The Taking of Louisburg, 1745

by Samuel Adams Drake

French Colonial System.

Its Unsatisfactory Workings.

In creating Louisburg the court of Versailles had far more extended views than the building of a strong fortress to guard the gateway into Canada would of itself imply. Unquestionably that was a powerful inducement to the undertaking; but, in the beginning, it certainly appears to have been only a secondary consideration. For a long time the condition of affairs in the colony had been far from satisfactory, while the future promised little that was encouraging. Compared with the English colonies, its progress was slow, irregular, and unstable. Agriculture was greatly neglected. So were manufactures. The home government had exercised, from the first, a guardianship that in the long run proved fatal to the growth of an independent spirit. There were swarms of governmental and ecclesiastical dependents who laid hold of the fattest perquisites, or else, through munificent and inconsiderate grants obtained from the crown, enjoyed monopolies of trade to the exclusion of legitimate competition. These leeches were sucking the life-blood out of Canada. So far, then, from being a self-sustaining colony, the annual disbursements of the crown were looked to as a means to make good the deficiency arising between what the country produced and what it consumed. Without protection the English colonies steadily advanced in wealth and population; with protection, Canada, settled at about the same time, scarcely held her own.

Two very able and sagacious men, the intendants Raudot, were the first who had the courage to lay before the court of Versailles the true condition of affairs, and the ability to suggest a remedy for it.

The Fur Trade Monopoly.

These intendants represented that the fur trade had always engrossed the attention of the Canadians, to the exclusion of everything else. Not only had the beaver skin become the recognized standard for all exchanges of values, but the estimated annual product of the country was based upon it, very much as we should reckon the worth of the grain crop to the United States to-day. It was also received in payment for revenues. Now, after a long experience, what was the result of an exclusive attention to this traffic? It was shown that the fur trade enriched no one except a few merchants, who left the country as soon as they had acquired the means of living at their ease in Old France. It had, therefore, no element whatever of permanent advantage to the colony.

Danger of Exclusive Attention to it.

It was also shown that this fur trade was by no means sufficient to sustain a colony of such importance as Canada unquestionably might become under a different system of management; for whether the beaver should finally become extinct through the greed of the traders, or so cheapened by glutting the market abroad as to lose its place in commerce entirely, it was evident that precisely the same result would be reached. In any case, the business was a precarious one. It limited the number of persons who could be profitably employed; it bred them up to habits of indolence and vice without care for the future; and it kept them in ignorance and poverty to the last. But, what was worst of all, this all-engrossing pursuit kept the population from cultivating the soil, the true and only source of prosperity to any country.

Other cogent reasons were given, but these most conclusively set forth what a mercantile monopoly having its silent partners in the local government and church, as well as in the royal palace itself, had been able to do in the way of retarding the development of the great native resources of Canada. It was so ably done that no voice was raised against it. And with this most lucid and fearless exposé of the puerile use thus far made of those resources the memorialist statesmen hoped to open the king’s eyes.

The two Raudots offer a Remedy.