FRANCE AND ENGLAND in NORTH AMERICA FOURTH PART THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA TWENTY-SIXTH EDITION BY FRANCIS PARKMAN BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1874 [Illustration: 0003] [Illustration: 0007] [Illustration: 0009] GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, D.D. My dear Dr. Ellis: When, in my youth, I proposed to write a series of books on the French in America, you encouraged the attempt, and your helpful kindness has followed it from that day to this. Pray accept the dedication of this volume in token of the grateful regard of Very faithfully yours, FRANCIS PARKMAN. PREFACE. “The physiognomy of a government,” says De Tocqueville, “can best be judged in its colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more distinct. When I wish to judge of the spirit and the faults of the administration of Louis XIV., I must go to Canada. Its deformity is there seen as through a microscope.” The monarchical administration of France, at the height of its power and at the moment of its supreme triumph, stretched an arm across the Atlantic and grasped the North American continent. This volume attempts to show by what methods it strove to make good its hold, why it achieved a certain kind of success, and why it failed at last. The political system which has fallen, and the antagonistic system which has prevailed, seem, at first sight, to offer nothing but contrasts; yet out of the tomb of Canadian absolutism come voices not without suggestion even to us. Extremes meet, and Autocracy and Democracy often touch hands, at least in their vices. The means of knowing the Canada of the past are ample. The pen was always busy in this outpost of the old monarchy. The king and the minister demanded to know every thing; and officials of high and low degree, soldiers and civilians, friends and foes, poured letters, despatches, and memorials, on both sides of every question, into the lap of government. These masses of paper have in the main survived the perils of revolutions and the incendiary torch of the Commune. Add to them the voluminous records of the Superior Council of Quebec, and numerous other documents preserved in the civil and ecclesiastical depositories of Canada.