Note 1163 — Chapter VIII

Speaking of Canada, John Fiske (Amer. Polit. Ideas, p. 55) says of the effect of the bureaucracy which governed it that it “was absolute paralysis, political and social,” and that in the war-struggle of the eighteenth century “the result for the French power in America was instant and irretrievable annihilation. The town meeting pitted against bureaucracy was like a Titan overthrowing a cripple;” but he forgets the history of that overthrow, its long-drawn-out warfare, the part that the vastly superior population and the interior lines and seaboard bases of supplies for the English played in the contest to intensify their power, and the jealousies and independence of the colonies themselves, which so long enabled the French to survive. Even as regards the results of the campaign of 1759, the suddenness had little of the inevitable in it, when we consider the leisurely campaign of Amherst, and the mere chance of Wolfe surmounting the path at the cove. It took the successes of these last campaigns to produce the fruits of conquest, even at the end of a long conflict.