THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA.*
THE subject of this work is one of which the author is thoroughly master, and which it would seem from the preface has been his study from his youth up. The book itself forms part of a series dealing more or less with certain portions of early Canadian history, and as such must be looked at as a serious historical work, rather than as a mere fragmentary study of a portion of time or of a group of historical personages. Of course, if judged by a high standard, a work is pretty sure to be open to a good deal of adverse criticism, but the simple fact that it is worth being criticised by such a standard at once places it on a higher level than inferior works which may meet with more favourable treatment from a lower point of view. The book bears marks of very great industry and research upon the part of Mr. Park man ; be appears to have consulted every available original document in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies at Paris and elsewhere, and he has undoubtedly given to the world a great malts of facts of the most interesting kind relating to the French administration of Canada, which would probably have otherwise long remained hidden in dusty strong-boxes. He has given any one who cares anything at all about the Colonies an opportunity of forming his own opinion upon the methods by which the monarchical adminis- tration of France "strove to make good its bold, why it achieved a certain kind of success, and why it failed at last." But with all Mr. Parkman's industry and with all the facts which he spreads before us, he is unable to paint a harmonious historical picture. The work contains a vast amount of material, but it lies before us in disjointed masses, and instead of a consecutive story, arranged in a clear chronological order, with certain points standing well out, based upon symmetrically arranged facts, we have a pile of very interesting information, but not a properly moulded historical work. Therefore, valuable as this book undoubtedly is, we cannot praise its form. Mr. Perlman is very painstaking, but he clearly does not possess one of the great requisites of an historian, namely, the power of subordinating details to the general plan of the work. The period of time over which his book ostensibly extends is from 1642, when a large number of French settlers found a new home in Canada, until the Peace of Paris, in 1763, when France ceded her North- American Colonies to the British Crown. But the latter part of the work only cursorily describes, in a general manner, the social and religious state of Canada, and in no way deals with actual events. This, we think, is a mistake, for the earlier portion of the time receives a full description in all that relates to the government of the colony ; and it would have been better to have confined both the facts and the conclusions to be deduced from them within a shorter period of time, or else have gone more fully into the later stage of the French Dominion of Canada. But a great deal of the early portion is very picturesquely described. This early part is chiefly remarkable as showing the working of the Jesuit system, in a community where they were enabled to carry out their plans almost unchecked by any secular authority, and where, when Church and State did clash, the conflict invariably ended in the triumph of the former. Another point of interest which also stands out sharply is the utter uselessness of keeping a colony in commercial and religious leading-strings in order to make it prosperous. In the first years of the colony, the Jesuits were eminently missionaries, of wonderful activity and energy, and an account of their deeds often reads more like a romance than a piece of true narrative. But as the colony increased in size and importance, they ceased to be merely missionaries, and became meddlers in State matters and weights upon the prosperity of Canada. In their first capacity their deeds call for our admiration, in the last they can only be regarded as utterly reprehensible. Take, for example, Dollier de Casson's work during one winter at Fort St. Anne, a new fort, built on Isle la Motte, at the northern end of Lake Champlain. After Tracy's • The Old Regime in Canada. By Francis Parkman. London: Sampson Low and Co. 1876. invasion of the Mohawk territory, this outpost was left with a small garrison alone in the Canadian wilderness. Dollier de Casson was a stout-hearted and stout-limbed Jesuit, -who bad at one time been a cavalry officer under Turenne. His labours during the long winter were such as would have exhausted many. Doctor, priest, nurse, and companion, he went through his duties ever cheerful and undaunted. "His cheery temper," writes Mr. Parkman (p. 203), "now stood him in good stead, for there was dreary work before him, and he was not the man to flinch from it. The garrison of Fort St. Anne had nothing to live upon but salt pork and half-spoiled flour. The scurvy broke out with fury. In a short time forty out of the sixty men became victims of the loathsome malady. Day or [and?] night Dollier de Casson and Forestier, the equally devoted young surgeon, had no rest. The surgeon's strength failed, and the priest was himself slightly attacked with the disease." Take, again, the mission of Father Simon le Moyne. The Jesuit Mission to the Hurons was ruined, but they boldly projected one to the destroyers,—the Iroquois. This took place in the year 1654. "Thus peace would be restored to Canada, a barrier of fire opposed to the Dutch and English heretics, and the power of the Jesuits increased." At Montreal the real departure of Le Moyne took place in a canoe; with a young Frenchman and two Indians, he began to navigate the tumultuous waters of the Upper St. Lawrence. Once he was seized by a war party of Mohawks, but released, and the intrepid priest returned in safety from his mission.
