84

The Canadian Church

[1664The first Canadian bishop, Laval, desired to equip a disciplined body of clergy wholly subordinate to his authority. To maintain control he proposed that the appointment of curés should be in his own hands, and that tithe should be paid to and administered by him. The question of the removability of curés was decided against him in 1679, and a fixed salary from the tithe of each district was allotted to them.

But the burning question between Church and State was that of the wisdom of allowing the sale of spirits to Indians. The State officials, bent on commercial success, argued in favour of free sale that the Indians' desire for spirits must be satisfied by the French, or they would cease to come under French influence, and would pass under the influence of those who were less scrupulous. The Jesuits dwelt on the hideous results of the trade in degrading and destroying the native tribes. Bishop Laval, finding the officials against him, decided to use his spiritual authority and made the sale of drink to natives a religious offence to be punished by excommunication. Although in the absence of the support of the Crown the Bishop had to change his policy, his point was so far gained that the liquor trade with the Indians was made illicit, but the issue of numerous licences to traders greatly reduced the value of the prohibition.

Colbert's hope that a great Indian population would be converted and gradually gallicised met with no support from the Jesuits. He had looked for much intermarriage and believed that common schools for French and Indian children would be found successful. The Jesuits favoured for the Indians a system of perpetual tutelage, arguing that the Indian mind was incapable of development. They arranged permanent missions for "domiciled" Indians, but were powerless to secure that total exclusion of all outside influences which characterised the South American missions. In Colbert's correspondence with the intendant some watchfulness over the Jesuit power is recommended; but "to soften Jesuit severity the means must be gentle, imperceptible." His hope was that, as the population grew, the royal power would insensibly supercede the Jesuit.

But his desire to draw the colony into a closely united whole, occupying the valley of the St Lawrence, clearing grounds only in immediate proximity to the settled parts, met with no sympathy from the Jesuit missionaries, or from the adventurous explorers who sought to enrich the colony by discovering a convenient way to the South Seas, or at the least, an outlet westwards to the sea-coast. The period of most carefully encouraged settlement was also the period of the scientific pursuit of exploration, mainly by the Jesuits. By 1669 they had pushed their mission stations westward as far as Sault Ste Marie, the first station on the southern bank of the lakes or the river. This, with Michillimackinac, and the Mission St Ignace,

-1683]

Canadian trade

85

commanded the junction of the three Lakes, Superior, Michigan, and Huron. Discovery was then pushed down the Illinois to the Mississippi; and the knowledge of a great waterway to the Gulf of Mexico determined the lines of future Canadian policy. To command the western trade, and the eastern head of Lake Ontario, Frontenac built in 1673 Fort Cataraqui, afterwards Fort Frontenac (now Kingston).

From 1664 to 1683 the colony was nursed with the utmost care by Colbert. He directed the governor and the intendant alike to encourage the export of charcoal, tar, potash, to sow hemp and flax, to foster a trade with the French West Indies, and to encourage Canadian shipping, sedentary fisheries, mining, the breeding of cattle, and the clearing of forest land. His instinctive bent was industrial rather than agricultural; but he saw that Canada needed development in every direction. In 1679 the total number of arpents cleared was put at 21,900, the population at 9400. Of horses there were only 145, most of these having been sent by Colbert himself. The horned cattle numbered 6983, sheep only 719, goats 33, asses 12. The need for live-stock was so great that Colbert forbade the slaughtering of any domestic animals capable of breeding. The colony still possessed but one trade, that in furs. In 1667 Talon estimated the value of the exported furs at 550,000 livres. The colony continued in constant need of support from the Crown, and sums varying from 20,000 to 200,000 livres were sent annually to the intendant, according as the demands for European expenses were large or small.

