1627]

The Company of New France.

73

of Richelieu, whose desire to secure a great sea-power made him perceive the wisdom of enlarging the limits not only of French trade but also of French settlement.

The decay of the Spanish empire opened to the Dutch, the French and the English the possibility of a colonial expansion which fitted in with, and was necessary to, the development of the political and commercial ideas of more far-sighted thinkers. Commercial and political principles combined to point the necessity for a navy strong enough to protect the colonial trade, and to prevent all other nations from sharing in its profits. Colonies produced saleable commodities; and the carrying-trade developed a mercantile marine. A subsidiary consideration was the desire to secure strategic coigns of vantage and convenient stations for receiving a fleet in distress. The time had not yet come for the development of wider views. Indeed, the possibility of depopulating the mother-country was acknowledged to be a serious danger; nothing had occurred to suggest hopes of great racial expansion.

The risks involved in colonial speculation were still so considerable, and the amount of superfluous capital was still so small, that the Dutch, French and English as yet saw no means to develop colonial trade other than the privileged company, forgetful of the many occasions on which the timely arrival of an unlicensed vessel had saved a dying colony. Richelieu's creation of the Company of New France, consisting of one hundred and twenty Associates, in 1627, marks an epoch in the development of French colonisation, inasmuch as now for the first time government support was offered to supply the want of adequate voluntary contributions. The Association was on a larger scale than the earlier companies; its acknowledged purpose was wider; and the subscribers (one of whom was Richelieu) were men of very different ranks. The twelve largest shareholders were to be ennobled, and many privileges were extended to those who took up the stock. The Company's merchandise was exempted from customs, and the King promised to provide two vessels of war for the Company's service. Entire possession of the soil was given to the Company, together with rights of justice and lordship, from Florida to the Arctic Circle, and the monopoly of all trade, except in the cod and whale fisheries, which were free to all French subjects. In return, the Company rendered homage and fealty, and submitted to certain conditions. Two or three hundred artificers were to go to Canada at once, and in the course of fifteen years at least 4000 men and women were to be sent, and maintained for three years. All emigrants were to be French and Catholic, and for each habitation three ecclesiastics were to be provided by the Company. The missionary purpose was put forward prominently. But the capital of the Company amounted only to 300,000 livres; and here was a principal source of weakness. The experiences of the Virginian Company, under more favourable conditions, proved that a far larger capital was necessary.

74

The Company of the Isles of America.

[1626-7

Still more inadequate was the capital provided for the French Company of the Isles of America, viz. 45,000 livres, of which Richelieu subscribed 10,000. While on the mainland France and England were entering claims extending from Florida to the Arctic Circle, and from the 34th to the 45th degree respectively, in the West Indian islands similarly extensive and unsubstantial claims were entered by both parties, and again with a close coincidence in date. As the Spanish supremacy lapsed, the smaller West Indian islands were deserted and left open to adventurers of all nationalities. The Englishman Warner and the Frenchman d'Esnambuc alike selected St Kitt's, one of the Leeward Islands, deserted by the Spaniards, as one of the most convenient whence to direct attacks on a larger spoil. It is possible that the two rivals chose the same island in order to use each other's alliance in case of danger from Spain. Both foresaw great opportunities in the future, and both came home to seek government support in their undertakings. To the French Company were granted all the islands not possessed by Christian princes that lay between the 11th and 18th degrees, with a reservation of a tithe of the produce to the King for twenty years. The English counter-step was the grant of all the Caribbean Islands between the 10th and 20th degrees to the proprietary government of the Earl of Carlisle (1627).

Similarly, in Guiana a company of Rouen merchants, in 1626, sought to follow up beginnings which dated from La Ravardière's enterprise (1604); but here again the English had entered claims by more than one attempted settlement. But the dangers of the climate, the hostility of the natives and the jealousy of the Dutch and Portuguese, long made permanent settlement impossible alike to French and English. The long story of failure is interesting mainly as an indication of the wide geographical range which the Anglo-French colonial conflict covered from the earliest period.

