448 THE END. 



traders, settlers, and garrisons, and cut up the virgin 

 wilderness into fiefs, while as yet the colonies of 

 England were but a weak and broken line along 

 the shore of the Atlantic ; and when at last the 

 great conflict came, England and Liberty would 

 have been confronted, not by a depleted antagonist, 

 still feeble from the exhaustion of a starved and 

 persecuted infancy, but by an athletic champion of 

 the principles of Richelieu and of Loyola. 



Liberty may thank the Iroquois, that, by their 

 insensate fury, the plans of her adversary were 

 brought to nought, and a peril and a woe averted 

 from her future. They ruined the trade which was 

 the life-blood of New France ; they stopped the 

 current of her arteries, and made all her early years 

 a misery and a terror. Not that they changed her 

 destinies. The contest on this continent between 

 Liberty and Absolutism was never doubtful ; but 

 the triumph of the one would have been dearly 

 bought, and the downfall of the other incomplete. 

 Populations formed in the ideas and habits of a 

 feudal monarchy, and controlled by a hierarchy pro- 

 foundly hostile to freedom of thought, would have 

 remained a hindrance and a stumbling-block in the 

 way of that majestic experiment of which America 

 is the field. 



The Jesuits saw their hopes struck down ; and 

 their faith, though not shaken, was sorely tried. 

 The Providence of God seemed in their eyes dark 

 and inexplicable ; but, from the stand-point of Lib- 

 erty, that Providence is clear as the sun at noon. 

 Meanwhile let those who have prevailed yield due 



