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 outlying parts of our Empire, there was hardly any peace between the rival colonists and traders, French and English, even though there might be peace in Europe. You must remember how vast were the spaces, how few the people, in the America of those days; how long, before the time of steamships and telegraphs, it took to get troops or even orders across the Atlantic. In bad weather two months was no uncommon time for a voyage from Bristol to New York; to Calcutta, six or seven months was quite usual. The vast but empty French colony of Canada had not more than one-sixth of the population of the British colonies in North America, then thirteen in number; but it was much better governed, fortified and equipped for war. Our colonists were never united amongst themselves, and did not want to be. They were none too loyal to the Mother Country, while the French Canadians were thoroughly loyal to France. That is why, between 1740 and 1758, the French were able to press our people in America so hard. Their great object was to occupy the valleys of the great rivers of Ohio and Mississippi. These lay right behind our colonies; and if the French could have held them, the British colonists would have been prevented from expanding westwards, which was just what they were doing more and more every year.

In India things were not quite so bad. France had an ‘East India Company’ like our own for trading with the native states, and the two Companies were natural rivals. Not far from our settlement of Madras lay the French settlement of Pondicherry; opposite to our Calcutta lay the French Chandernagore. Even when there was peace between France and England at home,