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Rh 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