Daniel Webster and the Invasion of Canada

From Daniel Webster on the Draft: Text of a Speech delivered in Congress, December 9, 1814:

You may sing to them the song of Canada conquests in all its variety, but they will not be charmed out of the remembrance of their substantial interests and true happiness.

Having finally put aside Wallace's 400 page history of Canada, I decided to pick up a shorter read during lunch with this speech of Daniel Webster, little realizing how much it touched upon a major part in that history.

All government, like Gaul, is divided into three parts.

From A History of the Canadian People:

He [Champlain] set out up the Ottawa with two canoes. He took with him also his surveying instruments; and, in crossing one of the numerous portages on the Ottawa, he lost his astrolabe, the instrument which he used for determining longitude and latitude. It is interesting to know that over two hundred and fifty years later, in 1867, this astrolabe was turned up by a farmer who was ploughing some new land near the town of Renfrew...

The Champlain astrolabe (pictured above) is now in the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

On Bishop Laval (p.79):

He fought persistently against the sale of spirituous liquors to the Indians; and though he failed in this fight, since it was felt that to deny French brandy to the Indians was merely to drive them "to English rum and Prostestantism"...