The English, neglected by their home government, and having to depend on themselves, proved the better colonizers; advancing gradually, step by step into the wilderness, and generally holding what they gained. The French, on the other hand, though excellent explorers and traders and fighters, pushed far afield, and the population of New France grew slowly compared to that of the English colonies. There was endless fighting between the representatives of the two races, both of which at times sought help from the Indians. The result was a peculiarly merciless warfare, in which women and children were murdered, prisoners tortured, and the little unprotected settlements on the frontiers constantly exposed to dreadful night attacks and the burning of their buildings and crops. The mother countries of both French and English colonists joined frequently in the struggles, and at last (as every British schoolboy knows) Quebec was taken and Canada was conquered. But it is not so well-known by those who have made no special study of its history that the French in Canada had for years suffered sad misgovernment, many of the officials sent out from France being bent only on making money by fair means or foul. In contrast to these men, the British officers, whose duty it became, on the conquest, to govern the Canadians, seemed eminently fair and just; and the lower classes at least felt that the change was for the better. Many of the gentlemen left the country, but others remained, and the early British governors took great pains to conciliate them and the Roman Catholic priests. By the Quebec Act, which came into effect in 1775, the free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion was secured to the French Canadians as well as the retention of their old system of civil law; but in criminal cases English law was to be followed. The Act was passed when the “Thirteen Colonies” to the south of Canada and Nova Scotia (which had become a British colony early in the eighteenth century) were on the eve of revolt, and before many months had gone by the United Colonies sent an invading army to try to force Canada to make common cause with them. But the leaders of the Canadian people proved loyal, and the invaders, though they kept up the siege of Quebec through the whole of one winter, were driven out of the country.