"Gentlemen," he began, "I have summoned you to meet me here because a situation has arisen which is of the utmost gravity to the welfare of the province and the larger interests of his Majesty's realm. Recently I have been in receipt of a communication in the form of a petition signed by many of the chief merchants of the province, beseeching me to abandon my opposition to the retention of the free trade with Canada which is now temporarily secured to them by the action of the Lords of Trade in suspending decision upon the law prohibiting the trade in Indian goods which I secured to be passed last year."
"That petition represented the sober thought of a majority of the merchants and traders, your Excellency," spoke up a prosperous-looking man in the front row facing Master Burnet.
"It may be so," replied the governor. "But I would suggest to you, my friends, that certain knowledge hath come to me which compels me to wonder whether you would persist in this attitude were you acquainted with it. Briefly, I have lately obtained definite information that the French are beginning the erection of a stone fort at Jagara."
"There are many such reports in circulation," said another merchant, a hard-featured man with graying hair. "It seems to many of us, sir, that the fault is as much upon our side as upon that of the French. Why must we assail them if they seek to protect their interests?"
"I agree with the principle of what you say, sir," answered the governor patiently. "But in this case, permit me to point out that the territory this side of the Falls of Jagara is secured to us by the Peace of Utrecht. 'Tis not only that the French have no right to construct a fort there. They have no right to maintain a trading-post there.
"Yet my agent talked with the officers in charge, Monsieur de Joncaire and Monsieur de Lery, and they boasted of their intent to erect such a fort as would be a curb on our Indian allies, the Iroquois, and divert to their posts farther up the Cadarakui Lake the fur trade which now comes to us at Irondequoit and Oswego, Schenectady and Albany."
"Your Excellency is needlessly worried concerning the fur-trade," asserted the hard-featured merchant. "What matters it to us the way in which the furs come! They will go ultimately to the people paying the best prices for them, and those people are ourselves."
"I thank you for putting me in the way of bringing forward a most important point," returned the governor suavely. "At the time I received word of the building of the fort at Jagara, I received also this report from an agent in Montreal——"
"Why must we have spies?" interrupted a third merchant.
"To protect our just interests, sir," said the governor, and for the first time a hint of sternness rang in his voice. "This report announces the doubling of the price paid for beaver at tie French posts, so that now they are on a par with us."