2IO NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Bible was in progress and nearly completed. The deep religions 

 feeling of the Puritan reaction against both Roman and royal epis- 

 copacy that was to cost Charles the First his life and James the 

 Second his throne had already become a controlling motive among 

 a great multitude of the EngHsh people. 



From these two countries, each possessed of great powers, each 

 endowed with noble qualities, proceeded the colonists who were to 

 dispute for the possession of America. The French movement was 

 in the main governmental, aristocratic, proceeding from state and 

 church, designed to extend and increase the power, dominion, and 

 glory of the king, to convert the Indians to the true faith, and to 

 extend over them and over all the lands through which they roamed, 

 and over all who should come after them and take their place, the 

 same iron rule of conformity against which the Huguenots of 

 France were vainly contending. The English movement was in 

 the main popular, proceeding from the people of England who 

 wisibed to escape either church or state at home and to find freedom 

 in a new world for the practice of their religion or the pursuit of 

 their for times according to their own ideas. Some of the English 

 colonies braved the hardships of exile rather than conform against 

 their consciences to^ requirements of practice and doctrine which 

 the English church imposed. Some sought for fortune In the New 

 World because the state had so distributed the property and so 

 closed the avenues for advancement in England that they must 

 needs seek opportunities elsewhere if at all. 



For centuries the struggle between civil and religious absolutism 

 on the one hand and individual liberty on the other were waged 

 alike in France and England. The attempt to colonize America 

 came from one side of the controversy in France and from the 

 other side of the same controversy in England. The virtues of the 

 two systems were to be tried out and the Irrepressible conflict be- 

 tween them was to be continued in the wilderness. 



For capable and efficient leadership, for farslghted and compre- 

 hensive plans, for clear understanding of existing conditions and 

 prevision as to the future, for conspicuous examples of heroic 

 achievement and self-devotion, the palm must be awarded to the 

 French over their English competitors. There are few chapters 

 in history so full of romantic interest, so compelling in their de- 

 mands for sympathy and admiration, as the record of the century 

 and a half that began with the wooden fortress of Champlain under 

 the bluff at Quebec and ended with the fall of Montcalm on the 

 Heights of Abraham. 



