THE SETTLEMENT OF CANADA AND THE FIVE NATION INDIANS

[Sidenote: Colonization by the medium of Chartered Companies characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe.]

To trade and to colonize through the medium of Chartered Companies has been characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe. Chartered Companies have not been peculiar to England. The Dutch worked entirely through two great companies; the Danes adopted the same system; and various companies played their part in the early history of French colonization. Herein lay the main difference, in the field of colonial enterprise, between the northern peoples and the southerners who had preceded them. In the case of Spain and Portugal all was done under the immediate control of the Crown. These two nations were concerned with conquest rather than with settlement; and, if the Portuguese were traders, their commerce was not the result of private venture, but was created and supported by the Government. The Spaniards and Portuguese were first in the field. East and West lay before them, and they divided the world in secure monopoly. The northerners came in—​they came in tentatively; policy kept the Governments in the background for fear of incurring war, and freedom of individual action was more ingrained in these races than in the Latin peoples of the south. So freebooters sailed here and there, at one time honoured, at another in disgrace; merchants took shares in this or that venture, and Chartered Companies came into being.

In the case of Holland, the Netherlands East India Company and the Netherlands West India Company practically {80} included the whole nation: the state and the companies were co-extensive. In England, the companies were really private concerns, licensed by the Government, often thwarted by the Government, but, in the main, working out their own salvation or their own ruin, as the case might be. In France there was a mixture of the northern and the southern systems, as of the northern and the southern blood. There, as in England, the companies were private associations, but Court favour was to them the breath of life. Kings and ministers constantly interfered, created and undid, conferred licences and revoked them, until in no long time the Chartered Company system lost all that makes it valuable, and Frenchmen learnt to look to the Crown alone.

Trade jealousies hampered the beginnings of Canadian settlement; there was neither free trade in Canada nor unquestioned monopoly. To cure this evil Richelieu, in 1627, brought into being the company of the One Hundred Associates, nominally a private association, really the offspring of the Government. Its sphere extended from Florida to the North Sea, and from east to west as far as discovery should extend along the rivers of Canada. It controlled all trade except the fisheries, and it enjoyed sovereign rights in so far that it was entitled to confer titles and tenures, subject to the approval of the Crown. The chief officers were to be nominated by the King, but under the Sovereign the company was feudal lord of New France; of its soil and its inland waters, with all that they produced. A statesman projected the company, and, with keen insight into the wants of New France, Richelieu laid down as one of the terms of its charter that settlers were to be introduced in specified numbers, especially and immediately settlers of the artisan class; but these provisions were made to a large extent barren by excluding the Huguenots. At the outset the new French company, with all its backing, was foiled in its efforts by the English Merchant Adventurers. The first transports {81} sent out, bearing settlers and supplies, were captured by Kirke. Quebec fell and New France was lost. The Convention of Susa and the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye were signed and executed, and the One Hundred Associates resumed their charge of Canada. Under them Champlain held the government of New France till he died, being succeeded by a soldier, M. de Montmagny, who reached Quebec in June,