THE FRENCH CHARTER RENOUNCED.

223

ern by the Rio del Norte and the Rocky Mountains, and extending from Dauphine Island to the Lakes. He shall have it with its mines and minerals, its forests, game and peltries, its fisheries and agriculture. He accepts the offer; and the world thinks he knows his business, and predicts for him a splendid result. La Motte Cadillac is governor at Detroit, and he becomes Crozat's partner. Their plan is to open trade between France and the West India Islands, Mexico, and Louisiana. Thus shall gold and gems be gained. But Spain refuses him leave to trade; declining to allow his vessels to enter any of her ports; and as for Louisiana, who is there to buy his goods? and there is no merchandise that he can carry thence. Thus the speculation of the great merchant fails, and at the end of five years he surrenders his charter, having paid thirty thousand dollars for the chance of making an experiment. But there are others. ready, eager to accept the opportunity; confident that there is wealth in Louisiana, and that it can be obtained, if only the right means are taken to get it. The mind of England and France is at this time possessed of a mania for speculation.

In the first the South Sea Company is offering an ample field for the knavery of rogues and the folly of dupes; in the other, John Law, a canny Scot, who had established a private bank, and was doing a thriving business, assuming the style and position

of an opulent capitalist, possessing the entire confidence of the generous but profligate regent, Philippe d'Orleans, and of the aristocracy and wealth throughout the country, was busily engaged in organizing various companies and schemes; a bank of France, a company of the Indies, and a western company. The latter procured a charter of twenty-five years to monopolize Louisiana. Its stock was divided into two hundred thousand shares, the par value of which was five hundred livres each. All classes of people throughout France having money, are stockjobbers. The bourse opens with the beat of drum. Abbés, bishops, cardinals, dukes, royal princes, and the fairest womer. of the realm throng the Exchange, and vie with each other in the financial competition. The shares of the Louisiana speculation are greedily bought up. Maps delineating its vastness, illustrating its fertility and wealth; a soil richer than that of the Delta, mountains of silver richer than that of Potosi, and of gold, with which the land of Ophir cannot be compared; picturing prosperous states and private towns, quays thronged with shipping and busy tradesmen; are exhibited in Paris, and inflame the already excited fancy of the country. It is whispered as a great secret, but gains a wide circulation, that ingots of Louisiana gold have been seen in Paris, but by whom no one pauses to inquire. The lust for sudden riches has deprived the people of their com

THE ASSIENTO CONTRACT.

225

mon sense; and the infinite wealth of the Mississippi valley is believed in as a present fact by the noble brokers and bankers of France, during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Active measures are at once set on foot by the company to increase the population of the province. They enter into obligation by their charter, to settle six thousand whites and three thousand African slaves, within its limits. The pernicious plan of sending out the prostitute and criminal is continued. Street-walkers and women from the hospitals of correction, bankrupts, felons whose sentence is commuted to transportation, are to become the agents in gaining fabulous stores of wealth. Others, however, of more reputable character are sent; and at length the schemes of emptying the filth of Paris into the great valley is given up. Law and his company controlled in Louisiana the exclusive traffic in human flesh, as England did throughout the rest of the New World. Britain not only supplied her colonies upon the Atlantic coast with slaves, but in pursuance of her plans of ambitious and gigantic monopoly, gained by the treaty of Utrecht the sole right to supply Spanish America with Africans. "IIer Britannic Majesty did offer and undertake,'" quotes Bancroft from the treaty of Utrecht, "by persons whom we shall appoint, to bring into the West Indies of America, belonging to His Catholic

Majesty, in the space of thirty years, a hundred and forty-four thousand negroes at the rate of four thousand eight hundred in each of the said thirty years; paying on four thousand a duty of thirty-three and one-third dollars a head.' The assientists might introduce as many more as they pleased, at the rate of duty of sixteen and two-thirds dollars a head. Only no scandal was to be offered to the Roman Catholic religion! Exactest care was taken to secure the monopoly. No Frenchman nor Spaniard, nor any other person, might introduce one negro slave into Spanish America. For the Spanish world in the Gulf of Mexico, on the Atlantic, and along the Pacific, as well as for the English colonies, her Britannic Majesty, by persons of her appointment, was the exclusive slave-trader. England extorted the privilege of filling the New World with negroes. As great profits were anticipated from the trade, Philip V. of Spain took one quarter of the common stock, agreeing to pay for it by a stock note; Queen Anne reserved to herself another quarter; and the remaining moiety was to be divided among her subjects. Thus did the sovereigns of England and Spain become the largest slave-merchants in the world."

By the side of this enormous speculation in flesh and blood, Law's was dwarf-like. Nevertheless, the profits derived from the sale of the negroes were one of the chief sources of revenue to the company's

'GOLD UNSUCCESSFULLY SOUGHT.

227

coffers. The price of a stout negro man was a hundred and fifty dollars; that of a healthy woman, a hun

dred and twenty-five dollars. raised about sixteen per cent.

It was subsequently Nor was the perpetu

only style of slavery

al bondage of the African the adopted. Twenty-five hundred Germans of the Palatinate were introduced into the province, who were called "Redemptioners." They were bound to work as slaves for three years in the service of those who defrayed their expenses across the deep. Considerable numbers of soldiers, miners and assayers, in addition, were sent; the first to defend the colonists, and the others to discover and work the precious ores. Lead, iron, copper, without end, were found; but after the most extensive and assiduous search, neither gold nor silver. Two or three years were devoted by the company's servants to this bootless quest; and then, at last, Bienville's long-urged policy of wringing riches from the soil was reluctantly adopted. Meanwhile, the enterprising governor had established a fort and laid the foundations of a town on the site of the present city of Natchez, giving to it the name of Fort Rosalie, in honor of the Countess Pontchartrain, wife of the French Minister of Marine, D'Iberville's friend and his patron in the colonization of Louisiana. The location had been selected by the brave admiral twelve years before; but the spot was too far distant from the sea to permit it to become the capital; and Bienville was still