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THE OLD RÉGIME

1308

1608-1698

BY

CHARLES W. COLBY
Professor of History in M'Gill University

NEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1908

Chouxed
May 1918,

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PREFACE

THE chapters of this book represent lectures which were delivered recently in Ottawa before the May Court Club. They contain no new material, and use with freedom the works of others. At the same time historical facts can be employed in a large number of different combinations, and here the life of Canada during the Old Régime is approached by a route which as yet seems not to have been followed. The author's aim is to discuss various aspects of French colonisation, without at any point straying far from the concrete. To secure distinctness the examples have been drawn, chapter by chapter, from some one career. Or rather, a single personage has been made the representative of a class, and in considering the large subject with which he is connected, certain features of his experience are rendered prominent. But this method does not involve the exact portraiture of individuals, nor does it exclude minor figures from the field of the discussion.

1

One gives a hostage to fortune in publishing a volume which discloses his conception of what a popular lecture should attempt. But History does not exist simply for the benefit of the erudite, and there are always some to whom a book is recommended by the absence of specific gravity.

June 12th, 1908.

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