HISTORY OF CANADA PART II Book I THE SEPARATE PROVINCES CHAPTER I BRITISH RULE TO THE QUEBEC ACT discoveries of science. In the preceding volume of this history the close connexion Influence of between the history and the geography of French Canada has geography on history been emphasized. The St. Lawrence was the dominant factor modified by in its economic and social development. The Mississippi had formed the channel by which Canada and Louisiana could meet. Through the Hudson and Lake Champlain the way had been opened between Canada and the English colonies. With the advance of civilization, however, man learns how to resist and finally control the natural forces which have hitherto governed him. The effects of distance are minimized by means of railroads and steamboats, mountains are tunnelled, river courses are deepened, and canals avoid the risks of rapids. By these means vast tracts of territory can be held together under a common government, and disintegrating forces, which a hundred years ago would have worked unchecked, are successfully arrested. In this state of things geography plays a less commanding part in the making of history.. The expansion of British North America presents points both of resemblance to, and of contrast with, that of its great southern neighbour. In both cases the expansion has been Resemblance and contrast between British from the east to the west. In both, new communities have altered the balance previously prevailing. Just as the northern and southern states find themselves outnumbered by new states, which have arisen in the west, so the two Canadas and the can expan- maritime provinces have to recognize that the pivot of power will, as the years pass by, be more and more found in the new western provinces whose population is so rapidly advancing. and Ameri sion. Between the expansion, however, of the United States and that of British North America, there is this distinction, that whereas the United States, from whatever sources its units may have been derived, present, as a whole, the front of a homogeneous English-speaking community, except so far as the large negro settlement in the south complicates the question, in British North America there has been little blending of the separate channels of race, and French Canada remains for all purposes, except those of political allegiance, as distinct from the British provinces as it was at the date of the conquest. At the time of the conquest by Great Britain, Canada, it must be remembered, consisted, so far as population was concerned, of only a small portion of the present province of Quebec. A few forts were held beyond to preserve the communication with the west, but there was practically no French population west of the Ottawa river. After the conquest, General Amherst was the nominal Governor-in-Chief, but the government was administered by three Lieutenant-Governors, Murray, Gage, and Burton, at Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers. French-Canadian historians in the first half of the nineteenth century sought to find proofs of injustice in the annals of this period of arbitrary rule, but impartial inquirers have recognized the justice of the claim advanced by Gage in a letter to Amherst in 1762.1 'I feel the highest satisfaction that I am able to inform you that during my command in this Government I have made it my constant care and attention that the 1 Report of March 20. |