On their part, the Company were bound to convey to New France during the
next year, 1628, two or three hundred men of all trades, and before the
year 1643 to increase the number to four thousand persons, of both
sexes; to lodge and support them for three years; and, this time
expired, to give them cleared lands for their maintenance. Every settler
must be a Frenchman and a Catholic; and for every new settlement at
least three ecclesiastics must be provided. Thus was New France to be
forever free from the taint of heresy. The stain of her infancy was to
be wiped away. Against the foreigner and the Huguenot the door was
closed and barred. England threw open her colonies to all who wished to
enter,--to the suffering and oppressed, the bold, active, and
enterprising. France shut out those who wished to come, and admitted
only those who did not,--the favored class who clung to the old faith
and had no motive or disposition to leave their homes. English
colonization obeyed a natural law, and sailed with wind and tide; French
colonization spent its whole struggling existence in futile efforts to
make head against them. The English colonist developed inherited freedom
on a virgin soil; the French colonist was pursued across the Atlantic by
a paternal despotism better in intention and more withering in effect
than that which he left behind.
Pages:
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420