CHAPTER I.

THE FRENCH RÉGIME. 1534--1760.


SECTION I.--Introduction.

Though the principal object of this book is to review the political,
economic and social progress of the provinces of Canada under British
rule, yet it would be necessarily imperfect, and even unintelligible in
certain important respects, were I to ignore the deeply interesting
history of the sixteen hundred thousand French Canadians, about thirty
per cent of the total population of the Dominion. To apply to Canada an
aphorism of Carlyle, "The present is the living sum-total of the whole
past"; the sum-total not simply of the hundred and thirty years that
have elapsed since the commencement of British dominion, but primarily
of the century and a half that began with the coming of Champlain to the
heights of Quebec and ended with the death of Wolfe on the Plains of
Abraham. The soldiers and sailors, the missionaries and pioneers of
France, speak to us in eloquent tones, whether we linger in summer time
on the shores of the noble gulf which washes the eastern portals of
Canada; whether we ascend the St. Lawrence River and follow the route
taken by the explorers, who discovered the great lakes, and gave to the
world a knowledge of the West and the Mississippi, whether we walk on
the grassy mounds that recall the ruins of the formidable fortress of
Louisbourg, which once defended the eastern entrance to the St.
Lawrence; whether we linger on the rocks of the ancient city of Quebec
with its many memorials of the French régime; whether we travel over the
rich prairies with their sluggish, tortuous rivers, and memories of the
French Canadians who first found their way to that illimitable region.