Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/325

Rh indicated from the first that same sense of virtual independence as asserted itself in the fulness of time in our Revolutionary War. So while the Old-World feudalism and despotism underlaid the colonization enterprise of New France, and sought to reproduce and reconstruct itself among these forests on our North and West, a pure and rejuvenated democracy was rooting itself and rearing its popular institutions and sway among the hard-working farmers of New England when their settlements were still on the seaboard. Possibly if France had allowed and encouraged, instead of expressly prohibiting, her heretic Huguenots to represent her in her New-World colonization, she might still have had provinces and dominion here. But a Puritan democracy, inoculating the system of Englishmen, proved to be the right spirit and constituency for securing a heritage in the New World. Whether, indeed, the Huguenot faith and blood transported hither might not have adapted itself to and improved for noble uses this free opportunity for colonial empire, is a question which might be differently answered. No great statesman suggested this method for disposing of that ever-increasing body of heretics which no edicts, disabilities, threatenings, or aggravation of cruelty could suppress, and which was not exterminated by the shocking massacre on St. Bartholomew's day. Both England and New England were glad to welcome such of the hounded exiles from France as sought in them a refuge. Those who found in either place a new home, with fields and workshops for their industry and thrift, and causes to engage their patriotism for the places of their adoption, have incorporated their descendants into the most honored ranks of society. But if Old France had opened New France even only as a place of enforced banishment for the Huguenots, leaving them without threatening or burdens to make the best of new homes in the wilderness, two results worthy of the exercise of a nation's wisdom in council and foresight would have