Page images
PDF
EPUB

HUNT'S

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE

AND

COMMERCIAL REVIEW.

NOVEMBER, 1854.

Art. I.-COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES.

NUMBER XI.

BUCANEERING-SPANISH WAR-LOUISIANA-CROZAT-THE MISSISSIPPI COMPANY-THE LAKE REGIONBUBBLES-PRODUCTS OF THE SEA-COD AND WHALE-LOUISBURG-FUR TRADE-THE WEST-PROHIBITION OF TRADE WITH CANADA-NAVAL STORES AND LUMBER-PINE-TREE PRESERVATION-IRON MANUFACTURES-COPPER AND LEAD.

BUCANEERING, as usual at the conclusion of war, broke out with great violence in the West India and neighboring seas, after the peace of Utrecht. John Theach, or Blackbeard, became a most noted pirate chieftain, the terror of peaceable traders. The island of New Providence, one of the Bahamas, was "a kind of outlawed capital." In 1718, George I. sent a squadron under Woodes Rogers, who reduced this stronghold. The desperadoes attempted to establish another at the mouth of Cape Fear river, in North Carolina, but were ousted by the governor of the colony. Many of the pirates had surrendered on the proffer of pardon, some of them afterwards returning to their old pursuit. In the next twenty-five years twenty-six pirates were executed.

A war of two years commenced between England and Spain, in 1717. It ruined the projects in hand of the great company of the South Seas, which had commenced operations under the Presidency of his majesty George of Brunswick, and which lost 200,000l. in effects, at its factories; but does not seem to have much affected the trade or other interests of the English colonies. The power of Spain was, at this time, too reduced to occasion either England or them great inconvenience. She suffered more severely from them.

In December, 1701, D'Ibberville, who had gone to France, returned to his colony in Louisiana, and found only 150 living. In 1702, some more emigrants arrived from France, and settled at the Mobile river, (Alabama,) whither Bienville soon after removed the first colony. D'Ibberville died at Sea, in 1702, and the settlement thereafter languished, France

Bancroft thus describes the condition

[ocr errors]

being involved at the time in war. of Louisiana, at this stage of its colonization :"Louisiana, at this time, was little more than a wilderness, claimed in behalf of the French king. In its whole borders there were scarcely thirty families. The colonists were unwise in their objects-searching for pearls, for the wool of the Buffalo, or for productive mines. Their scanty number was dispersed on discoveries, or among the Indians in quest of furs. There was no quiet agricultural industry. Of the lands that were occupied, Biloxi is as sandy as the desert of Lybia; the soil on Dauphine island is meager; on the Delta of the Mississippi, where a fort had been built, Bienville and his fellow soldiers were insulated and unhappy-at the mercy of the rise of waters in the river; and the buzz and sting of musketoes, the hissing of the snakes, the cries of alligators, seemed to claim that the country should still for a generation, be the inheritance of reptiles-while at the fort of Mobile, the sighing of the pines and the hopeless character of the barrens, warned the emigrants to seek homes farther inland."

In 1711, the close of the war drawing near, Louis XIV. granted to Anthony Crozat, a wealthy merchant, who was also the king's secretary, a patent for fifteen years, of the province of Louisiana, extending "from the mouth of the river Mississippi, in the Bay of Mexico, to the Lake Illinois, northward; and from New Mexico on the west to the lands of the English, or Carolina eastward." Crozat was to enjoy the sole trade of this region, and the profit of all mines, after paying one-fifth of the mineral proceeds to the king, his Commerce being exempt from all custom, outward or homeward, The government was to be dependent on that of New France, that is, Canada, of which colony this was merely an attempted extension.

Crozat's views referred almost exclusively to trade. Traffic with the Indians was the object of first attention; the other part of the scheme was the establishment of a Commerce, legitimate or contraband, with Mexico and other Spanish possessions, by which he expected to obtain gold and silver plentifully, in exchange for French manufactures. His plans were extensive, and not badly conceived, as trading speculations merely, but his agents were stupid and fraudulent. The English managed to retain the principal control of the Indian trade of that region, and he failed in his effort to establish commercial relations with the Spanish provinces.

In 1716, two ships were sent to France, from the Mississippi, richly laden, being the first which had carried any merchandise from the colony to France, since it was founded.

In the same year fort Rosalie was built on the present site of Natchez, the first settlement made within the limits of the State of Mississippi. Natchitoches on the Red River, was founded in 1717.

