llen
hopelessly behind. Two great rivals remained, and she had
humbled the one and swept the other from her path. Spain,
with vast American possessions, was sinking into the decay
which is one of the phenomena of modern history; while France, of
late a most formidable competitor, had abandoned the contest in
despair. England was mistress of the seas, and the world was thrown
open to her merchants, explorers, and colonists. A few years after
the Peace the navigator Cook began his memorable series of voyages,
and surveyed the strange and barbarous lands which after times were
to transform into other Englands, vigorous children of this great
mother of nations. It is true that a heavy blow was soon to fall
upon her; her own folly was to alienate the eldest and greatest
of her offspring. But nothing could rob her of the glory of
giving birth to the United States; and, though politically
severed, this gigantic progeny were to be not the less a source
of growth and prosperity to the parent that bore them, joined
with her in a triple kinship of laws, language, and blood. The
war or series of wars that ended with the Peace of Paris
secured the opportunities and set in action the forces that have
planted English homes in every clime, and dotted the earth
with English garrisons and posts of trade.

With the Peace of Paris ended the checkered story of New
France; a story which would have been a history if faults of
constitution and the bigotry and folly of rulers had not dwarfed
it to an episode. Yet it is a noteworthy one in both its lights
and its shadows: in the disinterested zeal of the founder of
Quebec, the self-devotion of the early missionary martyrs, and
the daring enterprise of explorers; in the spiritual and temporal
vassalage from which the only escape was to the savagery
of the wilderness; and in the swarming corruptions which were
the natural result of an attempt to rule, by the absolute hand
of a master beyond the Atlantic, a people bereft of every
vestige of civil liberty. Civil liberty was given them by the
British sword; but the conqueror left their religious system untouched,
and through it they have imposed upon themselves a weight of
ecclesiastical tutelage that finds few equals in the most Catholic
countries of Europe. Such guardianship is not without certain
advantages. When faithfully exercised it aids to uphold some of the
tamer virtues, if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant
presence o