But Such A Crude Formula Would Not Convey A Sufficient
Sense Of Her Actual Achievements.
The end of the great war left her with
a wider dominion than that with which she was endowed
When she plunged
into the struggle; but it left her also with augmented power and
prestige, a settled sense of security, and a steeled spirit of
resolution - elements not measurable on the scale of the map, but counting
as immense factors in the government and development of oversea
possessions.
The details of the British colonial empire during the storm epoch, are as
follow: -
In Canada she governed a belt of country stretching from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, divided for administrative purposes into two areas, one of
which, Lower Canada - embracing the cities of Quebec and Montreal, and
including the basin of the St. Lawrence - was populated principally by
people of French origin. It would be too much to suppose that these
colonists, who jealously preserved the French language and the French
tradition, were indifferent to the doings of their kin across the water;
and there were, indeed, many who cherished the hope that events would so
shape themselves as to restore the authority of France in this part of
the New World. But the habitant was Roman Catholic as well as French, and
the hierarchy was profoundly distrustful of the regime which it regarded
as the heritage of the hateful ideas of 1789. We may speculate as to what
would have happened if Napoleon had set himself to woo the affections of
the French Canadians.
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