had fired the imagination of the whole western world. The spreading curiosity in France about outlandish peoples, distant voyages, and the fabulous wealth of Asia, is illustrated by the writings of that age, and by constant allusions to the subject in such authors as Rabelais and Montaigne. Nevertheless, although at the opening of the seventeenth century commercial and colonizing projects had been already entertained by that active and far-sighted ruler Henry IV, who projected a French East India Company, it was in England and Holland, not in France, that the first important step was taken by founding the two East India Companies that were destined to a long and memorable career. In 1624, however, began the long ministry of Richelieu, in whose powerful mind the conception of endowing France with a great dominion beyond sea reached its maturity, and had issue in successive decrees for the foundation and multiplication of colonizing companies in various parts of the world, from Canada in the West to Madagascar and the East Indies.

It is worth observation that in the charters of these companies may be found the earliest promulgations of principles that were consistently maintained throughout the entire course of French colonization under the old monarchy, but which would be in vain looked for in the commercial records of England or Holland. The Roman Catholic faith was established, to the rigid exclusion of all other religions; but on the other hand converted pagans were to be admitted to the full civil rights. of Frenchmen. The propagation of Christianity was placed upon a level with the plantation of colonies, as a direct object of these expeditions. Nevertheless their real motive was, after all, not so much economical or

propagandist, as political; the companies were organized by the great cardinal to counteract the accumulation of vast transmarine possessions by Spain, then France's most dangerous rival, and in order that Spain might not claim for herself the whole non-Christian world. In this policy, indeed, Richelieu was only imitating the tactics of England and Holland. Both these nations were already striking at the extremities of the unwieldy Spanish empire, cutting off its gold convoys, harrying its coasts and islands, sweeping the narrow seas by privateers, and generally pursuing that irregular buccaneering warfare of which the memory long lived among mariners in the romantic traditions of the Spanish Main. In these wild adventures the French took little share; but they had borrowed from their neighbours the system of chartered associations; and under Mazarin as under Richelieu, the peopling of new lands beyond the ocean by French Catholics, in the interests of God, and as a balance against Spain, was the essential principle of colonial action in France during the first half of the seventeenth century.

At this moment the religious idea was dominant in France. The court and all the fashionable society interested themselves warmly in collecting subscriptions for propagating the true faith among the heathen; missions were sent out, bishops were appointed, and the Jesuits began gradually to acquire great power in all the new colonies of North America. Nor was officialism less active than ecclesiasticism in the direction and superintendence of these projects for the extension of the faith and dominion of France. The system of companies under Church and State patronage was not popular among the men of business, who demanded of their Government no more than freedom of trade for

themselves, and protection from foreign enemies. But official predilections were then, as they have always been in France, adverse to the English practice of chartering a body of pioneers or merchant adventurers, and leaving them to plant settlements or factories by their own resources. The expeditions were not only authorized, but energetically promoted by the Government, with the result that the governing classes insisted on sharing the investment or taking their part in the speculations, with an eye to the benefits promised in this world and the next. All the administrative and

military commands were distributed among the noblesse; and among the hundred associates of the Company of New France we find thirty seigneurs de la cour, besides a certain number of ecclesiastic and even princely dignitaries, who are represented on the board by their secretaries.

No chartered association for the single purpose of trade, like the English or Dutch East India Companies, was founded by Richelieu, nor could any such company have been launched upon the system that has been just described. The French mercantile community demurred to conditions which placed all these corporations so completely under the paternal supervision of priests, nobles, and high officials; they also betrayed a perverse mistrust of the religious and propagandist element. They cautiously suggested that in commercial transactions spiritual directorship and ministerial supervision are not altogether desirable. The Chambers of Rouen and Marseilles recommended that at no price, and on no pretext, should the captains of their vessels be nominated by the king; they complained of French consuls abroad and revenue officers at home as equally dictatorial. They asked that religious interests should not rule

trading operations, but that their traffic should be protected at sea by the royal navy, and that trading factories should be allowed to manage their own affairs. It does not appear, in short, that Richelieu's colonial policy produced any notable results, beyond some remarkable voyages of discovery which gave a con-siderable impulse to all future colonization, and a great diffusion of missionary literature reporting the successfulpropagation of the faith in those countries that had been made over to the new companies.

We may thus register, even at this early stage, observations of a distinct and remarkable contrast in origin, character, and practical methods between the colonial systems of France and England. The first Frenchcolonies derived their initiative from the Crown; they were formed under strict official regulations, and the note of high orthodoxy was predominant in their constitution. The first English colonies owed their foundation either to men who had left their fatherland to escape the oppression of kings and bishops, or to 'gentleman adventurers' with a taste for the roving life and freedom of a new country, which they were quite willing to hold as national property so long as they were permitted to use their own ways and means of acquiring it. And at a time when the great commercial companies of England and Holland were already wresting from Spain and Portugal the invaluable prize of the sea-borne trade with Asia, the French merchants were deterred from entering into competition with them mainly by the misguided solicitude of their own Government.

For the commerce of France, however, better times were coming. The period of greatest colonial expansion, as it is styled by French writers, was inaugurated when Colbert, the famous minister of Louis XIV,

- launched, in 1664, his two Companies of the East and West Indies. It has been already explained that in those days the term 'Indies' bore an exceedingly wide geographical significance in both hemispheres. Under the general denomination of the East Indies were included all the coasts of Southern Asia, from the Persian Gulf to China, Malacca, Borneo, Java, and all the rich Spice Islands of the China Sea. By the West Indies were meant not only the islands now known under that name, but the whole eastern littoral, and even the interior as far as it had been explored, of Northern and Central America. No ship could double the Cape of Good Hope without coming within the trading sphere of the East India Companies; while to cross the Atlantic was to trespass on some West Indian monopoly. The Charter of the Dutch Company (1600) conferred upon them the exclusive privilege of navigation in all Eastern waters, with power to seize and confiscate any vessel that intruded on their domain. The Charter of Colbert's East India Company granted a similar monopoly of trade for fifty years in all lands and seas beyond the Cape of Good Hope. It is not too much to say that the great Companies of the seventeenth century were the champions and delegated agents of their respective nations in the competition for commerce and territory throughout the whole non-Christian world, and from this point of view the importance of a good colonial policy can hardly be over-estimated. The French West Indian Company was an association of the type invented by Richelieu, with authority to conquer and convert the heathen; but the foundation of the East India Company by Colbert on different lines marks a distinct step in advance. This Company, fitted out on the Dutch and English models as a chartered body with