On the other hand, the dangerous British rivals had rapidly advanced to prosperity and to the possession of formidable resources. The State of Massachusetts alone mustered 40,000 men capable of bearing arms, by one third a greater number than all Canada could produce. The militia of Connecticut was 27,000 strong, and that of New Hampshire and Rhode Island also considerable. Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other states were also in themselves powerful, but in military matters New England ever took the lead. The sturdy Nonconformists who first peopled that country had been long accustomed to encounter and overcome difficulties: they had continually waged a war of mutual extermination with the Indians. The unbending spirit of their ancestors lost nothing under such training. Each separate settlement possessed an independent vitality; the habit of self-government engendered a feeling of confidence in their own power, and they who had marched with steady step over the barriers of an almost impenetrable forest, and swept away the warlike hordes of its savage inhabitants, were no mean foes to match even against the brilliant chivalry of France.
The peculiar and distinct institutions of these British colonies, while they fostered the development of individual energy and stimulated general prosperity, forbade, at the same time, that compact and centralized organization which rendered the external power of New France so formidable. It was difficult or impossible to unite all the different states in one great effort, and hopeless to induce them to act in concert. The borderers of Maine or Massachusetts heard with almost indifference of Indian massacres upon the banks of the Susquehanna, and the men of Virginia felt but little sympathy with the victors of the north. English colonization had already progressed to unheard of prosperity in its component parts, in spite of its utter want of large and comprehensive system, while that of France, planned on a scheme of magnificent ambition, had proved but a sickly exotic under the over-anxious care of the founders. In the one, powerful elements formed but a disjointed and unwieldy aggregate; in the other, indifferent materials were rendered strong by the firm frame-work in which they were united.