at home. These banded powers, pushing into the wilderness their
indomitable soldiers and devoted priests, unveiled the secrets of the
barbarous continent, pierced the forests, traced and mapped out the
streams, planted their emblems, built their forts, and claimed all as
their own. New France was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the
lank, lean body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked
itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seigniories and hordes
of savage retainers.

Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was strengthening and
widening, with slow but steadfast growth, full of blood and muscle,--a
body without a head. Each had its strength, each its weakness, each its
own modes of vigorous life: but the one was fruitful, the other barren;
the one instinct with hope, the other darkening with shadows of despair.

By name, local position, and character, one of these communities of
freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this
antagonism,--Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France. The
one was the offspring of a triumphant government; the other, of an
oppressed and fugitive people: the one, an unflinching champion of the
Roman Catholic reaction; the other, a vanguard of the Reform. Each
followed its natural laws of growth, and each came to its natural
result. Vitalized by the principles of its foundation, the Puritan
commonwealth grew apace. New England was preeminently the land of
material progress. Here the prize was within every man's reach: patient
industry need never doubt its reward; nay, in defiance of the four
Gospels, assiduity in pursuit of gain was promoted to the rank of a
duty, and thrift and godliness were linked in equivocal wedlock.
Politically she was free; socially she suffered from that subtle and
searching oppression which the dominant opinion of a free community may