On the whole, the growth of the population during this period compares favourably with the growth of trade.  In 1664 a general monopoly of Canadian trade had been conceded to the West India Company, on terms which gave every promise of success.  But the trading companies of France proved a series of melancholy failures, and at this point Colbert fared no better than Richelieu.  When Frontenac reached Canada the West India Company was hopelessly bankrupt, and in 1674 the king acquired its rights.  This change produced little or no improvement.  Like France, Canada suffered greatly through the war with Holland, and not till after the Peace of Nimwegen (1678) did the commercial horizon begin to clear.  Even then it was impossible to note any real progress in Canadian trade, except in a slight enlargement of relations with the West Indies.  During his last year at Quebec Duchesneau gives a very gloomy report on commercial conditions.

For this want of prosperity Frontenac was in no way responsible, unless his troubles with Laval and Duchesneau may be thought to have damped the colonizing ardour of Louis XIV.  It is much more probable that the king withheld his bounty from Canada because his attention was concentrated on the costly war against Holland.  Campaigns at home meant economy in Canada, and the colony was far from having reached the stage where it could flourish without constant financial support from the motherland.

In general, Frontenac’s policy was as vigorous as he could make it.  Over commerce, taxes, and religion he had no control.  By training and temper he was a war governor, who during his first administration fell upon a time of peace.  So long as peace prevailed he lacked the powers and the opportunity to enable him to reveal his true strength; and his energy, without sufficient vent, broke forth in quarrels at the council board.

With wider authority, Frontenac might have proved a successful governor even in time of peace, for he was very intelligent and had at heart the welfare of the colony.  As it was, his restrictions chafed and goaded him until wrathfulness took the place of reason.  But we shall err if we conclude that when he left Canada in discomfiture he had not earned her thanks.  Through pride and faults of temper he had impaired his usefulness and marred his record.  Even so there was that which rescued his work from the stigma of failure.  He had guarded his people from the tomahawk and the scalping-knife.  With prescient eye he had foreseen the imperial greatness of the West.  Whatever his shortcomings, they had not been those of meanness or timidity.

CHAPTER VI

THE LURID INTERVAL

We have seen that during Frontenac’s first term of office no urgent danger menaced the colony on the frontier.  The missionary and the explorer were steadily pressing forward to the head of the Great Lakes and into the valley of the Mississippi, enlarging the sphere of French influence and rendering the interior tributary to the commerce of Quebec.  But this peaceful and silent expansion had not passed unnoticed by those in whose minds it aroused both rivalry and dread.  Untroubled from without as New France had been under Frontenac, there were always two lurking perils—­the Iroquois and the English.