True, he says, others occupy much
of this territory, but France must drive out intruders and in
particular the English. Boston rightly belongs to France and so
also do New York and Philadelphia. The only regions to which
England has any just claim are Acadia, Newfoundland, and Hudson
Bay, ceded by France under the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This
weak cession all true Frenchmen regret and England must hand the
territories back. She owes France compensation for her long
occupation of lands not really hers. If she makes immediate
restitution, the King of France, generous and kind, will forego
some of his rights and allow England to retain a strip some fifty
miles wide extending from Maine to Florida. France has the right
to the whole of the interior. In the mind of the reverend
memorialist, no doubt, there was the conviction that England
would soon lose the meager strip, fifty miles wide, which France
might yield.
These dreams of power had a certain substance. It seems to us now
that, from the first, the French were dreaming of the impossible.
We know what has happened, and after the event it is an easy task
to measure political forces.
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