The colonists from England brought over the forms of the government of the mother country, and the purpose of giving them a better development and a fairer career in the western world.  The French emigrants took with them only what belonged to the past, and nothing that represented modern freedom.  The English emigrants retained what they called English privileges, but left behind in the parent country English inequalities, the monarch, and nobility, and prelacy.  French America was closed against even a gleam of intellectual independence; nor did it contain so much as one dissenter from the Roman Church; English America had English liberties in greater purity and with far more of the power of the people than England.  Its inhabitants were self-organized bodies of freeholders, pressing upon the receding forests, winning their way farther and farther forward every year, and never going back.  They had schools, so that in several of the colonies there was no one to be found beyond childhood, who could not read and write; they had the printing press scattering among them books, and pamphlets, and many newspapers; they had a ministry chiefly composed of men of their own election.  In private life they were accustomed to take care of themselves; in public affairs they had local legislatures, and municipal self-direction.  And now this continent from the Gulf of Mexico to where civilized life is stayed by barriers of frost, was become their dwelling-place and their heritage.

* * * * *

From “The History of the United States.”

=_131._= DEATH OF MONTCALM.

But already the hope of New France was gone.  Born and educated in camps, Montcalm had been carefully instructed, and was skilled in the language of Homer as well as in the art of war.  Greatly laborious, just, disinterested, hopeful even to rashness, sagacious in council, swift in action, his mind was a well-spring of bold designs; his career in Canada a wonderful struggle against inexorable destiny.  Sustaining hunger and cold, vigils and incessant toil, anxious for his soldiers, unmindful of himself, he set, even to the forest-trained red men, an example of self-denial and endurance, and in the midst of corruption made the public good his aim.  Struck by a musket ball, as he fought opposite Monckton, he continued in the engagement, till, in attempting to rally a body of fugitive Canadians in a copse near St. John’s gate, he was mortally wounded.

On hearing from the surgeon that death was certain, “I am glad of it,” he cried; “how long shall I survive?” “Ten or twelve hours, perhaps less.”  “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”  To the council of war he showed that in twelve hours all the troops near at hand might be concentrated and renew the attack before the English were intrenched.  When De Ramsay, who commanded the garrison, asked his advice about defending the city, “To your keeping,” he replied, “I commend the honor of France.  As for me, I shall pass the night with God, and prepare myself for death,” Having written a letter recommending the French prisoners to the generosity of the English, his last hours were given to the hope of endless life, and at five the next morning he expired.