In the West Indies Colbert ruled the Company of the West during the ten years of its existence with an equally firm hand, seeking from the first to secure a wide liberty of commerce for French subjects within its dominions. It was seen that the profits of the West Indies went for the most part to the filibusters and buccaneers. As members of the strange commonwealth which was established by these outlaws, the French showed themselves peculiarly skilful in the art of self-government and in the framing of codes. The buccaneers took up constitution-making-on a small scale, it is true, and merely in order that each pirate-group might secure a share in the booty for which life had. been risked; but their work was not without influence on the more peacefully minded settlers. The cry for open trade, open to all Frenchmen, if not to all nations, was raised with persistency by each succeeding governor; and there are many indications that the French West Indians asked and took a freer lead in the defence of their own interests than the Canadian farmers. It is seen in the greater importance of the Council in Martinique, which in 1668 was made the seat of civil and military government, Guadaloupe becoming dependent on Martinique. The Council being framed on the pattern of the Parlement, it was intended that it should consist of professed lawyers; but, as these were not forth

86 The Company of the West in the West Indies [1664-74

coming, the chief officers of the militia were chosen instead. At first much freedom was allowed in deciding the number of councillors called in to decide contentious matters; and not till 1674 was it reduced to ten. The separation of St Domingo from the central scheme of government shows the respectful treatment which it was thought advisable to adopt where the buccaneers were strong; and the whole tone of Colbert's letters and instructions to West Indian governors points to his having given careful consideration to the complaints of West Indian colonists. To satisfy them he compelled the Company to sell its merchandise to the habitants within a month of its arrival, and ordered that French vessels not belonging to the Company should be licensed to trade. Besides the danger of contraband trade, the fear of sedition was ever present. The negro slaves, the native Caribs, the Mulattoes, and the tameless buccaneers were elements of danger that required careful handling. The skill of such governors as d'Esnambuc and d'Ogeron, the founder of the French settlement in St Domingo, men who thoroughly understood the peculiar circumstances of the case, appealed strongly to Colbert, who with all his love of centralisation saw the need of independence of judgment and liberty of action for high officials on the spot. There was to be unity of government, but not necessarily uniformity. Thus he saw in the freebooters a source of strength for the tropical colony, while the Canadian trapper he would fain have suppressed. The tropical climate forbade the hope of the settlement of any very large white population in the islands; accordingly Jews and Protestants were allowed to enter here though they were excluded from Canada. In his correspondence with the governors he constantly urged a mild treatment of offenders; no one must ever be sent back to France for any crime except sedition. In the endeavour to people the islands with men and women, to stock them with domestic animals, and to develop a shipping interest, Colbert showed the same zeal as in Canada.

The fear lest the governors should defraud the Company required that a host of intendants, commissioners, receivers, etc., should be paid to watch their proceedings; and the large staff maintained by the Company robbed it of most of its profits. By 1674 its failure became obvious, for its debts were over three and a half million livres. Thereupon, besides paying an indemnity to the shareholders, the Crown took over their debts, and thus bought back the possessions of the great Company. From 1674 the colonial trade was thrown open to French subjects. In the same year the Dutch West India Company opened its trade to Dutch subjects. The danger of a general collapse of French colonial enterprise had been successfully tided over by the Company, and so far it had served its purpose. But the general opinion was that it had been ruining the islands, and great hopes for the future were now raised. The number of inhabitants was given as 45,000; the trade occupied 100 French ships of from 50 to 300 tons. The zeal of the

1683-1713]

Fourth period

87

Crown in developing the islands was not without a direct reward in the form of taxation, parallel to the four and a half per cent. duty paid by Barbados. The French taxation took its rise in the sum paid to the Company by French merchants who bought the licence to trade, which amounted to six livres a ton on imports and five per cent. on exports. In 1669 the King obtained the monopoly of these licences; and under the name Domaine d'Occident the duty was levied, after 1671, at the rate of three per cent. There was further a poll-tax of one cwt. of sugar on every freeman and every slave, together with a tobacco duty of 20 sous a pound, a small duty on cotton, and, for a time, duties on indigo and cocoa that discouraged the planters. The regulation, decreed for the better control of the trade, that ships must return to the port from which they started, and the partial confinement of trade to the ports of Marseilles and Rouen, exercised a damaging effect. The regulation of the sugar trade had certain distinctive merits, inasmuch as the refining of sugar on the spot was early promoted, instead of being discouraged in the interest of the refiners at home, as in all the other colonies.

