ent his spleen against the Jesuits, whom he cordially hated.

Eighteen years had passed since the founding of Quebec, and still the
colony could scarcely be said to exist but in the founder's brain.
Those who should have been its support were engrossed by trade or
propagandism. Champlain might look back on fruitless toils, hopes
deferred, a life spent seemingly in vain. The population of Quebec had
risen to a hundred and five persons, men, women, and children. Of these,
one or two families only had learned to support themselves from the
products of the soil. All withered under the monopoly of the Caens.
Champlain had long desired to rebuild the fort, which was weak and
ruinous; but the merchants would not grant the men and means which,
by their charter, they were bound to furnish. At length, however, his
urgency in part prevailed, and the work began to advance. Meanwhile the
Caens and their associates had greatly prospered, paying, it is said,
an annual dividend of forty per cent. In a single year they brought from
Canada twenty-two thousand beaver skins, though the usual number did not
exceed twelve or fifteen thousand.

While infant Canada was thus struggling into a half-stifled being,
the foundation of a commonwealth destined to a marvellous vigor of
development had been laid on the Rock of Plymouth. In their character,
as in their destiny, the rivals were widely different; yet, at the
outset, New England was unfaithful to the principle of freedom. New
England Protestantism appealed to Liberty, then closed the door against
her; for all Protestantism is an appeal from priestly authority to the
right of private judgment, and the New England Puritan, after claiming
this right for himself, denied it to all who differed with him. On a
stock of freedom he grafted a scion of despotism; yet the vital juices
of the root penetrated at last to the uttermost branches, and nourished
them to an irrepressible strength and expansion. With New France it was
otherwise. She was consistent to the last. Root, stem, and branch, she
was the nursling of authority. Deadly absolutism blighted her early
and her later growth. Friars and Jesuits, a Ventadour and a Richelieu,
shaped her destinies. All that conflicted against advancing liberty--the
centralized power of the crown and the tiara, the ultramontane in
religion, the despotic in policy--found their fullest expression
and most fatal exercise. Her records shine with glorious deeds, the
se