ns.
To think that people whose religion had spread 'murder,
persecution, and revolt throughout the world' were to be
entrenched along the St Lawrence was bad enough. But to
see Crown protection given to the Indian lands which the
Americans considered their own western 'birthright' was
infinitely worse. Was the king of England to steal the
valley of the Mississippi in the same way as the king of
France?

It is easy to be wise after the event and hard to follow
any counsel of perfection. But it must always be a subject
of keen, if unavailing, regret that the French Canadians
were not guaranteed their own way of life, within the
limits of the modern province of Quebec, immediately
after the capitulation of Montreal in 1760. They would
then have entered the British Empire, as a whole people,
on terms which they must all have understood to be
exceedingly generous from any conquering power, and which
they would have soon found out to be far better than
anything they had experienced under the government of
France. In return for such unexampled generosity they
might have become convinced defenders of the only flag
in the world under which they could possibly live as
French Canadians. Their relations to each other, to the
rest of a changing Canada, and to the Empire would have
followed the natural course of political evolution, with
the burning questions of language, laws, and religion
safely removed from general controversy in after years.
The rights of the English-speaking minority could, of
course, have been still better safeguarded under this
system than under the distracting series of half-measures
which took its place. There should have been no question
of a parliament in the immediate future. Then, with the
peopling of Ontario by the United Empire Loyalists and
the growth of the Maritime Provinces on the other side,
Quebec could have entered Carleton's proposed Confederation
in the nineties to her own and every one else's best
advantage.

On the other hand, the delay of fourteen years after the
Capitulation of 1760 and the unwarrantable extension of
the provincial boundaries were cardinal errors of the
most disastrous kind. The delay, filled with a futile
attempt at mistaken Americanization, bred doubts and
dissensions not only between the two races but between
the different kinds of French Canadians. When the hour
of trial came disintegration had already gone too far.
The mistake about the boundaries was equal