1664]

The Company of the West founded

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the Ministry of Marine came under his reforms. He seized the opportunity opened by a proposed Company of Equinoctial France centring in Cayenne, to form a scheme for the consolidation of the whole of the French colonies in Canada, the West Indies, and Guiana under one great Company, to be controlled by himself. The prices at which the islands had been sold and were now bought back give the best view of their relative value. Martinique with the adjacent islands had been sold for 60,000 livres and developed so well under proprietary government, through the introduction of sugar industries by Dutch Jews, that it now cost 240,000. The claims sold to the Maltese Knights for 120,000 livres now cost 500,000; and Guadaloupe and its adjacent islands, sold for 73,000 livres, cost 125,000 to buy back.

In 1664 letters patent were issued constituting a new Company of the West, with a monopoly of trade for forty years in Canada, Acadia, Newfoundland, the Antilles, Cayenne, and the land between the Orinoco and the Amazon, as also on all the coast of Africa, from Cape Verde to the Cape of Good Hope, and in particular on the coast of Guinea and Senegal, so that a supply of slaves might be forthcoming. The number of shareholders was unlimited, and official and social privileges of many kinds were offered by the government to large subscribers. The government offered a bounty on every ton of merchandise imported or exported, and freedom from duty on all goods re-exported from France and on the export of military stores or provisions for shipping. It also proposed to contribute a tenth of the total capital yearly for the next four years, and afterwards to continue this endowment as a loan. The Company was to have entire lordship over the whole of the lands named, saving only homage to the King; also full powers to fortify, to form alliances, and to engage in war. Subinfeudation was not made compulsory; nor were any terms imposed except that the Company, remembering the King's sacred purpose to convert the savage nations, should send out clergy and build churches. All emigrants, all children born in the colonies, and all converted natives were to have the privileges of naturalised Frenchmen. The nomination of governors and officials lay with the Company; and an annual meeting of the Chamber of Direction was to be held in Paris.

The government offered all these privileges in order to attract the necessary capital for colonisation on a grand scale. The close relation of the Company to the government renders the French scheme of chartered companies unlike that of other countries. It was in fact only a step to the ultimate buying out of the shareholders, which, as no conditions were dictated to the Company, was doubtless foreseen by Colbert. From the first the Company tacitly allowed the Crown to appoint the chief officials. The lieutenant-general and the governors of the islands, being invested with military powers, corresponded with the

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Colbert and Talon

[1664

King and with Colbert, not with the Company. The slight governmental functions left to its nominees were carefully regulated, so as to allow of supervision by the Crown.

Colbert's intention of dealing with the transatlantic possessions of France as a whole and of protecting them adequately, was clearly shown in 1664 by the despatch of a squadron under the Marquis de Tracy, with powers as lieutenant-general over all the governors, to make a general inspection of Guiana, the Antilles, and finally of Canada. In Canada the necessity of sending disciplined soldiers to break the Iroquois power had long been pressing. A force of 1200 men was sent out; and the result of their brief campaign was to change for a time the relations of the Iroquois to the French Canadians. The Iroquois power was not yet extinguished, but it was so far broken that their chief hope now lay in taking advantage of French and English enmity and in forming alliances with the one or the other as best suited the needs of the moment. The immediate result of the expedition was that roads were made, and forts and missions established, along the line of the river Richelieu and Lake Champlain.

The advance of the French frontier along this southward waterway implied the danger of conflict with the English on fresh ground. The Iroquois had hitherto served as a bulwark between the Dutch in the New Netherlands and the French in Canada. In 1664, again by a few months only, the English were the first to see the necessity of removing the feeble Dutch power which was the one obstacle to continuous settlement along the American coast. By way of exchange for Surinam, the New Netherlands became the English New York (1667). Talon, the Canadian intendant, with his usual foresight, wrote in 1666 of the necessity that the French should find on the Hudson a second entry to Canada, one which was not blocked with ice half the year, which would break the English power in its centre, and cut off the English trade with the Iroquois. Although Talon was not allowed to carry out his scheme, the mixed character of the population of New York, their want of sympathy with their neighbours, the ready means of approach by the Lake route, and the exposure of the colony to Iroquois attack, enabled the French for half a century to nurse the hope that it might one day be theirs.

