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For New France this cessation of new settlement and the limitation of growth to the natural increase of population, meant isolation and the development of a distinctive, homogeneous community. With each year that passed the men of New France knew less of any country other than the land of their birth. For old France it meant defeat in the struggle for colonial empire, defeat which might be postponed by the bravery and resource of individual leaders, by the firm military organization of the people of New France, and by the disunion of the English colonies, but which could not be averted.

The French régime came to an end a century and a half after Champlain had raised the flag of France on the rock of Quebec. The new rulers were faced at once by the most serious difficulty that had yet beset any colonizing power. Here were nearly eighty thousand Frenchmen and Catholics, firmly rooted in the soil, with ways of life and thought fixed by generations of tradition. What was to be the attitude of their English and Protestant rulers? On the answer to that question hung the future of Canada, and the answer, or rather the answers, that were given shaped the problems and the tasks that in after days faced Wilfrid Laurier and his contemporaries and that in changing forms will face the Canadians of to-morrow.