The second period of French colonial history, from 1627 to 1664, is a period of quiescence, in which slowly but surely some of the main roots struck. The brilliant hopes for Canada's future, which the Company of New France had raised in French bosoms, were doomed to an abrupt disappointment; for the English colonists seized the opportunity created by an outbreak of hostilities with France, to cut off the fleet sent to the relief of the Catholic colony. The scheme of attack, directed by the Kirkes, the Calvinist sons of a Scotch settler in Dieppe, was so well concerted that in 1629 Champlain and the little fort of Quebec had no choice but to surrender, and, till the peace of St Germain 1632, New France was an English possession.

For a time the English claim threatened pressure at all points. The work of Guy and Calvert promised permanent settlement in Newfoundland. The foundation of colonies at Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay showed that the question of the Acadian frontier must grow serious.

1627-64]

Second period of colonisation.

75

In 1621 James I granted to Sir William Alexander the "isle and continent of Norumbega"; the continental portion to be styled New Alexandria, the peninsular Nova Scotia. In 1627 Alexander's son made a settlement opposite Port Royal, and the son of La Tour, the French successor to de Poutrincourt, withdrew to Cape Sable. With the formal restoration of Canada and Acadia in 1632, a better regulated attempt at their colonisation followed; but the proposal to make three provinces of Canada, Port Royal and Cape Breton rendered La Tour jealous of the rival governors, and he encouraged interference from the now flourishing New Englanders. In 1656, with Cromwell's co-operation, the Acadian settlement once more passed to the English and was granted to Sir Thomas Temple, who vigorously developed it. But in 1667 Charles II's French sympathies compelled the restoration of the much debated territory. No boundary-line however long remained satisfactory to both parties, and the weakness of the French colony exposed it to continual attacks on the part of its powerful neighbour. Eventually the Kennebec river was to become notorious as a sort of "no-man's land" where encroachments might, or might not, constitute serious offences according as the exigencies of the moment, and the readiness of the rival parties to proceed to larger issues, should determine.

After the restoration of Canada the zeal of the Company began to fall off; and in 1663 the population was only 2500, at a time when the town of Boston numbered 14,300 inhabitants, and Virginia over 80,000. A main cause of the backwardness of Canada lay in the particular circumstances that the colonists were called upon to meet. Unluckily for France, Champlain's arrival in Canada had coincided with the rise of the Iroquois confederacy of Five Nations and the outbreak of hostilities between the races south of the St Lawrence and the Algonquin races, inhabiting the Lake districts and the River valley. It was natural and necessary that the scanty band of settlers should seek a friendly alliance with the natives whose habitations lay nearest to them or into whose lands they pushed their explorations; but these natives happened to belong to tribes destined ultimately to succumb in one of the internecine wars which had continually thinned the native population of America. The hostile confederacy is believed to have numbered in the height of its power not more than 2200 fighting men; but the race of the Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas, who made up the Five Nations, was superior in quality to that of the Algonquins and Hurons, the French allies. Their power of permanent confederation supplies evidence enough of their superiority. By lucky accident the English settlements escaped the path of the Iroquois. The tribes that had occupied the New England coasts had been devastated by disease shortly before the arrival of the Puritans, and in Virginia too none of the tribes that were dislodged belonged to the races whom a great future awaited. The path of the Iroquois naturally stretched northward and westward to the

76

Relations with the natives.

[1627hunting grounds, rather than east of the Alleghanies to the coast. Even if the future growth of the Iroquois power could have been foreseen, a neutral position was impossible for intruders so weakly supported as were the early French traders. According to Champlain's belief he and a force of 120 soldiers supported by his two or three thousand savage allies could force English and Dutch to retire to the coasts, and could then keep the general peace with the Iroquois.

A policy of extermination was no part of the French scheme. It was Champlain's hope that the beginnings of New France might be made easy by a warm friendship with the Indians. If a large French population failed to emigrate, the example of the Spanish colonies showed that the natives themselves could be used as labourers. In order to be gallicised, the Indians must be converted, and the converts must be protected from the raids of the heathen. But the very process of conversion and protection, the insidious effects of contact with civilisation, and the pressure of repeated Iroquois attack, involved the unintentional destruction of the tribes whose alliance was most easily secured.

