to deal with and most humane, though sternly just, as
conquerors.

In the following April Levis made his desperate throw
for victory; and actually did succeed in defeating Murray
outside the walls of Quebec. But the British fleet came
up in May; and that summer three British armies converged
on Montreal, where the last doomed remnants of French
power on the St Lawrence stood despairingly at bay. When
Levis found his two thousand effective French regulars
surrounded by eight times as many British troops he had
no choice but to lay down the arms of France for ever.
On the 8th of September 1760 his gallant little army was
included in the Capitulation of Montreal, by which the
whole of Canada passed into the possession of the British
Crown.

Great Britain had a different general idea for each one
of the four decades which immediately followed the conquest
of Canada. In the sixties the general idea was to kill
refractory old French ways with a double dose of new
British liberty and kindness, so that Canada might
gradually become the loyal fourteenth colony of the Empire
in America. But the fates were against this benevolent
scheme. The French Canadians were firmly wedded to their
old ways of life, except in so far as the new liberty
enabled them to throw off irksome duties and restraints,
while the new English-speaking 'colonists' were so few,
and mostly so bad, that they became the cause of endless
discord where harmony was essential. In the seventies