examples of a despotic government that the world has ever seen.  All the autocratic and bureaucratic ideas of Louis XIV. were here carried out without let or hindrance.  It would be incredible, were it not attested by such abundant evidence, that the affairs of any people could be subjected to such minute and sleepless supervision as were the affairs of the French colonists in Canada.  A man could not even build his own house, or rear his own cattle, or sow his own seed, or reap his own grain, save under the supervision of prefects acting under instructions from the home government.  No one was allowed to enter or leave the colony without permission, not from the colonists but from the king.  No farmer could visit Montreal or Quebec without permission.  No Huguenot could set his foot on Canadian soil.  No public meetings of any kind were tolerated, nor were there any means of giving expression to one’s opinions on any subject.  The details of all this, which may be read in Mr. Parkman’s admirable work on “The Old Regime in Canada,” make a wonderful chapter of history.  Never was a colony, moreover, so loaded with bounties, so fostered, petted, and protected.  The result was absolute paralysis, political and social.  When after a century of irritation and skirmishing the French in Canada came to a life-and-death struggle with the self-governing colonists of New England, New York, and Virginia, the result for the French power in America was instant and irretrievable annihilation.  The town-meeting pitted against the bureaucracy was like a Titan overthrowing a cripple.  The historic lesson owes its value to the fact that this ruin of the French scheme of colonial empire was due to no accidental circumstances, but was involved in the very nature of the French political system.  Obviously it is impossible for a people to plant beyond sea a colony which shall be self-supporting, unless it has retained intact the power of self-government at home.  It is to the self-government of England, and to no lesser cause, that we are to look for the secret of that boundless vitality which has given to men of English speech the uttermost parts of the earth for an inheritance.  The conquest of Canada first demonstrated this truth, and when—­in the two following lectures—­we shall have made some approach towards comprehending its full import, we shall all, I think, be ready to admit that the triumph of Wolfe marks the greatest turning-point as yet discernible in modern history.

II.

THE FEDERAL UNION.

The great history of Thukydides, which after twenty-three centuries still ranks (in spite of Mr. Cobden) among our chief text-books of political wisdom, has often seemed to me one of the most mournful books in the world.  At no other spot on the earth’s surface, and at no other time in the career of mankind, has the human intellect flowered with such luxuriance as at Athens during the eighty-five years which intervened