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 regime, 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.