In 1717, Crozat, being disgusted with his adventure, was easily induced to resign Louisiana to a new commercial association, called the Company of the West. Their privileges of trade were the same as had been granted to him, together with the beaver traffic of Canada, for twenty-five years. Florida was also included in their patent, which brought them into collision with the Spaniards. The company was organized by the Scotchman John Law. The designs were, first, profit by Commerce with the Mississippi country, and, second, the payment of the enormous public debt of France, of about fifteen hundred millions of livres, or 70,000,000l. sterling, by drawing the creditors into this association, as stockholders. The scheme

was similar in this respect, precisely, to that of the English South Sea Company.

The entire population of Louisiana, at this time, did not exceed 700. In 1718, one hundred millions of the public debt being subscribed in the Mississippi stock, four millions were allowed for the interest thereon, and for a further allurement, the entire farm of tobacco was granted to the company for nine years. The stock of the company was now up to 120 per cent.

The company sent out, the same year, a body of eight hundred emigrants, artificers, planters, laborers, and soldiers; most settled at Biloxi Bay, some settled at NEW ORLEANS, where a solitary hut had been erected in 1717, and which Bienville had, with much judgment, selected as the commercial and political metropolis of the colony. Most of this party had soon perished. The culture of Wheat, Rice, and Silk was introduced.

In 1718, the colony felt strong enough to attack, but was driven from Texas, where La Salle's colony had existed for a while; and also attacked and was attacked from Pensacola, which the French took soon afterward, and held, as part of Louisiana, until peace.

The Senegal Company had been merged in the Western or Mississippi Company, as it was now called, and in 1719, the French East India Company, which was in a very reduced condition, doing very little trade and unable to pay its debts, was united also, the name of the association being changed to the India Company. It had now the monopoly of the whole trade of France and America, Africa, and Asia, and the king engaged to institute no other company in France. By the same decree, making this arrangement, the complete control of the bank, born contemporaneously with the company, was confided to it, and the whole revenue of France was farmed to it, the condition being the advance, by the company to the government, of 1,200,000,000 livres, equal to about $216,000,000, at three per cent, to be used for paying off the public debt. This issue was more than all the banks in Europe united, could circulate. The price of their stock rose to 500, 600, 1,200, and in 1720 reached 2,050 per cent, which brought the valuation of their capital of 300,000,000 up to 6,150,000,000 livres. A further loan of 300,000,000 livres, (about twelve millions sterling,) was made to the government.

The French people were made to believe the wealth of the Missssippi region was such that it would immediately repay almost any price paid for the stock of this company. The richness of the gold and silver mines was described as exceeding all belief, and almost conception. For the exclusive right of working them for nine years, the company paid the government 50,000,000 livres (about two millions sterling.) As for tobacco, naval stores, and other products of wood, of field, and of pasture, which could not be expected to receive much attention from the colonists, where the precious metals were so abundant, Mississippi could supply France with any quantities she might require, either for her own use, for her colonies, or for export to other parts of the world.

The policy of the company toward the colony was wretched in the extreme. To the poor settlers already there, no encouragement was given other than they could find in the imposition of every possible restraint and inconvenience. The inducement to further emigration was very small. The grand operations were not in the resources of America, but in the stock of the company. Premiums were demanded on the export of merchandise from France to the Mississippi, of fifty, sixty, eighty, and one

hundred per cent; and the rates at which the produce of that region was sold in France, were fixed by a most oppressive tariff, which benefited the company alone. Under such a state of things, of course, nothing of real prosperity could be expected in the colony. The population was yet small. New Orleans was still but a village.

66

The humbug exploded, and the Mississippi was no more regarded in France as the promised land of flocks, milk, and honey; of corn, oil, and wine; of gold, silver, and diamonds." Its very name was execrated. Its loathsome marshes were but the hotbeds of disease and death. It was made a convict colony, and deemed scarcely fit for the abode of felons. The revulsion reached the colony itself, and hundreds of the settlers abandoned their homes, and made their way famishing, to the English and Spanish trading posts, begging relief, while numbers perished in the effort

at escape.

Yet the colony had become firmly planted, and was now left to a healthy, if slow development of the Commerce and wealth of the really immensely rich region of the Mississippi.

