78 ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



American empire to a handful of forces under the gallant Mont- 

 calm, while England sent 9,000 men in ships to Quebec, and the 

 sturdy Americans, amidst great sacrifices, pushed their way 

 through the forest to the St Lawrence to join in the attack. 

 Upon the plains of Abraham, whose heights were scaled by 

 superhuman daring, was fought the battle that decided the fate 

 of Canada, and the dying Wolfe wrung from the hand of the 

 dying Montcalm the keys of the great West and the dominion 

 of a continent. 



The destiny of America was involved in the issue of that 

 death struggle between the paternalism of France and the forces 

 of self-government. " The town meeting pitted against bureau- 

 crac}'," says Fiske, " was like a titan overthrowing a cripple. 

 . . . This ruin of the French scheme of colonial empire was 

 due to no accidental circumstance, but was involved in the very 

 nature of the French political system. Obviously it is impos- 

 sible for a people to plant beyond sea a colony which shall be 

 self-supporting unless it has retained intact the power of self- 

 government at home. It is to the self-government of England, 

 and to no less cause, that we are to look for the secret of that 

 boundless vitality which has given to men of English speech the 

 uttermost parts of the earth for an inheritance." 



But it was not political causes alone that effected the anni- 

 hilation of French influence on this continent. The French, 

 the Dutch, and the Spaniards all surpassed the English in the 

 adventurous spirit that leads to wide exploration and brilliant 

 discovery; but the English had come with their wives and chil- 

 dren, and they had come to stay. They loved agriculture and 

 industry and knew the meaning of that potential word " home. 1 ' 

 They were in the best sense a sedentary people, forming attach- 

 ments to the soil, and by honest labor with their own hands 

 making it respond to their necessities. With plenty of food and 

 boundless acres awaiting the culture of the toiler, the conditions 

 of a great population were fulfilled. They religiously obeyed the 

 scriptural injunction to '* multiply, and replenish the earth," 

 and brought up their numerous children to lead frugal and 

 well-regulated lives, earning their bread in the sweat of their 

 faces. A little later Franklin estimated that the population of 

 the colonies doubled every twenty-five years without counting 

 the immigrants. But it was not so with the French or the Span- 

 ish, who left behind them in the wilderness their half-breed off- 

 spring to be nurtured by Indian mothers and encounter the 



