon of forts 

 stretching from Louisbourg to the heights of Quebec, Lake Champlain, 

 Niagara and the forks of the Ohio. With the fall of Quebec and Mon- 

 treal in 1759-60, France left the New World to England, and of all her 

 former possessions she now retains only some insignificant islands off' the 

 southern coast of Newfoundland, where her fishermen continue to prose- 

 cute the fisheries as they did centuries ago before a European had 

 founded a settlement in Canada. The conflict with France had done 

 much to restrain the spirit of self-assertion among the English colonists, 

 and to keep them dependent upon England ; but at the same time it had 

 shown them their power and taught them to have much more confidence 

 in their own resources as a people. The capture of the formidable fort- 

 ress of Louisboui'g, one of the triumphs of Vauban's engineering skill, 

 by the New England volunteers under Pepperrell and the fleet under 

 Warren, was the principal incident in their history, which showed the 

 people their strength and nerved them to enter into what must have 

 seemed to many a hopeless struggle with England. The fall of Quebec 

 may be considered the first step in the direction of the independence of 

 the old English colonists. 



