96 West Indian trade. [1724- which was steadily eclipsing all the other islands, until in 1780 its trade amounted almost to that of all the rest of the West Indies put together. The change in the position of St Domingo began in 1724, when the failure of Law's Company drove a number of proprietors to return to the plantations which they had left in hopes of a life of successful stock-jobbing in Paris. The Spanish alliance now assisted, as much as Spanish hostility had hitherto hindered, the development of trade; and a policy of reduction or abolition of commercial restriction on the colonies began to be steadily pursued. The extraordinary facilities which the brilliant fertility of the island offered, when unhampered by a company claiming monopoly, exercised their effect at once; and France for a time threatened to drive the English out of the sugar and coffee trade. The prosperity of the island continued to grow by leaps and bounds until the great rebellion of 1792. In 1788 it was reckoned to absorb two-thirds of the whole foreign commerce of France. But in population the tendency was for the proportion of whites to negroes and mulattos to grow steadily less. The wealth of St Domingo encouraged traders to reserve the finest negroes for that market ; hence the strength of the black people when the revolution came. The phrase, " nos seigneurs de St Domingue, nos messieurs de Mar- tinique, nos bourgeois de Guadaloupe? expressed the relative prosperity of the islands. Martinique continued to be the centre of government for the Windward Isles, but after St Domingo had secured a distinct government on the same pattern, the governor was no longer governor of the French American Islands, but of the Windward Isles only. The power which Martinique obtained, as the mart for all the French islands except St Domingo, raised its position above Guadaloupe for a time; but the loss of trade during the Seven Years' War, Jesuit speculations, and the development of Guadaloupe while in British hands (1759-63), ruined this supremacy. The rise of Guadaloupe under English care brought the question seriously to the front, whether it would not be more profitable to England to retain it in 1763 rather than Canada. For once, considerations touching security of dominion prevailed over the more immediate considerations of trade. At that time indeed the magnitude of the French West Indian trade was sufficiently alarming. Raynal and Justamond in 1776 put the total of French West Indian trade at about 100 million livres, as against a British total of only 66, the Dutch following next with 24, the Spanish with 10. But in a later edition (1783) Raynal and Justamond fix the trade of the French West Indies and Cayenne at 126 millions, as against a total of 93 millions from the British West Indies. Although in wealth St Domingo surpassed other islands, its rapid commercial development had left it no time for growth in civilisation. Martinique and Guadaloupe both possessed a more firmly rooted society, addicted to amusements though possessed of some cultivation ; but
