To whom belonged this world of prairies and forests?  France claimed it by right of discovery and occupation.  It was her explorers who, after De Soto, first set foot on it.  The question of right, it is true, mattered little; for, right or wrong, neither claimant would yield her pretensions so long as she had strength to uphold them; yet one point is worth a moment’s notice.  The French had established an excellent system in the distribution of their American lands.  Whoever received a grant from the Crown was required to improve it, and this within reasonable time.  If he did not, the land ceased to be his, and was given to another more able or industrious.  An international extension of her own principle would have destroyed the pretensions of France to all the countries of the West.  She had called them hers for three fourths of a century, and they were still a howling waste, yielding nothing to civilization but beaver-skins, with here and there a fort, trading-post, or mission, and three or four puny hamlets by the Mississippi and the Detroit.  We have seen how she might have made for herself an indisputable title, and peopled the solitudes with a host to maintain it.  She would not; others were at hand who both would and could; and the late claimant, disinherited and forlorn, would soon be left to count the cost of her bigotry.

The thirteen British colonies were alike, insomuch as they all had representative governments, and a basis of English law.  But the differences among them were great.  Some were purely English; others were made up of various races, though the Anglo-Saxon was always predominant.  Some had one prevailing religious creed; others had many creeds.  Some had charters, and some had not.  In most cases the governor was appointed by the Crown; in Pennsylvania and Maryland he was appointed by a feudal proprietor, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island he was chosen by the people.  The differences of disposition and character were still greater than those of form.

The four northern colonies, known collectively as New England, were an exception to the general rule of diversity.  The smallest, Rhode Island, had features all its own; but the rest were substantially one in nature and origin.  The principal among them, Massachusetts, may serve as the type of all.  It was a mosaic of little village republics, firmly cemented together, and formed into a single body politic through representatives sent to the “General Court” at Boston.  Its government, originally theocratic, now tended to democracy, ballasted as yet by strong traditions of respect for established worth and ability, as well as by the influence of certain families prominent in affairs for generations.  Yet there were no distinct class-lines, and popular power, like popular education, was widely diffused.  Practically Massachusetts was almost independent of the mother-country.  Its people were purely English, of sound yeoman stock, with an abundant leaven drawn