WHY FRANCE FAILED 11 66 build a native civilization. (2) At times they struck terrible blows at New France itself. (3) They shielded the English colonies, during their weakness, from French attack. The French in Canada could strike at the English only by way of the route followed later by Burgoyne. Everywhere else the wilderness between Canada and the English settlements was impassable except by prowling bands; and this one route was guarded by the Iroquois. (4) They changed the whole course of French exploration, turning it to the north. The home of the confederacy in western New York was the military key to the eastern half of the continent," as Winfield Scott called it, and Ulysses S. Grant afterward. It commanded the headwaters of the Delaware, Susquehanna, and Mohawk-Hudson system, and the portage at Niagara from Erie to Ontario, as well as part of the headwaters of the Ohio. The French leaders had keen eyes for military geography and would certainly have seized this position at any cost, if they had been able to learn its character. They would then have fortified the Ohio by a chain of posts, as they did their other waterways; and this would have buttressed their position on the Mississippi and the Lakes so as to defy attack. diverted But the French did not suspect the importance of the Ohio valley until too late. Montreal was founded in 1611; but, instead of reaching the interior from there French by the upper St. Lawrence and Lake Erie, French colonization traders turned up the Ottawa, so as to avoid from the the Iroquois, and reached Lake Huron by port- Ohio valley age from Nipissing. Lake Erie was the last, instead of the first, of the Lakes to be explored. It was practically unused until after 1700, and the country to the south remained unknown even longer. Navigation was by fleets of canoes, which had to land frequently. Thus, because of the Iroquois, the French could not follow the southern shore, or use the portage at Niagara. When they awakened to the value of the Ohio valley, English traders had begun to push into it, with cheaper goods; and the opportunity for France. was already lost. England's industrial superiority over France, let us note in passing, was one factor in winning America. After 1725 that superiority was marked. Inherent weaknesses in French colonization, however, were the fundamental cause of French failure. Inherent causes of French failure: lack of homes 1. New France was not a country of homes or of agriculture. Except for a few leaders and the missionaries, the settlers were either unprogressive peasants or reckless adventurers. For the most part they did not bring families, and they remained unmarried or chose Indian wives. Agriculture was the only basis for a permanent colony; but these colonists did not take to any regular labor. Instead, they turned to trapping and the fur trade, and tended to adopt Indian habits. The French government in Europe sought in vain to remedy this by sending over cargoes of "king's girls," and by offering bonuses for early marriages and large families. But even with this fostering, French colonization did not produce numbers. In 1754, when the final struggle for the American continent began, France had three times as many people as England had, but in America she had only a twentieth as many colonists. 2. Paternalism smothered private enterprise. In all industries, New France was taught to depend upon the aid Paternalism and direction of a government three thousand in industry miles away. Aid was constantly asked from the king. "Send us money to build storehouses," ran the begging letters of Canadian officials; "Send us a teacher to make sailors"; "We want a surgeon "; and so, at various times, requests for brickmakers, ironworkers, pilots, and other skilled workers. Such requests were usually granted; but New France did not learn to walk alone. The rulers did much; but the people did little. 3. Political life was lacking. In the seventeenth century France itself was a centralized despotism; and in New Lack of France (to use the phrase of Tocqueville) "this political life deformity was seen magnified as through a microscope." No public meetings were permitted without a special license; and such meetings, when held, could do nothing WHY FRANCE FAILED 13 worth while. All sorts of matters, even the regulation of inns and of pew rent, the order in which people should sit in church, the keeping of dogs and of cattle, the pay of chimney sweeps, were settled by ordinances of the governors at Quebec, who were sent over by the French king. "It is of the greatest importance," wrote one official, “ that the people should not be at liberty to speak their minds." And the people had no minds to speak. In 1672, Frontenac, the greatest governor of New France, tried to introduce the elements of self-government. He provided a system of "estates to advise with him, a gathering 66 of clergy, nobles, and commons (citizens and merchants); and he ordered that Quebec should have a sort of town meeting twice a year to elect aldermen and to discuss public business. But the home government sternly disapproved all this, directing Frontenac to remember that it was proper that each should speak for himself, and no one for the whole." The plan fell to pieces: the people cared so little for it that they made no effort to save it. When such a plan was introduced in Virginia (which also during its first years had lacked such privileges) we shall see that no mere paper decree could take it away. The easiest way for France to have corrected the evils in her colonization would have been to let the Huguenots come to America. They were the most skillful Exclusion artisans and agriculturists in France and they of the had shown some knack for self-government. Huguenots Moreover, they were anxious to come, and to bring their families. But the government, which lavished money in sending out undesirable emigrants, refused to allow these heretics to establish a state in America. After all, in large part, it was religious bigotry that cost France her chance for empire. CHAPTER II VIRGINIA AND MARYLAND, TO 1660 I. THE MOTIVES OF EARLY ENGLISH COLONIZATION Virginia was founded by a great liberal movement aiming at the spread of English freedom and of English empire. - HENRY ADAMS. It is to the self-government of England, and to no lesser 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 as an inheritance. Fnglish patriotism -JOHN FISKE. THE first impulse to English colonization came from English patriotism. When Elizabeth's reign was half completed, little England entered upon a daring colonization rivalry with the overshadowing might of Spain. and English Out of that rivalry, English America was born. Reckless and picturesque freebooters, like Drake and Hawkins, sought profit and honor for themselves, and injury to the foe, by raiding rich provinces of Spanish America. More far-sighted statesmen, like Raleigh, saw that English colonies in America would be “a great bridle to the Indies of the Kinge of Spaine," and began to try put a byt in the anchent enymys mouth." Wrote Richard Hakluyt (Western Planting, 1584 A.D.): “If you touch him [Spain] in the Indies, you touch him in the apple of his eye. For, take away his treasure which he has almost wholly out of his West Indies - his olde bandes of souldiers will soon be dissolved, his pride abated, and his tyranie utterly suppressed." so to 66 But to found a colony in those days was harder than we can well comprehend. The mere outlay of money was enormous for that time. Ships had little storage room; so 15 MOTIVES OF THE ENGLISH PROMOTERS freights were high, and the best accommodations were poorer than modern steerage. To carry a man from England to America cost from £10 to £12, or about The dif$300 in our values (since money in 1600 was worth ficulties five times as much as now). To provide his outfit and to support him until he could raise a crop, cost as much more. QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE, on board the Golden Hind on his return from raiding Spanish America in his voyage around the globe (1581). From a contemporary drawing by Sir John Gilbert. Thus to establish a family in America took some thousands of dollars. Moreover, there were no ships ready for the business, and no supplies. The directors of the early colonizing movements met all sorts of costly delays and vexations. They had to buy ships, or build them; and, in Channing's apt phrase, they had to buy food for the voyages "on the hoof or in the shock," and clothing "on the sheep's back." They had also to provide government, medicines, fortifications, military supplies, and food to meet a possible crop |