118 THE FEENCH BLOOD IN AMEEICA 



France 

 Loses North 

 America as a 

 Result 



Shutting Out 

 Protestants 



IV 



To the Jesuits, those fomenters of wars and mischief in 

 every country where they have been permitted to live, 

 France owes it that North America was lost to her. The 

 first thing the Jesuits aimed at was to get control of 

 Acadia and Canada, and banish every heretic from the 

 new world, then prevent any more from coming. In that 

 simple way New France was to be kept Eoman Catholic, 

 and free from religious troubles such as had long dis- 

 tracted France and Germany and other nations. By the 

 formation of a new company, the Company of New 

 France, in which no Huguenot had place, and by the 

 taking away of its charter from the former company, at 

 the head of which was a Huguenot, the transformation 

 was accomplished after a few years. Complaints of the 

 singing of the Huguenots on shipboard brought orders 

 prohibiting the singing of hymns, which was peculiarly 

 distasteful to the Jesuits, of whom it was said, ' ' They do 

 not sing ; birds of prey never do." Champlain, as gov- 

 ernor of Quebec, tried to enforce the orders against sing- 

 ing and public saying of prayers, but says: ''At last it 

 was agreed that they might meet to pray, but should not 

 sing psalms. A bad bargain, yet it was the best we 

 could do." 



It was not long, however, before the Jesuits had grown 

 strong enough to stop even the arrival of the singing 

 Protestants. Under the policy of Cardinal Eichelieu, 

 who was as zealous a Eoman Catholic as he was energetic 

 and unscrupulous a minister of Louis XIII, every emi- 

 grant who went out under the Company of New France, 

 must first profess the Eoman Catholic faith. This was in 

 the line of Eichelieu' s plan to crush out Protestantism in 

 France also, and was regarded as a master stroke of 

 policy. What it accomplished was to hand over North 

 America to England, and to pave the way in Franco for 

 the awful days of Eed Eevolution and a descending scale 

 of power and influence among the world powers. 



