They now proposed to wholly reorganize this unsound commercial system by directing capital and labor into new channels. Such natural productions of the country as masts, boards, ship-timber, flax, hemp, plaster, iron and copper ores, dried fish, whale and seal oils, and salted meats, might be exported, they said, with profit to the merchant and advantage to the laboring class, provided a suitable port were secured, at once safe, commodious, and well situated for collecting all these commodities, and shipping them abroad.
Cape Breton brought to Notice.
To this end, these intendants now first brought to notice the advantages of Cape Breton for such an establishment. Strangely enough, up to this time little or no attention had been paid to this island. Three or four insignificant fishing ports existed on its coasts, but as yet the whole interior was a shaggy wilderness, through which the Micmac Indians roamed as freely as their fathers had done before Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence. Its valuable deposits of coal and gypsum lay almost untouched in their native beds; its stately timber trees rotted where they grew; its unrivalled water-ways, extending through the heart of the island, served no better purpose than as a highway for wandering savages.
Acadia to be helped.
By creating such a port as the Raudots suggested, the voyage from France would be shortened one half, and the dangerous navigation of the St. Lawrence altogether avoided, since, instead of large ships having to continue their voyages to Quebec, the carrying trade of the St. Lawrence would fall to coasting vessels owned in the colony. A strong hand would also be given to the neighbor province, the fertile yet unprotected Acadia, which might thus be preserved against the designs of the English, while a thriving trade in wines, brandies, linens, and rich stuffs might reasonably be expected to spring up with the neighboring English colonies.
A Military and Naval Arsenal proposed.
These were considerations of such high national importance as to at once secure for the project an attention which purely strategic views could hardly be expected to command. And yet, the forming of a military and naval depot, strong enough to guarantee the security of the proposed port, and in which the king’s ships might at need refit, or take refuge, or sally out upon an enemy, was an essential feature of this elaborate plan, every detail of which was set forth with systematic exactness. For seven years the project was pressed upon the French court. War, however, then engaging the whole attention of the ministry, the execution of this far-seeing project, which had in view the demands of peace no less than of war, was unavoidably put off until the peace of Utrecht, in 1713, by giving a wholly new face to affairs in the New World, compelled France to take energetic measures for the security of her colonial possessions.
Peace of Utrecht.
By this treaty of Utrecht France surrendered to England all Nova Scotia, all her conquests in Hudson’s Bay, with Placentia, her most important establishment in Newfoundland. At the same time the treaty left Cape Breton to France, an act of incomparable folly on the part of the English plenipotentiaries who, with the map lying open before them, thus handed over to Louis the key of the St. Lawrence and of Canada. No one now doubts that the French king saw in this masterpiece of stupidity a way to retrieve all he had lost at a single stroke. The English commissioners, it is to be presumed, saw nothing.
English Harbor chosen.