Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/137

 -1763] French colonial constitutions. 105 of what Burke calls "a chain of petty, interested mismanagement, 1 " to which France felt no temptation. The French colonies were apt on the other hand to be treated too much as hothouse plants, when a hardier culture might have suited them better. The British colonies, like thistles planted by the hand of nature, seemed to grow apace out of sheer wilfulness. England took interest in the sugar colonies only, because they were not competitors with her in the field of manufactures ; but here her success was by no means continuous, and the example from which she expected to learn most was the example of France. To many minds the only conclusive argument in favour of colonial expansion was that the French King believed in colonies, and undoubtedly knew his own interest better than England knew hers. The French colonies, however, would seem to have received less support from the individual capitalist than those of England, and less support from the French at home than from the colonials themselves. The one large and regular French shareholder was the government. The British government was as a rule chary of risking anything till the eighteenth century, when Georgia and Acadia were made notable excep- tions to the rule. The French colonies, of which very few were proprietary, show no such great sacrifices on the part of individuals as were made by the English proprietors. The colonial currency question was one which troubled both peoples alike and was dealt with in an equally unsatisfactory way by both. The French King tried to meet the difficulty by senoling small quantities of bullion, but the supplies were wholly inadequate. The early Spanish colonies were free at least from the dislocation of trade caused by the want of coin, to which both French and English were continually subject. The contrast between the comparative absence of commercial restraint in the French colonies and the subjection to it of the English is balanced by that other contrast between the governmental institutions of the two countries which, obvious as it is, yet always needs accentuation as the most fundamental cause directing the issue of events. Representative institutions were banished from the colonial empire of the Old Regime, and with them every governmental idea which the English cherished in their colonies, tropical and temperate. No attempt whatever was made to resist the action of the monarch in this respect. The French colonists believed that their welfare was dependent on the sovereign's will, for they saw that if with one hand he took from them certain profitable issues, he returned fully as much with the other. The sense of com- mercial oppression from which the colonists of New England suffered was not paralleled, apparently, by any sense of governmental oppression on the part of the Canadians. They suffered no disabilities which were not suffered by their countrymen at home. The colonists took pride in the