not devised in order to set bounds to the expansion of the older
colonies; that was an afterthought. The policy had its root in an
honest desire to protect the Indians from the frauds of
unscrupulous traders and from the encroachments of settlers on
their hunting grounds. The need of a conciliatory, if firm,
policy in regard to the great interior was made evident by the
Pontiac rising in 1763, the aftermath of the defeat of the
French, who had done all they could to inspire the Indians with
hatred for the advancing English.

How to deal with Canada was a more thorny problem. The colony had
not been sought by its conquerors for itself. It was counted of
little worth. The verdict of its late possessors, as recorded in
Voltaire's light farewell to "a few arpents of snow," might be
discounted as an instance of sour grapes; but the estimate of its
new possessors was evidently little higher, since they debated
long and dubiously whether in the peace settlement they should
retain Canada or the little sugar island of Guadeloupe, a mere
pin point on the map. Canada had been conquered not for the good
it might bring but for the harm it was doing as a base for French
attack upon the English colonies--"the wasps" nest must be smoked
out." But once it had been taken, it had to be dealt with for
itself.

The policy first adopted was a simple one, natural enough for
eighteenth-century Englishmen. They decided to make Canada* over
in the image of the old colonies, to turn the "new subjects," as
they were called, in good time into Englishmen and Protestants. A
generation or two would suffice, in the phrase of Francis
Maseres--himself a descendant of a Huguenot refugee but now