in various parts of it. About 1700 the French opened ground at the mouth of the Mississippi; D'Iberville (1702) founded Mobile and the French Mississippi Company (1718) founded the city of New Orleans. Consistent design, foiled at last only by failure of material, marks the proceedings of the French commanders in America for the next thirty years. New Orleans and Quebec were the extremities of a line of well-placed forts which were to secure the whole Mississippi valley, and to confine the English settlements for ever to the strip of land along the coast bounded on the west by the Appalachian or Alleghany range of mountains, which is parallel to the coast and has but one important break in its barrier, the opening through which the Hudson river flows. The practical genius of the French plans is shown by the fact that so many of these old forts have since become the sites of great and flourishing western cities: Natchez, Vincennes, Peoria, Fort Wayne, Toledo, Detroit, Ogdensburgh, and Montreal either are built on or are so near to the old forts as to testify to the skill and foresight against which the English colonies had to contend. To this whole territory, extending from the mouth of the Mississippi to that of the St Lawrence, covering even the western part of the present State of New York, the name of New France was given. The English possessions, extending in hardly any place more than a hundred miles from the ocean, except where the Dutch had long ago planted the outpost of Fort Orange, or Albany, on the upper Hudson, were generally restricted to the immediate neighbourhood of the coast, to which the early population had naturally clung as its base of supplies.
Weakness of the French system.26. The French difficulties were even greater than those of the English. The French people had never had that love of emigration which had given the English colonies their first great impetus. Even where the French settled they showed more of a disposition to coalesce with the native population than to form a homogeneous people. The French were commonly far stronger with the Indians than were the English; but, at the end of a hundred and fifty years, when the English colonists numbered a million and a quarter, all animated by the same political purposes, the population of all New France was only about 100,000, and it is doubtful whether there were 7500 in the whole Mississippi valley. The whole French system, wisely as it was designed, was subject to constant and fatal interference from a corrupt court. Its own organization was hampered by attempts to introduce the feudal features of home social life. A way was thus opened to exactions from every agent of the court, to which the people submitted with hereditary patience, but which were fatal to all healthy development. Perhaps worst of all was the natural and inevitable formation of the French line of claims. Trending westward from Quebec to meet the northward line of forts from New Orleans, it was bent at the junction of the two parts, about Detroit, and its most important part lay right athwart the path of advancing English migration. The English wave was thus to strike the weaker French line in flank and at its weakest point, so that the final issue could not in any event have been doubtful. The French and Indian war probably only hastened the result.
Intercolonial wars.27. There had been wars between the French and the English colonies since the accession of William and Mary, mostly accessory to wars between the mother countries. The colonies had taken part in the wars ended by the peace of Ryswick (1697), the peace of Utrecht (1713), and the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748). The alliance of the French and Indians made all these struggles wretched experiences for the English. The province of Canada became a prison-pen, where captives were held to ransom or adopted into savage tribes. Outlying settlements were broken up, or forced to expend a large part of their energy in watchful self-defence; and it required all the persistence of the English colonies to continue their steady forward movement. Nevertheless they even undertook offensive operations. They captured Port Royal in 1690, but it was given up to the French in 1697. They captured it again in 1710, and this time it was kept, with most of Acadia, which was now to be known as Nova Scotia. In 1745 the colonies took the strongest French fortress, Louisburgh, on Cape Breton Island, with very little assistance from the home Government. Their land expeditions against Montreal and Quebec were unsuccessful, the reason for failure being usually defective transport.
The “asiento.”28. In the treaties which closed these wars, the interests of the colonies met with little consideration. The most notable instance of this was the 12th article of the treaty of Utrecht, by which an English company was secured the exclusive right to carry African slaves into American ports. Originally meant to obtain the Spanish trade in negroes, the company had influence enough to commit the crown to a steady support of the African slave-trade in its own colonies. Again and again the English legislatures in North America attempted to stop the slave-trade, and were prevented by the royal veto. This will serve to explain a passage in Jefferson's first draft of the American Declaration of Independence, as follows:—“He [the king] has waged cruel war against human nature itself. . . . . . Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.”
29. All parties seem to have felt that the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was but a truce at the best; and the French court seems to have come at last to some comprehension of its extensive opportunities and duties in North America. With its tardy sympathy, its agents on the new continent began the erection of barriers against the great wave of English westward migration which was just appearing over the crest of the Alleghanies. It was too late, however, for the English colonies were really able to sustain themselves against the French colonies and court together. Their surveyors (1747) had crossed the crests of the mountains, and had brought back appetizing accounts of the The Ohio Company. quality of the lands which lay beyond. The Ohio Company (1749), formed partly of Virginian speculators and partly of Englishmen, had obtained a grant of 500,000 acres of land in the western part of Pennsylvania (then supposed to be a part of Virginia), with a monopoly of the Indian trade. As the grant was completely on the western side of the Alleghanies, and was the first English intrusion into the Ohio valley, it behoved the French to meet the step with prompt action. Their agents traversed the Ohio country, making treaties with the Indians and burying lead plates inscribed with the lilies of France and a statement of the French claims. The erection of the Ohio Company's first fort (1752) brought on the crisis. The main line of French forts was too far away to be any check upon it. The French leaders therefore began to push a branch line eastward into the disputed territory. Their first work (1753) was put up at Presque Isle (now Erie), about 100 miles north of the Ohio Company's fort. The citadel of the disputed territory had been begun on the spot where Pittsburgh now stands, where the Allegheny and Monongahela unite to form the Ohio river. Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, had obtained the right to erect the fort by treaty with the Indians. From Presque Isle the French began running a line of forts south, through the present “oil district” of Pennsylvania, towards the headquarters of the English.
