e other side of the sea.
Subsisting upon the strength of the great monarchy, they must needs
share its fortunes, evil as well as good. When, after the reverses of
France in the Seven Years' War, it became necessary to accept hard terms
of peace, the superb framework of empire in the West fell to the
disposal of the victors. "America," said Pitt, "was conquered in
Germany."

2. The business basis of the French colonies, being that of trade with
the Indians rather than a self-supporting agriculture, favored the swift
expansion of these colonies and their wide influence among the Indians.
Scattered companies of fur-traders would be found here and there,
wherever were favorable points for traffic, penetrating deeply into the
wilderness and establishing friendly business relations with the
savages. It has been observed that the Romanic races show an alacrity
for intermarriage with barbarous tribes that is not to be found in the
Teutonic. The result of such relations is ordinarily less the elevating
of the lower race than the dragging down of the higher; but it tends for
the time to give great advantage in maintaining a powerful political
influence over the barbarians. Thus it was that the French, few in
number, covered almost the breadth of the continent with their
formidable alliances; and these alliances were the offensive and
defensive armor in which they trusted, but they were also their peril.
Close alliance with one savage clan involved war with its enemies. It
was an early misfortune of the French settlers that their close friendly
relations with their Huron neighbors embattled against them the
fiercest, bravest, and ablest of the Indian tribes, the confederacy of
the Six Nations, which held, with full appreciation of its strategic
importance, the command of the exits southward from the valley of the
St. Lawrence. The fierce jealousy of the Iroquois toward the allies of
their hereditary antagonists, rather than any good will toward white
settlers of other races, made them an effectual check upon French
encroachments upon the slender line of English, Dutch, and Swedish
settlements that stretched southward from Maine along the Atlantic
coast.

3. In one aspect it was doubtless an advantage to the French missions in
America that the sharp sectarian competitions between the different
clerical orders resulted finally in the missions coming almost
exclusively under the control of the Jesuit society. This result insured
t