Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/145

* CANADA. 117 CANADA. and judicial power, and supervise the expendi- ture of all public moneys, besides acting virtually as a spy on the Governor ; and the Supreme Council, composed of the Governor, the In- tendant, the Bishop, and five, later seven, and still later thirteen, councilors, to issue decrees for the government of the colony in civil and fiscal affairs, and to sit in judgment on va- rious civil and criminal causes. The distinctive features of the government of Canada through- out the French regime were absolutism and pa- ternalism, the individual settler being robbed of all initiative and forced to look for every- thing to the general Government, which habit- ually intervened in the most trivial affairs of everyday life. During the period of royal con- trol, the celebrated feudal system of Canada, first established by Richelieu, and based, with important modifications, upon the system which had obtained in ancient France, took definite form. Large grants, called seignories, were made to men of rank or prominence, known as seigneurs, who held, in many eases directly from the Crown, by the 'tenure of faith and homage,' and who, in turn, made smaller grants to the hahitants or censitaires, whose tenure rested upon their payment of annual rentals in money or produce, and in some cases upon their rendering to their over-lords certain feudal ser- vices, such, for instance, as the corvee. The set- tlements, called cotes, were almost uniformly made along streams, the houses being built in long lines, instead of being arranged around a common centre, as was the case in many of the New England villages — each habitant receiv- ing a narrow strip of land, fronting on a river or creek and extending for a considerable dis- tance to the rear. The system was not inter- fered with at the time of the English conquest in 1760, and survived in Lower Canada (Quel>ec) until 1854, when it was finally abolished. With the English Colonists to the south the in- habitants of Xew France came into conflict during the last part of the Seventeenth Century. Such events as the destruction of the French settle- ment at Port Royal by Argall in 1013, or the capture and occupation of Quebec by David Kirke in 102S1-32 may be regarded as sporadic; but with the outbreak of the first of the so-called French and Indian wars in 1G89, the long contest be- tween the French and English for supremacy in North America was initiated. (See King Wil- Li.vji's Wak: Qufen Anne's War; King George's Was; Fkench and Indi.an Was.) Of these wars, the first two especially, 1689-97 and 1702-13, may be differentiated from the last as being essentially the fighting out of European quarrels on American soil. On the part of the French, the conflict took the form of sudden raids, with the help of their Indian allies, on the fron- tier settlements of New York and New England. Though no important victory was gained on cither side, the English nevertheless acquired by the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) Acadia, Newfound- land, and the Hudson Bay Territory. Thirty- five years of peace followed, marked by rapid development both among the French and the Eng- lish. The tide of English colonization, breaking through the passes of the .AUcghanies, was checked by the French, who had made themselves masters of the gieat rivers of the west. The war which broke out in 17.54 was essentially American, and though it later merged into the greater struggle of the Seven Years' War, the stake between Eng- land and France was the mastery in America. In the French and Indian ar, Canada experienced both the advantages and disadvantages of the ab- solute system of government under whieli it lived. Against the armies of Great Britain, weakened by incapacity on the part of their commanders and constant friction between British officers and the Colonials, it presented a force of trained fight- ers, under officers, for the most part, acquainted with the nature of the country, and acting all under the direction of one supreme will. This would account for the ill success of the English during the first part of the war. When it came, however, to a test of endurance between the com- batants, Canada, with its sparse population of fur traders and forest rangers, could never liope to hold out against the English Colonists, if, as was the fact, it was forced to depend for help on distant France, with the British holding the mastery of the seas. The capture of Quebec by Wolfe in September, 1759, practically ended the war. By the Treaty of Paris (q.v.) in 1763, Canada, together with all the territory between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi River, claimed by France, was ceded to Great Britain. Canada was under a military government from 1760 to 1764, and under a sort of provis- ional government, organized in pursuance of a proclamation by George III., from 17(54 to 1774, when the British Parliament passed an im- portant measure known as 'The Quebec Act' (q.v.), which e.xtended the province to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, provided that Reman Catholics should not be interfered with in their religion, intrusted the administration of affairs to a Governor and a Legislative Council ap- pointed by the Crown, and formally recognized the old civil laws and civil institutions of French Canada, though the English criminal la-ns were to be in force throughout the prov- ince. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress attempted to secure the active alliance of Canada, and to that end sent a commission, made up of Franklin, Chase, Charles Carroll, and John Carroll, to Quebec; but the province remained loyal throughout, and at the close of the war its population was augmented by the innnigration from the United States of between 30,000 and 40.000 Loyalists, whose advent, says the Ca- nadian historian Bourinot, "was the saving of British interests in the great region which England still happily retained in North Ameri- ca." It was these immigrants who founded New Brunswick and Upper Canada (Ontario), and their descendants have continued to the present day to constitute perhaps the most im|)ortant and influential element in the population of Canada. By the treaty of 1783, the area of Canada, as established by the Quebec Act, was reduced by the formal relinquishment to the United States of the territory now constituting the States of Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and in 1791 the province was di- vided by the so-called 'Constitutional Act' into twQ sections, 'Upper Canada' and 'Lower Can- ada,' the former of which, then having a popu- lation of about 20,000, was inhabited almost entirely by men of English descent, and the lat- ter, then having a population of about 125,000, largely by men of French descent. Each sec-