158 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [chap. philosophy and classic freedom would bring back healthy life and vigour. Original thought, which had been crushed by the Church of Rome, was beginning to force its way in wild theories which took for granted that, because everything existing was evil, every first principle was also evil. Persecution was as bitter as ever. The Huguenots were still hunted down, and the Jansenists were even worse treated by the profligates around Lewis XV. ; but the perils of irreligion were not suspected, and, while Protestant books were burnt, infidel books were freely read. The Jesuits were alive to the danger ; but the whole of E'lrope was striving to put down this order, which was hated by the king and Madame de Pompadour for their resistance to their vices. An attempt on Lewis's life by a madman named Damien, in 1756, was charged on their friends, and the king joined in expelling them and demanding their suppression from the pope. 30. The French in India and America. — Meanwhile a great French dominion had been growing up in distant parts of the world, which about this time began to have an influence on European affairs. Alike in North America, in the West Indies, and in India, France had won a great power, which about this time was largely transferred to England. In North America several unsuccessful attempts at colonization were made in the sixteenth century ; and from the beginning of the seventeenth the French had a firm hold on that continent. In 1603 began the coloniz- ation of Canada or New France, and the foundation of Quebec. The French claimed the whole inland region along the cyrcat rivers, St. Lawrence and Mississippi, wliile the eastern coas', from New England southwards, was colonized by other nations, chiefly the English. It naturally followed that there was a great rivalry between the English and French in North America, that disputes often arose, and that, when there was open war between the two nations. North America was one chief seat of it. Thus the peninsula called /-i^'^r^/zV or No-:'a Scotia chTingcd hands several times, and finally passed to England along with the island of Newfoundland at tiie peace of Utrecht. The chief French insular possession in these parts was now the island of Cape Breton j on the mainland France had Canada at one end and Louisiana at the other (both names being taken in a much wider sense than they are now), with a vague claim over the territory between them. During the war of the Austrian Succession Cape Breton