In the Upper Western, or Lake region, there were only a few feeble French stations. At Detroit there was a regular but very small settlement. At Mickilimackinack there was a fort surrounded by an Indian village, At Niagara and Frontenac, (Yorktown, Canada,) were forts, but no sign of cultivation. But the French were now entirely at peace, in all parts, with the Indians, and their trade was active. As the great object of the settlement of Canada was for this trade, the villages there were all gathered along the banks of the St. Lawrence, and they were nearly all within the limits between Montreal and Quebec. The population of the latter town was 7,000.

The French, however, were beginning to feel the effects of the competition of the English at New York, in the Indian trade. The Indians began to be inclined to exchange French for English connections, as the most profitable. One of these tribes, the Autagomies, attacked Detroit, and had they succeeded, it would have become an English post. They were terribly defeated. But according to Charlevoix, the historian of Canada, the settlement was now objected to by the French themselves, as bringing the Indian trade too much within reach of the English. A more northerly route was probably desired.

The South Sea Company in England, flushed with the success of its first speculations, advanced with the objects of incorporating the debt of England, the funds of the Bank, the East Company's means and power and the whole national exchequer into its active capital. The highest point its stock attained was 1,000 per cent in 1720. With its decline perished a thousand lesser bubbles to which it had given birth, and which aided its operations in turn by adding their stimulus to the popular frenzy. A host of them were suppressed by a scire facias in August, 1720, pronouncing them illegal.

Among these companies was one for raising and importing Hemp and Flax from Pennsylvania, the original price of the stock being 27. 108. per share, and the highest price in 1720, 287. per share-a company for im porting naval stores from Nova Scotia and Virginia-one for importing Walnut trees from Virginia, capital 2,000,000l.-one for importing Beaver and Fur, capital 2,000,000l.-one for importing Pitch and Tar from America and Scotland-one for importing Tobacco and exporting it to the

north of Europe, with 4,000,000l. capital-one for preparing tobacco for making Snuff-one for trade to Nova Scotia, capital 2,000,000l.—one for trade to the river Orinoco. There were also associations for trade to other parts of America, for the settlement of various West India and other unoccupied islands, and one for a grand American Fishery. Many other schemes indirectly concerned America. Some of these schemes, if properly managed, were as sensible projects as any devised in England, at any time, regarding the Commerce of America.

Among the wild projects we may mention a repetition of the oft-repeated, as often defeated effort to discover a Northwest passage to India. Capt. Barlow was sent in 1715 by the Hudson Bay Company to search for the passage through Hudson Bay. He was never heard of after.

The invention of the Steam Engine by Newcomin, in 1710, with its promised efficacies, was a potent solidity of this Bubble-period.

It was not at once put upon Railroads. The public was not prepared to be carried and to carry its effects, by steam, for the public scarcely traveled at all. But an insurrection in England, in 1715, helped to open a path for it. The necessity of transporting troops obliged the government to lay out many new roads, which greatly facilitated thereafter the loyal trade and travel of Britain, and stimulated the desire of a something

better.

Chalmers estimates the population of the British North American colonies in 1715, at 434,420, to wit, 375,570 whites and 58,850 negroes. The estimate is, doubtless, much too small. The duplicative period of the century was not above twenty-five years, and upon this progression the numbers of the year 1715 should have been in the neighborhood of 550,000.

1720-1740. The period under review was marked by an elaborate examination, in the year 1732, of the whole state and condition of the colonies of Great Britain, made by the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations-the appointed overseers of colonial concerns, but whose power was happily, confined in the main, to recommendations, which recommendations were not always enacted by Parliament. But the Board, amid all its inability and all its stupidity, did some good things-and one good thing which it did, was the collecting of a very considerable amount of valuable information respecting the British dependencies, in the aforesaid report of 1732. We acknowledge, at the lapse of so many years after the Board and all who served upon it have become defunct, our indebtedness in the present article, for many facts therein contained, to the labors and patience of which a fruit has survived, as embodied in Anderson. It is true that the statesmen who sat in its councils were somewhat practiced upon in the replies made by the governors or other colonial officers to their annual queries, and sometimes had not even the satisfaction of a deceptive answer-but in the first instance, the errors were never of the exaggerative, but of the other species, and were in good part corrected, as well as the deficiences in the latter case supplied, by a resort to other informative sources. For their statistic merits of 1732, let the Lords Commissioners be respectfully mentioned in 1854.

PRODUCTS OF THE SEA.

COD FISHERY. Except a very small fraction possessed by the adjoining colonies, the whole of this important interest still centered in Massachu

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »