by the Treaty of Utrecht, France had surrendered to England the
island of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia (then including New Brunswick),
and the Hudson-bay Territory. She now gave up Canada and Cape
Breton, acknowledged the sovereignty of Great Britain in the original
thirteen Colonies as extending to the Mississippi, and, by a separate
treaty, surrendered Louisiana on the west side of the Mississippi,
with New Orleans on the east side, to Spain. Thus, in 1763, French
power disappeared from North American. The last square mile of
the most valuable colonial territory ever possessed by a European
sovereign was lost under the weak and effeminate rule of Louis XV.,
a reign not fitted for successful war, but distinguished only, as
one of its historians says, for "easy-mannered joyance, and the
brilliant charm of fashionable and philosophical society."

The country which France surrendered to Spain was of vast but
indefinite extent. Added to her other North-American colonies, it
gave to Spain control of more than half the continent. She continued
in possession of Louisiana until the year 1800, when, during some
European negotiations, Bonaparte concluded a treaty at San Ildefonso
with Charles IV., by which the entire territory was retroceded to
France. When the First Consul acquired Louisiana, he appeared to
look forward to a career of peace,--an impression greatly strengthened
by the conclusion of the treaty of Amiens the ensuing year. He
added to his prestige as a ruler when he regained from Spain the
American empire which the Bourbons had weakly surrendered thirty-
seven years before, and he expected a large and valuable addition
to the trade and resources of France from the vast colonial
possession. The formal transfer of so great a territory on a
distant continent was necessarily delayed; and, before the Captain-
general of France reached New Orleans in 1803, the Spanish authorities,
still in possession, had become so odious to the inhabitants of
the western section of the Union by their suspension of the right
of deposit at New Orleans, that there was constant danger of an
armed collision. Mr. Ross of Pennsylvania, an able and conservative
statesman, moved in the Senate of the United States that the
government be instructed to seize New Orleans. Gouverneur Morris,
a statesman of the Revolutionary period, then a senator from New
York, seconded Mr. Ross. So intense was the feeling among the
people that a large army