ntrymen in the Old World; the fertile soil repaid
his labor with competence; independence fostered self-reliance, and the
unchecked range of forest and prairie inspired him with thoughts of
freedom. But all these elevating tendencies were fatally counteracted by
the blighting influence of feudal organization. Restrictions,
humiliating as well as injurious, pressed upon the person and property
of the Canadian. Every avenue to wealth and influence was closed to him
and thrown open to the children of Old France. He saw whole tracts of
the magnificent country lavished upon the favorites and military
followers of the court, and, through corrupt or capricious influences,
the privilege of exclusive trade granted for the aggrandizement of
strangers at his expense.

France founded a state in Canada. She established a feudal and
ecclesiastical frame-work for the young nation, and into that
Procrustean bed the growth of population and the proportions of society
were forced. The state fixed governments at Montreal, Three Rivers, and
Quebec; there towns arose. She divided the rich banks of the St.
Lawrence and of the Richelieu into seigneuries; there population spread.
She placed posts on the lakes and rivers of the Far West; there the
fur-traders congregated. She divided the land into dioceses and
parishes, and appointed bishops and curates; a portion of all produce of
the soil was exacted for their support. She sent out the people at her
own cost, and acknowledged no shadow of popular rights. She organized
the inhabitants by an unsparing conscription, and placed over them
officers either from the Old Country or from the favored class of
seigneurs. She grasped a monopoly of every valuable production of the
country, and yet forced upon it her own manufactures to the exclusion of
all others. She squandered her resources and treasures on the colony,
but violated all principles of justice in a vain endeavor to make that
colony a source of wealth. She sent out the ablest and best of her
officers to govern on the falsest and worst of systems. Her energy
absorbed all individual energy; her perpetual and minute interference
aspired to shape and direct all will and motive of her subjects. The
state was every thing, the people nothing. Finally, when the power of
the state was broken by a foreign foe, there remained no power of the
people to supply its place. On the day that the French armies ceased to
resist, Canada was a peaceful province o