Trade was carried on for a time by means of negotiable notes, payable in furs, goods, or farm produce. In 1685, the intendant Meules issued a card currency. He had no money to pay the soldiers, “and not knowing,” he informs the minister, “to what saint to make my vows, the idea occurred to me of putting in circulation notes made of cards, each cut into four pieces; and I have issued an ordinance commanding the inhabitants to receive them in payment.” * The cards were common playing cards, and each piece was stamped with a fleur-de-lis and a crown, and signed by the governor, the intendant, and the clerk of the treasury at Quebec. ** The example of Meules found ready imitation. Governors and intendants made card money whenever they saw fit; and, being worthless everywhere but in Canada, it showed no disposition to escape the colony. It was declared convertible not into coin, but into bills of exchange; and this conversion could only take place at brief specified periods. “The currency used in Canada,” says a writer in the last years of the French rule, “has no value as a representative of money. It is the sign of a sign.” *** It was card representing paper, and this paper was very often dishonored. In 1714, the amount of card rubbish had risen to two million livres. Confidence was lost, and trade was half dead. The minister Ponchartrain came to the rescue, and promised to
* Meules au Ministre, 24 Sept., 1685.
** Mémoire addressé au Régent, 1715.
*** Considérations sur l’Etat du Canada, 1758.
redeem it at half its nominal value. The holders preferred to lose half rather than the whole, and accepted the terms. A few of the cards were redeemed at the rate named; then the government broke faith, and payment ceased. “This afflicting news,” says a writer of the time, “was brought out by the vessel which sailed from France last July.”
In 1717, the government made another proposal, and the cards were converted into bills of exchange. At the same time a new issue was made, which it was declared should be the last. * This issue was promptly redeemed, but twelve years later another followed it. In the interval, a certain quantity of coin circulated in the colony; but it underwent fluctuations through the intervention of government; and, within eight years, at least four edicts were issued affecting its value. ** Then came more promises to pay, till, in the last bitter years of its existence, the colony floundered in drifts of worthless paper.
One characteristic grievance was added to the countless woes of Canadian commerce. The government was so jealous of popular meetings of all kinds, that for a long time it forbade merchants to meet together for discussing their affairs; and, it was not till 1717 that the establishment of a bourse or exchange was permitted at Quebec and Montreal. ***
In respect of taxation, Canada, as compared with
* Edits et Ord., I. 370.
** Ibid., 400, 432, 436, 484.
*** Doutre et Lareau, Hist, du Droit Canadien, 254.
France, had no reason to complain. If the king permitted governors and intendants to make card money, he permitted nobody to impose taxes but himself. The Canadians paid no direct civil tax, except in a few instances where temporary and local assessments were ordered for special objects. It was the fur trade on which the chief burden fell. One-fourth of the beaver-skins, and one-tenth of the moose-hides, belonged to the king; and wine, brandy, and tobacco contributed a duty of ten per cent. During a long course of years, these were the only imposts. The king, also, retained the exclusive right of the fur trade at Tadoussac. A vast tract of wilderness extending from St. Paul’s Bay to a point eighty leagues down the St. Lawrence, and stretching indefinitely northward towards Hudson’s Bay, formed a sort of royal preserve, whence every settler was rigidly excluded. The farmers of the revenue had their trading-houses at Tadoussac, whither the northern tribes, until war, pestilence, and brandy consumed them, brought every summer a large quantity of furs.
When, in 1674, the West India Company, to whom these imposts had been granted, was extinguished, the king resumed possession of them. The various duties, along with the trade of Tadoussac, were now farmed out to one Oudiette and his associates, who paid the Crown three hundred and fifty thousand livres for their privilege. *
* The annual return to the king from the ferme du Canada
was, for some years, 119,000 francs (livres). Out of this
were paid from 35,000 to 40,000 francs a year for “ordinary
charges.” The governor, intendant, and all troops except the
small garrisons of Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers, were
paid from other sources. There was a time when the balance
must have been in the king’s favor; but profit soon changed
to loss, owing partly to wars, partly to the confusion into
which the beaver trade soon fell. “His Majesty,” writes the
minister to the governor in 1698, “may soon grow tired of a
colony which, far from yielding him any profit, costs him
immense sums every year.”