Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-07-04

for almost one hundred years, nearly all that
La Sale proclaimed, was hers east of the great
river, and held until the reign of the great
Napoleon, nearly all that was proclaimed as
hers west of the great river, she eventually
lost everything. and left but little or no trace of
her presence, excepting what is now the State
of Louisiana?
The cause was not conquest. CoDquests then
we're, but they were merely the secondary and
prOximate agencies of the transfer.
And here we are presented with one of the
grandest examples which time has given to his.
tory, of the divulsion OF great region from one
empire and lis attachment to another,
by the moral power OF contending institutions.
For this was effected by the collision of IN
stitutions, and by nothing else. We have seen
France, starting from Montreal, engirdle the
North American continent from the mouth of
the st. Lawrence to the mouth of the Missis-
sippi, and shutting up the English occupancy
into tract which was practically bounded by
the st. Lawrence, the Alleghanies and the Sa-
vaunah. We understand the proportions of the
physical competitory powers by which these
rival institutions were sustained.
I do not think that differences of dogma or
victories in proselyting had anything to do
with the result. The Puritan of New England,
the Quaker of Pennsylvania, the Catholic of
Maryland, and the Churchman of Virginia,
each represented political tendency, with
which his religious faith had little to do
either by any of creation or modification. The
result would have been the same had James the
Second succeeded In restoring England to the
ranks of the Catholic powers.
Behind and beyond the mere questions of
faith, ruling and overruling them by providen-
tial destiny. carrying them along as the world
revolving west carries ship that is sailing
east, were the great and peremptory ideas Of per-
sonal freedom and of self government, based
Nbr1ck IN oy,1 not ur,f ifc
creeds, which were fighting their way to insti-
tutional recognition in the person of every
EDglish-speaking man.
Englishmen had fought for centuries this mo-
mentous fight. They had extorted Magma
Charta from John. They had enacted in par
lament the declaration of rights, and so far an
initiated the feudal system, ss to leave nothing
but its fictions. They had passed the statute of
habeas corpus. They had increased the pow
ers of the commons, until that house became
the immediate agent of the people in the 3D.
ministration of the State. More than all,
they had so dilated their capacity for self gov
eminent through their love Of freedom that it
was as certain then as it is to-day that the
mountains would be removed into the sea be-
fore the stock of that people could ever be
forced back into the dungeons of absolute
power.
In France there was no counterpart to all
this. There was, on the contrary, a complete
system of antithetical Institutions. The whole
kingdom was feudal. It was enfeoffed to despot
over despot through all the ascending degrees of
tyranny, until the king was reached. who abb
sOrbed into himself the sum of all these des-
potic powers. There was no parliament.
Judges were so purchasable that judgments
were finally sold as common commodities.
The land was filled with private prisons, in
which the seigneurs incarcerated their offending
underlings without pretext Of trial. The king
took away personal liberty by simple letter de
cacket. There was no liberty of conscience,
nor was there anything in the tendency of the
institutions which promised it. The system
of taxation was an abominable device of spo-
liation by which host of Intermediates
tolled the product so that but fraction reaches
the royal eXchequer.
Such were the two systems which started in
the race of empire upon this continent. The
French colonial system was feudal, and was
governed from Versailles. The English colonial
system was allodial and substantially gov
erned itself. Each, in short, was reproduce
tion of its original. That of the French was
cumbrous and difficult to transport. The
Frenchman who founded colony laid off a
seigniory and had his vassals. The English col
onists, on the contrary, owned their farms and
their houses were their castles They had their
provincial parliaments and enacted their own
laws. Every English settlement was nucleus
settlement was a lordship or fort-it stood by
itself; its neighbor was another lordship or
fort. The English settlements were confueut.
Those of the French were marked by bounda-
ries established from the beginning. The
former tended to Identification; the latter
were indurated into separation; contact was
friction and private war.
Under such conditions of growth it is easy
to understand how the French, moving with
the celerity of organization, at first covered so
much territory. After the first act was done
progress stopped.
The French settler looked to his landlord,
and was attached to the soil. If he removed
he entered q vagrant life. The English immi-
grant, who was his own man, bettered his con-
dition. His children stood higher in the scale
of wealth and society than he did. The result
was, that when the English became ready to
pass the Alleghanies, they took with them
ready made all of the machinery of an inde-
pendent government. The mere presence of
Boone aud his companions in Kentucky ended
the shadowy French claim to that region. The
capture of Kaskaskia by Gen. George Rogers
Clarke, who was sent upon that campaign by
Thomas Jefferson while governor of Virginia,
seems to have ended the French domination
over all the country east of the Mississippi.
The passage of the ordinance of 1887 gave to
the territory northwest of the Ohio q republic
can constitution, and from that time English
Immigrants poured into that region and the
French institutions disappeared like a cloud.
The hold of France upon the territory west
of the river became less eager. She ceded it
to Spain and then took it back. The iron
hold of Napoleon became Aaccid there and he
finally ceded it to the United States in 1903,
and nothing was left of France upon this CONT.
nent save Louisiana which exists like an area
of geologic drift and the names of counties and
cities where French and Indian words alike
mark the former presence of vanished in
stitutions.
The political consequences of the tendencies
and results of which have spoken, were most
momentous to the cause of liberty. Did any
todv ever conceive of q declaration of inde-
pendence by French colonies Had the French
institutions at all kept pace with those of the
English over what is now the United States,
there would have been no declaration of our
own independence. for Louis XVI and George
III, assisted by their colonists, would have
been fighting war of conquest and defence.
Mere political speculation might pause at
this point. But standing to-day at the great
anniversary of our independence, and seeing
what forces contended against each for a
century before it was declared we cannot help
recognizing the work of Providence in all this.
Through all time this new world had slum-
bered. hidden by the ocean from conquest, pre-
served from the operations of the events which
in the long course of thousands of years had
brought the Europeans to civilization. The
Greek and the Roman did their work and
passed away, and not hint of this great world
came to them from sea or shore. The long
night which settled over Europe and in the hours