But any benefits which Canada may for a time have received from the ministration of the members of this celebrated Society were soon far counterbalanced by the evils they wrought by endeavour- ing to make themselves the supreme rulers of the colony. One instance will show this with sufficient clearness. In April, 1663, a royal edict annulled the powers of the Company of New France, and all power, legislative, judicial, and executive, was placed in the bands of a Governor (whom Laval, the Vicar-Apostolic of Canada, had chosen in a recent visit to France) ; of Laval himself, and of seven members to be chosen jointly by Laval and the Governor (p. 135). Laval, with whom the choice practically lay, appointed as members men who had already joined a former council, and who had established themselves in it without the consent of the Company, and had used fraud and monopoly to their own profit, but to the detriment of the Company and the colony. Laval did this in order, through his tools, to hold in his hand the management of Canada. Mezy discovered ere long that he was being duped, and though a bigot in matters of religion, he had a strong sense of duty to the French King. The mutual struggles which ensued are thus summed up by Colbert in a memorial addressed to the Marquis de Tracy, the next Governor : —" Les Jesuites Paccuaent 'avarice et de violences ; et lui qu'ils voulaient entreprendre sur l'autorite qui lui a etc commise par le Roy. En aorta que n'ayant que de leurs creatures dans le Conseil Souverain, toutes lea resolutions s'y prenaient selon leurs senti- ments." The consequence was a conflict between the secular and religious powers, an appeal by the Governor to the people. But his mental agitation augmented a disease which caused his death after he had received a notice of recall, simply through the power of Laval, for attempting to perform his duty. "And he went," writes our author, "to his rest among the paupers, and the priests, serenely triumphant, sung requiems over his grave."
The name of Colbert at once brings us to the second point to which our space permits us to revert,—aamely, the way in which that Minister especially endeavoured to foster the growth of commerce by artificial restraints, and signally failed. From the very beginning to the very end of the French rule in Canada this colony was the chosen ground of monopolies. To this sub- ject Mr. Parkman devotes one chapter, which might well have been lengthened, and taken the place of some of the rather too numerous accounts of miracles and visions which the ignorant Canadians were continually beholding. First of all, there were the Companies to which the trade of Canada was granted, and the early restraints upon foreign commerce. Merchants not resi- dent in the Colonies were forbidden to trade with the Indians. Anybody having an article of foreign manufacture in his pos- session was subjected to a heavy fine. These two regulations alone were sufficient to kill any germs of commercial enter- prise. The natural consequence of this was that the colonists looked to the aid of Government to help their trade, as well as to repress that of competitors. Accordingly we find the fol- lowing example, among hundreds of instances (p. 293):—" One Hazeur set up a saw-mill at Mal Bay. Finding a large stock of timber on his hands, he begs the king to send two vessels to carry them to France, and the king accordingly did so." It is almost too obvious to point out that with unrestrained commerce the vessels which brought the goods of France to Canada would have returned with cargoes of wood. But this pernicious system of Government restraint and aid was most deplorable in the chief branch of Canadian industry, the fur trade. While the Government were continually endeavouring to control and regulate it, they tried the effect of licences to trade to the Indians for furs. A company was formed to whom every beaver-skin was to be sold. An accumulation of furs so large as to be unsaleable ensued. Then there grew up a race of men known as coureurs de bois, who, playing on the fascinations of danger, freedom, and great profits, absorbed the best young men of the colony, made them wild and debauched, and deprived the land of farmers. A greater freedom of trade would have tended towards the growth of a more respectable race of traders than the half-savages, half-out- laws, half-merchants who speculated in beaver-skins and were the horror of the Jesuits. Mr. Parkman seems to consider that his- torical antecedents and the natural temperament of the French are sufficient to account for the failure of Canada as a colony while a dependency of the French Crown. His comparison, indeed, of the New Zealand and Canadian settler, most interesting as it is, would seem to show that we need scarcely go into the historical past and among national characteristics to find reasons for this failure, since it is fully accounted for by the restraints which a paternal Government and a domineering religion cast round the moral, and political, and social growth of the Canadian colonist.
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