The fourth period of French colonial history extends from 1683 to 1713-from the death of Colbert to the Treaty of Utrecht. In 1682 La Salle had sailed down the Mississippi. The support which he received in his attempt to found a colony at its mouth showed that Colbert's son, De Seignelay, was prepared to follow up his father's work, had not a period of reaction, which favoured continental rather than colonial expansion, set in to divert the current of Louis XIV's ideas. La Salle's scheme, as set forth by himself, was to obtain for France a second continental establishment which should make her "mistress of the whole continent," besides serving to harass Spain, and making possible an attack on the Mexican mines. "We should obtain there everything that has enriched New England and Virginia, timber, salted meat, tallow, corn, sugar, tobacco, honey, wax, resin, gums, pasturage, hemp," and such things as yearly freight two hundred vessels in New England. He observes that, if foreigners should anticipate the French in settling the Mississippi valley, New France would be completely hemmed in. He anticipates that the ease of living would here keep the settlers together, unlike the habitants of New France, who are obliged to seek their subsistence over a wide area. His talent for dealing with the natives had already established friendly relations with a vast range of tribes, and he urges that possession be taken in right of discovery and of the consent. of the greater number of inhabitants. His well-considered memoir determined the government to give him the support he asked; and four ships were despatched with 280 colonists, male and female, and abundant stores the first example of a French colony the whole expense of which was provided by the Crown. Unluckily La Salle's skill in the management of natives would seem to have been in part due to the very

88

Proprietary colony of Louisiana

[1712 qualities which made him an unsympathetic leader of French colonists, and unluckily, too, the prospect of successful raids on the Mexican mines served to divert his attention from the proper settlement of the colony. In 1687 La Salle was murdered by his own people, and the well-provided little colony was wholly lost. It served only to excite the watchfulness and cupidity of the more far-seeing of the English colonists. The proprietor of Carolina began to press his claims to the wider "Carolana," dating his claim from Charles I's patent of 1630; and in 1687 Dongan, the governor of New York, is found asking for a sloop to "discover La Salle's river," where, he notes, French possession will be an evil thing for both English and Spanish.

In 1698 the Louisiana scheme was again taken up by the French government under the influence of the Canadian brothers D'Iberville and Bienville, the sons of a Norman emigrant, who had led French arms and enterprise wherever an opening offered. In 1700 a fort was planted fifty miles up the river, and another at Biloxi, midway between the mouth and the nearest Spanish settlement eastward, Pensacola. The bulk of

the population of some 200 settlers consisted of Canadian coureurs; and when some Huguenots made application to join the colony, Louis XIV's reply was that he had not chased the heretics from his kingdom in order to found a republic for them in America.

sons.

In 1708 the population was still not more than 280, with some 60 Canadian coureurs; but its immediate strategic and possible commercial value was so far realised that Louis provided the forts with small garriThe climate and the unfortunate choice of sites for the forts, which were driven to become more or less peripatetic, were a constant source of discouragement, and agriculture was neglected in the belief that the most probable source of wealth lay in mineral treasures. In the meanwhile the colonists were dependent on the Indians for food.

Four years later Louisiana was converted into a proprietary colony, a form that had so far been untried by France. Perhaps the success of some of the English proprietary colonies may have inclined the government to the experiment. Crozat, a member of the flourishing Company of St Domingo, obtained the exclusive commerce of the nascent colony for fifteen years, his rights extending from the sea-coast to the river Illinois. Beaver was excluded from his monopoly, in order that the Canadian trade might not be injured. The Custom of Paris was introduced, and the administration put in the hands of a council after the pattern of that in St Domingo. After nine years Crozat was to assume all the expenses of government, including military charges, but till then the King subscribed 50,000 livres towards the cost. Crozat agreed to send two ships annually, and hoped to refund himself out of mines, gold, silver and pearls, silk and indigo. The ideas which La Salle had put forward some thirty years before had as yet struck no root, and the Governor La Mothe Cadillac wholly despaired of the future of the colony. But the work of