large Congregationalists" increased. In 1708, the 1 6 9 0 general court ordered that the churches of each county 1 7 15 send "messengers," i. e., lay i.e., representatives, to the countytown and that the county assemblies, consociations they were called, send delegates to meet at Saybrook to prepare a church system for adoption by the legislature. This Congregational synod met in September and elaborated the ecclesiastical system known as as the Saybrook platform, which was at once ratified by the general court. The churches that stood upon it were "owned and acknowledged established by law." As Massachusetts orthodoxy be Elihu Yale Statue of Abraham Pierson came more and more diluted, Connecticut Congregationalism became more and more rigorous, although some unwelcome germs floated across the line from the ill-cultivated tangle on the east. From the first Yale College settlement of New Haven it had been intended to set up a college there but the project was long deferred and Connecticut contributions continued to I October 9 169o go to Cambridge. In 1698, the project was revived by 1715 the general synod. In 1700, the ten ministers who had been named as trustees met at Branford, each laying his contribution of books upon the table and saying, "I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony." In 1701, the general court granted a charter for a collegiate school and voted an annual grant of about sixty pounds sterling in aid of its support. The trustees chose Saybrook as the home of the school and Abraham Pierson as its first rector. In 1716, the school was established at New Haven. In 1718, the trustees named the new collegiate building Yale college, in recognition of a gift from a London merchant, Elihu Yale. The free-school system of Connecticut had been established in 1644. CANADA W AND LOUISIANA moi HILE the English colonies in America were 1 6 8 9 growing strong, New France remained weak. 1745 Differences in soil and climate fail to account L'état c'est for the difference in development. The English colony in America was in general a business venture; if it did not make money, it was a failure. But the French peasant went to New France because he was sent and he went without a family. The French soldier in Canada was offered his discharge and a year's pay if he would marry and settle there and to those who were already colonists premiums were offered for marrying and for children. The Englishman was glad to marry without a premium from the state and, when he emigrated to the New World, took his wife, children, and household goods with him. One was dependent; the other was characteristically independent. These dependent colonists constituted Canada; Canada leaned heavily on France and France was in decline. In 1689, Frontenac, then in his seventieth year, again Frontenac crossed the seas to govern Canada. For the next few and Callieres years, what he did constitutes the history of the colony. He sent a force with Nicholas Perrot to hold the Ottawas in check or to win them back to his support. He planned his triple invasion of the southern colonies that thus he might reanimate the Canadians, chastise the English into prudence, and satisfac Autograph of Nicholas Perrot Vaudreuil torily impress the minds of their Indian allies. Then 1 6 8 9 came Phips's capture of Port Royal, the Winthrop 1 7 0 7 advance on Montreal, and the repulse of Phips and Walley at Quebec. In 1694, Frontenac forced the Iroquois to sue for peace. In 1697, came the treaty of Ryswick and, in November, 1698, death robbed New France of her most distinguished hero. Frontenac's successor, de Callieres, acquired great influence over the Indians, secured peace with the Iroquois in 1700, and died in 1703. The next governor-general, Philippe de Vaudreuil, held the Iroquois in check and transferred the terrors of Indian invasion from New France to New England. His policy of securing quiet in Canada by encouraging raids upon the defenseless New England towns hastened the end of the French power in America by convincing the English colonies that the only path to permanent peace lay through the downfall of French rule in Canada. Canada then had a population of eighteen thousand; the English colonists were not fewer than four hundred thousand. France was weak and humiliated; England was strong and arrogant; and yet, expedition after expedition missed the apparently inevitable victory, until the pious French began to think that they were under the specially pro Medal Given to Indian Chiefs in 1693 tecting shield of Heaven-and to believe it with all the confidence of Puritan faith similarly exercised. That poor shuttlecock of French and English diplo- Acadia macy that one side called Acadia and the other Nova Scotia was, in these years, subjected to frequent incursions as recorded in an earlier chapter-the failure of Church in 1704, that of March in 1707, and the successful |