[Footnote C:  Melpomene, Sec. 196.]

Although this second Senegal Company was protected by the rigid exclusion, under pain of fine and confiscation, of all other Frenchmen from the trade, it soon fell into debt and parted with its privilege to a third Company, and this in turn was restricted by the formation of a Guinea Company, so that it soon sold out to a fourth Senegal Company, which passed in 1709 into the hands of Rouen merchants who started a fifth; and this too was merged in the West-India Company which was formed in 1718.  So little did the agriculture of the islands, overstocked with engages, justify as yet the slave-traders in the losses and expenses which they incurred.

The Guinea Company was bound to import only one thousand yearly into all the French Antilles; but it did not flourish until it became an Asiento Company, when, during the War of Succession, a Bourbon mounted the throne of Spain.  It was called Asiento because the Spanish Government let, or farmed by treaty, the privilege of supplying its colonies with slaves.  The two principal articles of this contract, which was to expire in 1712, related to the number of negroes and the rent of the privilege.  If the war continued, the French Company was bound to furnish Spain with thirty-eight thousand negroes during the ten years of the contract, but in case of peace, with forty-eight thousand.  Each negro that the Company could procure was let to it for 33-1/3 piastres, in pieces of India.  In consequence of this treaty, the ports of Chili and Peru, and those in the South Sea, from which all other nations were excluded, stood open to the French, who carried into them vast quantities of merchandise besides the slaves, and brought home great sums in coin and bars.  The raw gold and silver alone which they imported for the year 1709 was reckoned at thirty millions of livres.

But at the Peace of Utrecht, Louis XIV., exhausted by an unprofitable war, relinquished his asiento to the English, who were eager enough to take it.  It was for this advantage that Marlborough had been really fighting; at least, it was the only one of consequence that Blenheim and Malplaquet secured to his country.

The reign of Louis XV. commenced in 1715.  By letters-patent which he issued on the 16th of January, 1716, he granted permission to all the merchants in his kingdom to engage in the African trade, provided their ships were fitted out only in the five ports of Rouen, Rochelle, Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Malo; nine articles were specially framed to encourage the trade in slaves, as by the Peace of Utrecht all the South-Sea ports were closed to the French, and only their own colonies remained.  France no longer made great sums of money by the trade in slaves, but her colonies began to thrive and demand a new species of labor.  The poor white emigrants were exhausted and demoralized by an apprenticeship which had all the features of slavery, and by a climate which will not readily permit a white man to become naturalized even when he is free.