condition. Two years before the expiration of its Charter, its resources had been reduced to so low an ebb that it had been forced from want of means to transfer to some merchants of St. Malo its rights of trading to the East in consideration of an annual payment. This destitution produced its natural effects in India. Debts which had been contracted at Surat remained unpaid, and although MM. Dulivier and Hébert, the immediate successors of Martin, continued to administer the affairs of the settlement at Pondichery on the principles he had established, the falling off in the carrying-trade reduced them to very great straits. Nor, after lingering painfully for ten years, did there appear any reasonable chance of amendment. Indeed, just before the expiry of its Charter the friends of the Company had interest sufficient to procure the extension for ten years of its powers. This meant ten years more of atrophy. But in September of the year from which the continuation of the Charter dated (1715), Louis XIV died. The Regency of the Duke of Orleans succeeded, and within a month of his accession to that high office, there appeared in Paris a young Scotchman whose soaring genius captivated for a few years the hearts of all classes, and whose schemes promised to impart new vitality to the world of commerce.
France then possessed other territories beyond Europe, besides her small settlements in India. In 1525 she had acquired Canada; in 1682 she had explored and taken possession of Louisiana; in August,
