France and England entered on the struggle for dominion in America about
the same time, but long before the conquest of Canada the communities
founded by the latter had exhibited a vigour and vitality which were
never shown in the development of the relatively poor and struggling
colonies of Canada and Louisiana. The total population of New France in
1759--that is, of all the French possessions in North America--did not
exceed 70,000 souls, of whom 60,000 were inhabitants of the country of
the St. Lawrence, chiefly of the Montreal and Quebec districts. France
had a few struggling villages and posts in the very "garden of the
North-west," as the Illinois country has been aptly called; but the
total population of New France from the great lakes to the Gulf of
Mexico did not exceed 10,000 souls, the greater number of whom dwelt on
the lower banks of the Mississippi. At this time the British colonies in
America, pent up between the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian
mountains, had a population twenty times larger than that of Canada and
Louisiana combined, and there was not any comparison whatever between
these French and British colonies with respect to trade, wealth or any
of the essentials of prosperity.

Under the system of government established by Louis XIV, under the
advice of Colbert, the governor and intendant of Canada were, to all
intents and purposes in point of authority, the same officials who
presided over the affairs of a province of France. In Canada, as in
France, governors-general had only such powers as were expressly given
them by the king, who, jealous of all authority in others, kept them
rigidly in check. In those days the king was supreme; "I am the state,"
said Louis Quatorze in the arrogance of his power; and it is thus easy
to understand that there could be no such free government or
representative institutions in Canada as were enjoyed from the very
commencement of their history by the old English colonies.