80 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
have been to France could he have stayed and thriven 
there. Had the Puritans been driven from England, 
we can readily see that the average character of the 
English people, as regards sincerity and earnestness, 
would have been inevitably lowered. And it is im- 
possible that France should have lost out of its popu- 
lation so large a portion as seven per cent, selected 
precisely because of its signal preéminence in earnest- 
ness and sincerity, without seriously affecting the 
average character of the people for many generations 
to come. 
From these examples we may see that the dangers 
arising from the expulsion of nonconformists are 
many and profound. The evil consequences of such 
a policy are innumerable, and they ramify in countless 
directions. Such a policy had been intermittently 
pursued in France ever since the Albigensian horrors 
of the thirteenth century. But in the worst days of 
English history no such policy has ever prevailed. 
The acts against the Lollards, and the brief agony in 
the reign of Mary Tudor, were weak and ineffectual. 
The burning of heretics began in England in r4o1, 
and ended in 1611. During those two hundred and 
ten years the total number of persons put to death was 
about four hundred. Of these executions about three 
hundred occurred in the years 1555-1557, under Mary 
Tudor, leaving a total of one hundred for the rest of 
the two centuries. The contrast to what went on in 
other countries is startling. No great body of people 
has ever been violently expelled from England, so that 
its peculiar type of character has been subtracted from 
the subsequent life of the nation. On the contrary, 
ever since the days of the Plantagenets it has been a 
