Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/139

Rh colonies exist in such profusion and, as regards Canada at least, have been studied in such full detail, that the character and actions of the French officials may be fully known; yet matter for a scandalous history is for the most part absent. The number of great and world-remembered names that stand out in the list of French colonial governors is strikingly large. Whereas the British colonies repeatedly failed signally in their military undertakings for want of leadership, the Canadian governors were not only generals by profession but leaders of men in a more than military sense. Unhappily France could not spare a de la Gallissonière to the New World for more than a brief space; but the fact that he should have been even for a time a Governor of Canada shows that France was willing to give of her best.

In no respect was there greater divergence in the governmental systems of the British and French colonies than in the matter of taxation. While the British colonists as a rule taxed themselves heavily, both directly by poll-taxes, and indirectly by customs, and in nearly all cases bore the whole expense of government, the French were not suffered to tax themselves. The King kept taxation as the most carefully guarded sovereign right; the Crown bore the expense of government and paid all salaries; the colonies contributed direct to the Crown through the Domaine d'Occident. The rate levied by the Crown on Quebec and Montreal for their fortifications is a solitary example of a direct tax levied in Canada to defray local expenses. In the sugar islands, in this respect as in others, there was a somewhat stronger tendency to self-government. In 1713, when it was found that the indigo duty did not cover the expense of governing St Domingo, the Minister of Marine wrote to the Governor and Commissary of St Domingo ordering that a meeting of habitants should be summoned to negotiate the provision of an octroi that would cover governmental expenses. Again in 1714 a general assembly of habitants and merchants was held in Martinique, convoked by parishes, in which the habitants offered to bear the whole expense of the colony's maintenance if the King would release the island from the rights of the farmers-general. But these instances are isolated, and serve only to indicate that a change in the system of government could not be very much longer delayed.

No nation perceived so early and so fully as the French the importance of geographical position in political and military strategy. The magnitude of French designs is best witnessed by the names "La Nouvelle France" "La France Septentrionale" (the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence), "La France Méridionale" (Louisiana), "La France Equinoxiale" (Guiana and the Antilles), not to speak of "La France Orientale." During the rise of the French colonial empire the French were preeminent in geographical discovery and cartography. The nature of the fur-trade, and the character of the missionaries early dispersed the French wanderers into the heart of the continent. Once