The Carignan regiment which had been sent to quell the Iroquois was disbanded in Canada; and every effort was made to form military cantonments of officers and men who would settle and protect the Richelieu river. The officers were to receive seigneuries, and the men cash and a year's subsistence, if they would take up the lands there. During the ten years 1664-74 the population of Canada trebled under the careful guidance of Talon and Colbert. Emigration, settlement, early marriage, and large families were encouraged by every device and decree that could suggest itself within the limits set by considerations of religion and nationality. The neighbourhood of the heretical Dutch and

-1683]

Canadian constitution

81

English population was deemed to make it doubly necessary to exclude the schismatics, lest heretics should become traitors. Free maintenance, bonuses on marriage, on large families, fines on celibacy, the despatch of shiploads of young women, and the forcible prevention of return home were among the means tried to stimulate artificially the increase of population. Louis XIV watched the Canada censuses so closely that he was continually disappointed at what seemed to him slow progress; and, in the end, the artificial encouragements were withdrawn.

During these ten years the form of government, the main lines of which ultimately became fixed in Canada, was gradually shaped. From the first the governor's power had been checked by the Superior of the Jesuits, or by the bishop who acted in their interests. In 1665 the King added further an intendant, as successor to the Company's agent-general, with full powers in justice, police, and finance. A clear differentiation of functions was purposely avoided; the governor, with mainly military functions, was ordered to act harmoniously with the intendant; and, if conflict arose, Colbert at home decided which official should return. The bishop, as the one permanent member of Council, could check both, and made his power felt through his disciplined army of seminary priests, trained to the control of consciences, and to the use of the weapons of the confessional and of excommunication. Nor was it the intention of Louis XIV to disturb this power so long as it was not used in a manner derogatory to his own sovereignty. The Council, chosen by the Company while it lasted, and on its lapse by the King or the governor, was to be summoned by the joint action of governor and intendant. It sat weekly as a judicial body at the intendance; and from its judgments there was an appeal to the Conseil d'État at Paris.

At first it seemed likely that municipal institutions would develop. In 1663 a meeting of the habitants of Quebec and its banlieu was convoked to proceed by election to the choice of a mayor and two bailiffs. The election threatened to become a reality; whereupon the system was cancelled, and the municipal idea was rooted out from Canada. De Tracy urged Talon to avoid any "balance of authority among subjects," which might lead to a dismemberment of the community. In 1672 the Comte de Frontenac had assembled the habitants to take the oath of fealty and had divided them into three estates, as De Tracy himself had done in the West Indies. Thereupon Colbert wrote the celebrated letters ordering Frontenac to follow the example of the home government, where the Kings, he says, have for some time. ceased to assemble the States-General, in order insensibly to put a stop to that ancient form. The syndic who presents requests in the name. of all the habitants must cease to be appointed when the colony grows stronger, since it is well that each should speak for himself and that no one should speak for all.

The Council, which consisted of only seven members till in 1703

C. M. H. VII.

6

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Canadian land-tenure

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the number was raised to twelve, had no power to levy taxation; and none was levied. The law of the land was now made uniform under the Custom of Paris, and the Custom of the French Vexin, which had been partially introduced, was abolished. Thus a form of Roman Law well adapted to a municipal community was extended to a nascent colony that was essentially rural. The forms of law had, however, the merit of uniformity, simplicity, and cheapness; and care was taken in the organisation of a system of police for the three Canadian towns. The decrees issued by the Council cover matters large and small, from tithe, the size of the seigneuries, feudal dues, provision for the poor, down to rules of precedence, nuisances, and the cleaning of the streets. The ordonnances of the intendant direct the enclosing of habitations, and make building regulations and market-laws; while, as representative of the King in finance, he also regulates the coinage. The tendency was for legislation to pass more and more under his control and out of that of the governor.

