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 92 Law and the Company of the Indies. [1713- allow their trade in sugar, tobacco, coffee, cocoa, and red dyes to reach great proportions. Within four years of the Treaty of Utrecht, the whole of France had become convinced of the greatness of its immediate colonial future, and looked to the financier Law to play the part of Colbert on a still grander scale. The belief that the colonies required only capital to secure their progress made the principle of the grand Imperial Chartered Company appear as attractive as ever, in spite of the lessons of the past. The moment for a change of some sort was opportune, as Crozat's failure in Louisiana (1717) reopened the question of the best way of dealing with the Mississippi valley. The monopoly of the fur-trade in Canada and Acadia was also seeking a farmer. It was proposed to hand these over to a new Company of the West with what then seemed the vast capital of 100 million livres. The purchase of shares by Law's Bank caused the requisite "boom," and the interest of speculators was directed to the discovery of colonial wealth in every imaginable form. All the existing companies, believing success assured if they joined Law's scheme, elected to cooperate; and the Company of the West, reinforced with the privileges of the French East India Company, became the Company of the Indies. For a time the new Company made sincere attempts at the development of Louisiana, which, as the least known colony, offered the wildest hopes to the fevered imagination of the speculator. Colonists, for the most part of the worst type, were poured into it ; the foundations of New Orleans were laid ; and vast grants of territory were allotted to a few individuals. But the usual troubles arose; the Company sought to make so high a profit on the merchandise which it imported, and fixed so low a tariff of prices for exports, that the sufferings of the colonists became at last matter of general knowledge, in spite of all attempts, by means of postal censorship, or by refusing colonists leave to return home, to keep the secret of the colony's situation. With the collapse of Law, Louisiana fell once more into the background; the very extravagance of the hopes that had been raised now made the difficulties in the way of successful colonisation seem all the more insuperable. The colony, which in 1721 numbered 5420, of whom only 600 were negroes, abruptly lost the greater part of its white population, while the slaves alone increased. The Natchez Indians began to show hostility so soon as the white population thinned, and the colonists were careless in their treatment of them; the missionaries, who had been instrumental in maintaining native alliances in Canada, were absent; and the numerical strength of the negro slaves offered opportunity for conspiracies between them and the natives. In 1731 the colony obtained a hard-won triumph over the Natchez, a number of whom were sent as slaves to St Domingo; but the victory cost the colony dear in more ways than one. In 1732 the Company yielded its chartered rights over Louisiana to the King for 1,450,000 livres, more than they were