If we turn to the field of commerce, the spirit of restriction appears as prominently as in the domain of industry. The Company of One Hundred Associates, during its thirty years of control, allowed no one to proceed to Quebec except on its own vessels, and nothing could be imported except through its storehouses. Its successor, the Company of the West Indies, which dominated colonial commerce from 1664 to 1669, was not a whit more liberal. Even under the system of royal government, the consistent keynotes of commercial policy were regulation, paternalism, and monopoly.
This is in no sense surprising. Spain had first given to the world this policy of commercial constraint and the great enrichment of the Spanish monarchy was everywhere held to be its outcome. France, by reason of her similar political and administrative system, found it easy to drift into the wake of the Spanish example. The official classes in England and Holland would fain have had these countries do likewise, but private initiative and enterprise proved too strong in the end. As for New France, there were spells during which the grip of the trading monopolies relaxed, but these lucid intervals were never very long. When the Company of the West Indies became bankrupt in 1669, the trade between New France and Old was ostensibly thrown open to the traders of both countries, and for the moment this freedom gave Colbert and his Canadian apostle, Talon, an opportunity to carry out their ideas of commercial upbuilding.
The great minister had as his ideal the creation of a huge fleet of merchant vessels, built and operated by Frenchmen, which would ply to all quarters of the globe, bringing raw products to France and taking manufactured wares in return. It was under the inspiration of this ideal that Talon built at Quebec a small vessel and, having freighted it with lumber, fish, corn, and dried pease, sent it off to the French West Indies. After taking on board a cargo of sugar, the vessel was then to proceed to France and, exchanging the sugar for goods which were needed in the regions of the St. Lawrence, it was to return to Quebec. The intendant's plans for this triangular trade were well conceived, and in a general way they aimed at just what the English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard were beginning to do at the time. The keels of other ships were being laid at Quebec and the officials were dreaming of great maritime achievements. But as usual the enterprise never got beyond the sailing of the first vessel, for its voyage did not yield a profit.
The ostensible throwing-open of the colonial trade, moreover, did not actually change to any great extent the old system of paternalism and monopoly. Commercial companies no longer controlled the channels of transportation, it is true, but the royal government was not minded to let everything take its own course. So the trade was taxed for the benefit of the royal treasury, and the privilege of collecting the taxes, according to the custom of the old régime, was farmed out. All the commerce of the colony, imports and exports, had to pass through the hands of these farmers-of-the-revenue who levied ten per cent on all goods coming and kept for the royal treasury one-quarter of the price fixed for all skins exported. Traders as a rule were not permitted to ship their furs directly to France. They turned them in to farmers-of-the-revenue at Quebec, where they received the price as fixed by ordinance, less one-quarter. This price they usually took in bills of exchange on Paris which, they handed over to the colonial merchants in payment for goods, and which the merchants in turn sent home to France to pay for new stocks. Nor were the authorities content with the mere fixing of prices. By ordinance they also set the rate of profit which traders should have upon all imported wares brought into the colony. This rate of profit was fixed at sixty-five per cent, but the traders had no compunction in going above it whenever they saw an opportunity which was not likely to be discovered. As far as the forest trade was concerned, the regulation was, of course, absurd.
Every year, about the beginning of May, the first ships left France for the St. Lawrence with general cargoes consisting of goods for the colonists themselves and for the Indians, as well as large quantities of brandy. When they arrived at Quebec, the vessels were met by the merchants of the town and by those who had come from Three Rivers and Montreal. For a fortnight lively trading took place. Then the goods which had been bought by the merchants of Montreal and Three Rivers were loaded upon small barques and brought to these towns to be in readiness for the annual fairs when the coureurs-de-bois and their Indians came down to trade in the late summer. As for the vessels which had come from France, these were either loaded with timber or furs and set off directly home again, or else they departed light to Cape Breton and took cargoes of coal for the French West Indies, where the refining of sugar occasioned a demand for fuel. The last ships left in November, and for seven months the colony was cut off from Europe.
Trade at Quebec, while technically open to any one who would pay the duties and observe the regulations as to rates of profit, was actually in the hands of a few merchants who had large warehouses and who took the greater part of what the ships brought in. These men were, in turn, affiliated more or less closely with the great trading houses which sent goods from Rouen or Rochelle, so that the monopoly was nearly as ironclad as when commercial companies were in control. When an outsider broke into the charmed circle, as happened occasionally, there was usually some way of hustling him out again by means either fair or foul. The monopolists made large profits, and many of them, after they had accumulated a fortune, went home to France. "I have known twenty of these pedlars," quoth La Hontan, "that had not above a thousand crowns stock when I arrived at Quebec in the year 1683 and when I left that place had got to the tune of twelve thousand crowns."
Glancing over the whole course of agriculture, industry, and commerce in New France from the time when Champlain built his little post at the foot of Cape Diamond until the day when the fleur-de-lis fluttered down from the heights above, the historian finds that there is one word which sums up the chief cause of the colony's economic weakness. That word is "paternalism." The Administration tried to take the place of Providence. It was as omnipresent and its ways were as inscrutable. Like as a father chasteneth his children, so the King and his officials felt it their duty to chasten every show of private initiative which did not direct itself along the grooves that they had marked out for the colony to follow. By trying to order everything they eventually succeeded in ordering nothing aright.
CHAPTER XI
HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED
In New France there were no privileged orders. This, indeed, was the most marked difference between the social organization of the home land and that of the colony. There were social distinctions in Canada, to be sure, but the boundaries between different elements of the population were not rigid; there were no privileges based upon the laws of the land, and no impenetrable barrier separated one class from another. Men could rise by their own efforts or come down through their own defaults; their places in the community were not determined for them by the accident of birth as was the case in the older land. Some of the most successful figures in the public and business affairs of New France, some of the social leaders, some of those who attained the highest rank in the noblesse, came of relatively humble parentage.