The position of the Hurons in the neighbourhood of Lake Simcoe had made them a defence to the tribes north of the lakes; with the fall of the Hurons the Algonquins were the next exposed. Thus it happened that the missionary work which engaged the best efforts of the French from 1632 to 1664 was deprived of a large part of its usefulness; and during this period it was missionary work alone that met with enthusiastic support at home.

The members of the Company in whose hands the future of the colony lay, for the most part perceived that their chances of personal profit depended on the fur-trade. A large population of French farmers was not to their advantage; for agriculture diminished the profits of the chase, and in a forest-country yielded a low return. No chartered company had yet found profit in an agricultural colony, and the northern shores of the St Lawrence, being the coldest portion of the country, offered the least hope. Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal, each ninety miles distant from its neighbour, were planned as trading-posts only. Of the total population one-third was gathered at Quebec, the least sheltered and least fertile of the three. During the long winter there was no communication between the three posts except on snowshoes. So slight was the Company's success even in the fur-trade-for systematic fraud on the part of its officials could not be effectually checked that the temporary cession of its privileges was found to be advantageous. In 1645 the Canadian colonists obtained the fur-trade in return for an annual payment of a thousand pounds weight of beaver-skins. The Company still allowed no stranger to go to Canada except on its own vessels, and fixed a tariff for the purchase of furs. The Company chose the Governor-General, and on rare occasions he was assisted by a Council

-1664]

The emigrants.

77

consisting of the Superior of the Jesuits, and of three syndics representing the inhabitants of Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers. Appeal might be made from the judicial decisions of this council to the parlement at Rouen. The habitants, who came for the most part from Normandy, were free from litigious spirit, and such disputes as arose were settled by the governor in the way of arbitration.

The emigrants from France consisted mainly of humble artificers who bound themselves to work for three years without payment, in returħ for their passage and keep. At the end of the three years they might hope to receive a grant of land en roture from one of the lords of lands whom the Company had enfeoffed; or, if they preferred a life of adventure, they entered the fur-trade. The number of enterprising heads of families seeking to raise the family fortunes by taking up a grant of land en seigneurie was as yet very small. Beyond an increase of dignity, such grants offered little advantage. A seigneurial grant of some ten leagues by twelve was merely hunting-ground, unless the lord could obtain labourers willing to take grants en censive or en roture, who paid a nominal rent per acre, together with some agricultural service on the lord's demesne. The burden of defence was great when the danger of Indian raids grew serious; and agriculture was not as a rule carried on except in close proximity to the three forts.

The men to whom emigration offered the greatest attraction during this period were not those who sought to found a family or fortune, but those who sought the crown of martyrdom, or, if life at all, a life of religious devotion and perpetual celibacy. Monastic sentiment found in the French colonies a remarkable revival. The Jesuit father's reflexion, "should we at last die of misery how great our happiness will be,” animated men to endure hideous mutilations and agonising sufferings at the hands of the Indian enemy, and made them indifferent to starvation, thirst, fatigue and the torments of Canadian forest travel. Women too crowded to the new country in order to deny themselves the pleasures of the old, to tend the Indians dying of small-pox, and to teach Indian girls to seek with them the crown of virginity. The growth of religious institutions was for the present out of all proportion to the development of the State, which above all things required population. But the lines of Jesuit enterprise were fairly varied. Unlike the Récollets, the Jesuits were under no vow of poverty and encouraged agriculture and trade with that definiteness of purpose which they possessed by virtue of their intellectual superiority. At home their work was kept constantly in mind by their writings, by their appeals for help, and by the Crown itself.

In all but population and strength to resist the Iroquois the little colony stood well. Men of bad character were not allowed to stay, and care for the education and well-being of the Indians was a first thought with those who had power. Humanitarian influences were