Let me now ask you to follow me for a short time whilst I review some of the most salient features of our intellectual progress since the days Canada entered on its career of competition in the civilization of this continent. So far there have been three well defined eras of development in the country now known as the Dominion of Canada. First, there was the era of French Canadian occupation which in many respects had its heroic and picturesque features. Then, after the cession of Canada to England, came that era of political and constitutional struggle for a larger measure of public liberty which ended in the establishment of responsible government about half a century ago. Then we come to that era which dates from the confederation of the provinces—an era of which the first quarter of a century only has passed, of which the signs are still full of promise, despite the prediction of gloomy thinkers, if Canadians remain true to themselves and face the future with the same courage and confidence that have distinguished the past. As I have just said, the days of the French regime were in a sense days of heroic endeavour, since we see in the vista of the past a small colony whose total population at no period exceeded eighty thousand souls, chiefly living on the banks of the St. Lawrence, between Quebec and Montreal, and contending against great odds for the supremacy on the continent of America. The pen of Francis Parkman has given a vivid picture of those days when bold adventurers unlocked the secrets of this Canadian Dominion, pushed into the western wilderness, followed unknown rivers, and at last found a way to the waters of that southern gulf where Spain had long before, in the days of Grijalva, Cortez5 and Pineda, planted her flag and won treasures of gold and silver from an unhappy people who soon learned to curse the day when the white men came to the fair islands of the south and the rich country of Mexico. In these days the world, with universal acclaim has paid its tribute of admiration to the memory of a great Discoverer who had the courage of his convictions and led the way to the unknown lands beyond the Azores and the Canaries. This present generation has forgiven him much in view of his heroism in facing the dangers of unknown seas and piercing their mysteries. His purpose was so great, and his success so conspicuous, that both have obscured his human weakness. In some respects he was wiser than the age in which he lived; in others he was the product of the greed and the superstition of that age; but we who owe him so much forget the frailty of the man in the sagacity of the Discoverer. As Canadians, however, now review the character of the great Genoese, and of his compeers and successors in the opening up of this continent, they must, with pride, come to the conclusion that none of these men can compare in nobility of purpose, in sincere devotion to God, King and Country, with Champlain, the sailor of Brouage, who became the founder of Quebec and the father of New France.
In the daring ventures of Marquette, Jolliet, La Salle and Tonty, in the stern purpose of Frontenac, in the far-reaching plans of La Galissonière, in the military genius of Montcalm, the historian of the present time has at his command the most attractive materials for his pen. But we cannot expect to find the signs of intellectual development among a people where there was not a single printing press, where freedom of thought and action was repressed by a paternal absolutism, where the struggle for life was very bitter up to the last hours of French supremacy in a country constantly exposed to the misfortunes of war, and too often neglected by a king who thought more of his mistresses than of his harassed and patient subjects across the sea. Yet that memorable period—days of struggle in many ways—was the origin of a large amount of literature which we, in these times, find of the deepest interest and value from a historic6 point of view. The English colonies of America cannot present us with any books which, for faithful narrative and simplicity of style, bear comparison with the admirable works of Champlain, explorer and historian,[3] or with those of the genial and witty advocate, Marc Lescarbot,[4] names that can never be forgotten on the picturesque heights of Quebec, or on the banks of the beautiful basin of Annapolis. Is there a Canadian or American writer who is not under a deep debt of obligation to the clear-headed and industrious Jesuit traveller, Charlevoix,[5] the Nestor of French Canadian history? The only historical writer that can at all surpass him in New England was the loyalist Governor Hutchinson, and he published his books at a later time when the French dominion had disappeared with the fall of Quebec.[6] To the works just mentioned we may add the books of Gabriel Sagard,[7] and of Boucher, the governor of Three Rivers and founder of a still eminent French Canadian family;[8] that remarkable collection of authentic historic narrative, known as the Jesuit Relations;[9] even that tedious Latin compilation by Père du Creux,[10] the useful narrative by La Potherie,[11] the admirable account of Indian life and customs by the Jesuit Lafitau,[11a] and that now very rare historical account of the French colony, the "Etablissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle France," written by the Recollet le Clercq,[12] probably aided by Frontenac. In these and other works, despite their diffuseness in some cases, we have a library of historical literature, which, when supplemented by the great stores of official documents still preserved in the French archives, is of priceless value as a true and minute record of the times in which the authors lived, or which they described from the materials to which they alone had access. It may be said with truth that none of these writers were Canadians in the sense that they were born or educated in Canada, but still they were the product of the life, the hardships and the realities of New France—it was from this country they drew the inspiration that gave vigour and colour to their writings. New England, as I have already said, never originated a class of writers who produced work of equal value, or indeed of equal literary merit. Religious and polemic controversy7 had the chief attraction for the gloomy, disputatious puritan native of Massachusetts and the adjoining colonies. Cotton Mather was essentially a New England creation, and if quantity were the criterion of literary merit then he was the most distinguished author of his century; for it is said that indefatigable antiquarians have counted up the titles of nearly four hundred books and pamphlets by this industrious writer. His principal work, however, was the "Magnalia Christi Americana, or Ecclesiastical History of New England from 1620 to 1698,"[13] a large folio, remarkable as a curious collection of strange conceits, forced witticisms, and prolixity of narrative, in which the venturesome reader soon finds himself so irretrievably mystified and lost that he rises from the perusal with wonderment that so much learning, as was evidently possessed by the author, could be so used to bewilder the world of letters. The historical knowledge is literally choked up with verbiage and mannerisms. Even prosy du Creux becomes tolerable at times compared with the garrulous Puritan author.
Though books were rarely seen, and secular education was extremely defective as a rule throughout the French colony, yet at a very early period in its history remarkable opportunities were afforded for the education of a priesthood and the cult of the principles of the Roman Catholic religion among those classes who were able to avail themselves of the facilities offered by the Jesuit College, which was founded at Quebec before even Harvard at Cambridge, or by the famous Great and Lesser Seminaries in the same place, in connection with which, in later times, rose the University with which is directly associated the name of the most famous Bishop of the French regime. The influence of such institutions was not simply in making Canada a most devoted daughter of that great Church, which has ever exercised a paternal and even absolute care of its people, but also in discouraging a purely materialistic spirit and probably keeping alive a taste for letters among a very small class, especially the priests, who, in politics as in society, have been always a controlling element in the French province. Evidences of some culture and intellectual aspirations in the social circles of the8 ancient capital attracted the surprise of travellers who visited the country before the close of the French dominion. "Science and the fine arts," wrote Charlevoix, "have their turn, and conversation does not fail. The Canadians breathe from their birth an air of liberty, which makes them very pleasant in the intercourse of life, and our language is nowhere more purely spoken." La Galissonière, who was an associate member of the French Academy of Science, and the most highly cultured governor ever sent out by France, spared no effort to encourage a systematic study of scientific pursuits in Canada. Dr. Michel Sarrazin,[13a] who was a practising physician in Quebec for nearly half a century, devoted himself most assiduously to the natural history of the colony, and made some valuable contributions to the French Academy, of which he was a correspondent. The Swedish botanist, Peter Kalm, who visited America in the middle of the last century, was impressed with the liking for scientific study which he observed in the French colony. "I have found," he wrote, "that eminent persons, generally speaking, in this country, have much more taste for natural history and literature than in the English colonies, where the majority of people are entirely engrossed in making their fortune, whilst science is as a rule held in very light esteem." Strange to say, he ignores in this passage the scientific labours of Franklin, Bartram and others he had met in Pennsylvania.[13b] As a fact such evidences of intellectual enlightenment as Kalm and Charlevoix mentioned were entirely exceptional in the colony, and never showed themselves beyond the walls of Quebec or Montreal. The province, as a whole, was in a state of mental sluggishness. The germs of intellectual life were necessarily dormant among the mass of the people, for they never could produce any rich fruition until they were freed from the spirit of absolutism which distinguished French supremacy, and were able to give full expression to the natural genius of their race under the inspiration of the liberal government of England in these later times.