1683-1713] Fourth period. 87 Crown in developing the islands was not without a direct reward in the form of taxation, parallel to the four and a half per cent, duty paid by Barbados. The French taxation took its rise in the sum paid to the Company by French merchants who bought the licence to trade, which amounted to six livres a ton on imports and five per cent, on exports. In 1669 the King obtained the monopoly of these licences ; and under the name Domaine d } Occident the duty was levied, after 1671, at the rate of three per cent. There was further a poll-tax of one cwt. of sugar on every freeman and every slave, together with a tobacco duty of 20 sous a pound, a small duty on cotton, and, for a time, duties on indigo and cocoa that discouraged the planters. The regulation, decreed for the better control of the trade, that ships must return to the port from which they started, and the partial confinement of trade to the ports of Marseilles and Rouen, exercised a damaging effect. The regulation of the sugar trade had certain distinctive merits, inasmuch as the refining of sugar on the spot was early promoted, instead of being discouraged in the interest of the refiners at home, as in all the other colonies. The fourth period of French colonial history extends from 1683 to 1713 from the death of Colbert to the Treaty of Utrecht. In 1682 La Salle had sailed down the Mississippi. The support which he received in his attempt to found a colony at its mouth showed that Colbert's son, de Seignelay, was prepared to follow up his father's work, had not a period of reaction, which favoured continental rather than colonial expansion, set in to divert the current of Louis XIV's ideas. La Salle's scheme, as set forth by himself, was to obtain for France a second continental establishment which should make her " mistress of the whole continent," besides serving to harass Spain, and making possible an attack on the Mexican mines. " We should obtain there everything that has enriched New England and Virginia, timber, salted meat, tallow, corn, sugar, tobacco, honey, wax, resin, gums, pasturage, hemp," and such things as yearly freight two hundred vessels in New England. He observes that, if foreigners should anticipate the French in settling the Mississippi valley, New France would be completely hemmed in. He anticipates that the ease of living would here keep the settlers together, unlike the habitants of New France, who are obliged to seek their subsistence over a wide area. His talent for dealing with the natives had already established friendly relations with a vast range of tribes, and he urges that possession be taken in right of discovery and of the consent of the greater number of inhabitants. His well-considered memoir determined the government to give him the support he asked ; and four ships were despatched with 280 colonists, male and female, and abundant stores the first example of a French colony the whole expense of which was provided by the Crown. Unluckily La Salle's skill in the manage- ment of natives would seem to have been in part due to the very