The system on which lands were laid out by the French in Canada is of peculiar interest as throwing light on the method of procedure in earlier agricultural colonies. The great seigneuries of ten by twelve leagues were enfeoffed to the roturiers in strips measuring, as a rule, three arpents (each of 100 perches in width by 30 in depth), each strip running from a river frontage. The dwelling-houses were placed at the river end of the strips; and thus a row of farmsteads was formed, which even in the most scantily peopled regions allowed some indulgence to French social inclinations. Each strip was cultivated by a tenant and his family; on his death, by the Custom of Paris, equal division (subject to certain exceptions) was the mode of succession. The strips were divided longitudinally, with results not a little injurious to agriculture. In 1745 it was ordered that every habitant must have 1 arpents of frontage. A strip even of this width was not convenient in form, since it made central supervision impossible and access to the remote portions of the holding difficult, while requiring a large amount of enclosure. Throughout the French occupation the methods of agriculture were most primitive. The cleared land was tilled until exhausted, when fresh land was cleared, the tilled land being left to lie fallow under weeds on which the tenant's few beasts pastured.

The method of land-tenure was ill adapted to the circumstances of Canada, where the initial difficulties of clearing forest land were immense. It excluded the possibility of a métairie system, which so greatly assists the young agricultural colony where capital is plentiful and labourers are not highly skilled; and it excluded the freehold system which gives scope for the independent efforts of the individual. The "franc alleu roturier," which most nearly approached the English "free socage,' was very sparingly admitted in Canada, more freely in the West Indies.

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Canadian feudalism

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A heavy tax on the alienation of lands, in the case of the seigneur the payment of a fifth of the value of the estate, in the case of the tenant the payment of lods et ventes, though both were customarily lower in Canada than in France, was injurious to the development of uncultivated lands, and, as Adam Smith pointed out, robbed the colony of its prime source of prosperity, an abundance of cheap land. The liability of the tenants to promiscuous forced labour in the lord's service (after 1711 harvest time was excepted, and after 1716 the service was made commutable for 20 sous yearly per arpent), the inability of the censitaire to subinfeudate, the initial absence of obligation on the lord to infeudate, too late corrected, the rule which allowed only two-thirds of the fee to be infeudated, were injurious features.

But Canada was not troubled with absentee landlords; the relations of the seigneurs and the roturiers were singularly close and friendly; and the passionate military, national, and religious spirit that animated all alike, dignified the bond. The lord had, according to his grant, "haute," "moyenne," or "basse" justice over his tenants, until in 1714 it was ordered that no such grants of jurisdiction should be made. The large number of cases that came before the Council would seem to indicate that the liberty to erect gallows and pillory and to enforce jurisdiction over tenants was not generally exercised by the lords. It was to the advantage of the tenants in the early period that it was made incumbent on the lords to erect mills and to lay out roads, though the tenant's corn paid its multure of one-fourteenth of the grain ground, and the tenants had to make the roads themselves. The lord's supposed obligation of defence fell also of course on the tenants. Every man capable of bearing arms between the ages of 14 and 70 was bound to military service and drilled with a regularity unknown to the English colonial militia. The Canadian tenant was constantly engaged in active warfare, choosing the winter for his campaigns if possible, as summer warfare meant certain famine.

The seigneury in many cases formed a parish, and lord and priest worked as a rule harmoniously, except, it might be, on the question of precedence, which set the highest officials of Church and State constantly at issue. Many were the decrees of the Council upon this subject, and also regarding the amount of Church-tithe. Originally fixed at the ruinous proportion of one-thirteenth of all increase, it was lowered to one twenty-sixth of thrashed grain, with an exemption for five years on newly cleared ground. In 1667 Talon wrote that the clerical estate consisted of a bishop, nine priests, and many clerks gathered in the seminary at Quebec or sent out to missions in the country. There were thirty-five Jesuit Fathers whose work, he reports, is pious if not of commercial value: this last it might acquire in time. He foresaw the danger that the Jesuits might seek an excessive share of temporal power, and favoured the despatch of Sulpitian priests to counterbalance them.