France had shared the prevailing impulse, and put forth her strength to establish in Canada a dominion worthy to bear her name. The wise minister Colbert perceived the greatness of the opportunity, and spared neither labour nor outlay to foster the growth of colonies which would secure to France a firm hold of this magnificent territory. Successive Kings lent aid in every form. Well-chosen Governors brought to the colony every advantage which honest and able guidance could afford. Soldiers were furnished for defence; food was supplied in seasons of scarcity. A fertile soil and trading opportunities which were not surpassed in any part of the continent, offered inducements fitted to attract crowds of the enterprising and the needy. But under every encouragement New France remained feeble and unprogressive. When she passed under British rule, her population was scarcely over sixty thousand, and had been for several years actually diminishing. Quebec, her chief city, had barely seven thousand inhabitants; Montreal had only four thousand. The rest of the people cultivated, thriftlessly, patches of land along the shores of the great river and its affluents; or found, like the savages around them, a rude and precarious subsistence by the chase. The revenue of the colony was no more than £14,000--a sum insufficient to meet the expenditure. Its exports were only £115,000. While France was striving thus vainly to plant in Canada colonies which should bear her name and reinforce her greatness, some Englishmen who were dissatisfied with the conditions of their life at home, began to settle a few hundred miles away on the shores of the same great continent. They had no encouragement from Kings or statesmen; the only boon they gained, and even that with difficulty, was permission to be gone. When famine came upon them, they suffered its pains without relief; their own brave hearts and strong arms were their sufficient defence. But their rise to strength and greatness was rapid. Within a period of ten years twenty thousand Englishmen had found homes in the American settlements. Before the seventeenth century closed, Virginia alone contained a population larger than that of all Canada. When the final struggle opened, the thirteen English colonies contained a population of between two and three million to contrast with the poor sixty thousand Frenchmen who were their neighbours on the north. The greatness of the colonies can be best measured by a comparison with the mother country. England was then a country of less than six million; Scotland of one million; Ireland of two million.