"V. While awaiting an opportunity to make regulations, to confine each to his allotted trade, we permit Delaunay, in consideration of the business set up by him, to have only three garçons shoemakers and one apprentice, etc."
On the 28th of the same month Raudot ordered thirteen who had rented lots from the seigneurs on "lower" street, either to pay their rent or to hand them over by a certain date to the seigneurs on the reimbursement of the expenses for the buildings thereon and other improvements, the value of the same to be settled by experts mutually agreed upon.
The students of mercantile economy will find that on November 11, 1707, the Intendants Raudot (père et fils), writing to the Minister Pontchartrain, speak of the sad state of the country produced by the low price of the beaver, but still more by the loss of 50 per cent on the money given in France for the Canadian letter of exchange. In 1709 M. de Pontchartrain is surprised to hear that Montreal is filled with English merchandise—a thing not to be tolerated. This was not surprising, seeing that the Canadians were not producers, and the purchase of all their supplies from France became very expensive. A memoir of Raudot of July, 1708, gives an explanation that suffices. Too much reliance had been placed on the beaver trade which had been the pivotal point of the prosperity of the country, but it was necessarily a precarious resource. Sooner or later, there must result either a rarity of this product or a decrease in price. At present the colony was suffering from the latter. Agriculture, he pointed out, should be the principal object, but it was only an accessory. The beaver had been the gold mine of the country. The inhabitants had sought the woods first, preferring an adventurous and profitable life to a laborious one on the soil. Thus they had cultivated laziness and negligence. There was, however, a great quantity of cattle and easy food supplies, but a great scarcity of clothing. The trade of the country turned on a sum of 600,000 livres and it was with this sum that it had to settle for its purchases in France. This is too little for a population of eighteen to twenty thousand souls. Everyone pays in kind for the merchandise bought in France, in such a way that money does not even come this way. Merchandise is very dear and the habitant will not work except for a fat salary, saying that he uses up more wearing apparel in working than he can gain by his work. The remedy for this state of affairs is, to urge the population to the production of wheat, cattle, timber, oils, ships, by finding a market for Canadian products. He further deprecates the policy then in vogue of thinking too much of the trade interests of France. He urges the minister to be wide-minded, and to realize that by providing a wider field for the colony, the interest and prosperity of the colony ought sooner or later increase the prosperity of the mother country.
If France had learned this lesson of colonization, there would never have been the loss of this country to the English a half century later. The pupildom of New France was continued far too long by an overstrained, narrow and jealous paternalism.
We have made these lengthy notes on the trade relations of the colony because Montreal was the center of the beaver traffic. Indeed, as we have seen, there were not wanting those who were opposed to the expansion of the colony through outlying posts, but wished to concentrate in the lower part of the colony—the same principle already prevailing, which was to stand in the way of the growth and development of Ontario and Upper Canada in later years under the British rule.
A memoir presented to M. de Pontchartrain in 1710 makes this position clear, while the replies in the margin by M. de Vaudreuil, the governor, and MM. Raudot (father and son), joint-intendants, show the opposite view. The memoir hopes that the congés or permits to trade up-country will not be repeated; they have been the source of all the evils, lawlessness and pernicious traffic in eau de vie and of the stagnation of agriculture, contrary to the aim of this colony, which was to humanize and evangelize the savages. This suppression of congés would have the effect of raising the value of beaver skins, whose present abundance cheapens the market at this time. It would be of more avail to allow the Indians to bring their poultry to Montreal in exchange for merchandise, for the expense of transporting merchandise to them in the West raised the price so much that the Indians were constrained to go to the English for their supplies. The English did not allow their people to trade far afield. It was because M. de La Barre had not followed a similar policy that the French had had a war of fourteen years with the Iroquois.
The Marquis' reply was to the effect that it was the abuse of the congés, too frequently granted, and not their moderate use that was at fault. Rightly exploited and curtailed, they would favor the conversion of the Indians, the increase of the colony and the preservation of peace. The chief thing was to stop the liquor traffic. As for the savages going to the English, three or four hundred leagues, for cheaper merchandise, that was unreasonable if the goods were taken to them. But if they were not, and the choice lay between Montreal and Orange, then they would certainly choose the latter place because of cheaper prices. The fourteen years' war was not a result of the congés, but of M. de La Barre's action in allowing the Iroquois to pillage the French. It is true that the English do not mingle with the affairs of the Indians, but prefer to allow them to destroy one another; thus they are not loved and have no influence. Our policy is otherwise, and hence our strength. We maintain the peace of the whole West. If Michillimackinac had been reestablished, the "sauteux" would not have attacked the Pottawatomies, or attempted to cut the ears of the Iroquois—a failure which may still lead us to war again. What restrains the Iroquois from striking a blow at any of the savage tribes is, that they know, that by our efforts they will not have the opportunity of destroying these nations one after another, as they did formerly, but that they will have all of them on their back, at one and the same time.
A picture of a Sunday morning or feast day crush at the church door after service is to be found in an ordonnance of Jacques Raudot of January 21, 1708, when on account of the disorders arising, from those habitants with carriages and those on horseback, urging their horses to depart so quickly that they butt into one another and even into the foot passengers, to the risk of wounds and even of life, he enjoins under a penalty of 10 livres, applicable to the local parish church, that none should put their horses into a trot or a gallop until they are ten arpents from the church. This notice was fixed at the door of Notre Dame. It is to be hoped the curé had no occasion to look for any fines, after it had been sufficiently promulgated.
Road traveling in 1709 was no easy thing at all times, but in the winter least of all. [172] Yet it was necessary to keep up communication between Montreal and Quebec, so we can appreciate the wisdom of Jacques Raudot's ordonnance of December 13th of this year, enjoining all the habitants of the country in the districts north of the St. Lawrence to cut out, each one, before his habitation, a roadway in the places most convenient, as well as to make a roadway across the lake in the accustomed places. [173]
In 1709 we find Raudot dealing a blow at horse breeding. In an ordonnance of June 13, 1709, being informed that the habitants of the government of Montreal are rearing too great a number of horses to the detriment of horned and wool bearing cattle, whose pastures are eaten by the horses and whose number was decreasing, and as the attention of the government ought to be principally directed to their increasing abundance, it is ordered that each inhabitant shall not have more than two horses, or mares, and a colt, after the seeding time of the year 1710, to give time to get rid of the superfluous ones; after which they will be obliged to slaughter those not disposed of.