rt kings, Charles II and James H, were not less despotic in spirit
than Louis XIV. But while in France there was a vast organism which
moved only as the King willed, in England power was more widely
distributed. It may be claimed with truth that English national
liberties are a growth from the local freedom which has existed from
time immemorial. When British colonists left the motherland to found
a new society, their first instinct was to create institutions which
involved local control. The solemn covenant by which in 1620 the worn
company of the Mayflower, after a long and painful voyage, pledged
themselves to create a self-governing society, was the inevitable
expression of the English political spirit. Do what it would, London
could never control Boston as Versailles controlled Quebec.

The English colonist kept his eyes fixed on his own fortunes. From
the state he expected little; from himself, everything. He had no great
sense of unity with neighboring colonists under the same crown. Only
when he realized some peril to his interests, some menace which would
master him if he did not fight, was he stirred to warlike energy. French
leaders, on the other hand, were thinking of world politics. The voyage
of Verrazano, the Italian sailor who had been sent out by Francis I of
France in 1524, and who had sailed along a great stretch of the Atlantic
coast, was deemed by Frenchmen a sufficient title to the whole of North
America. They flouted England's claim based upon the voyages of the
Cabots nearly thirty years earlier. Spain, indeed, might claim Florida,
but the English had no real right to any footing in the New World. As
late as in 1720, when the fortunes of France were already on the wane
in the New World, Father Bobe, a priest of the Congregation of
Missions, presented to the French court a document which sets forth in
uncompromising terms the rights of France to all the land between the
thirtieth and the fiftieth parallels of latitude. True, he says, others
occupy much of this territory, but France must drive out intruders and
in particular the English. Boston rightly belongs to France and so also
do New York and Philadelphia. The only regions to which England has any
just claim are Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay, ceded by France
under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This weak cession all true
Frenchmen regret and England must hand the territories back. She owes
France compensation for her long occupation of l