Company was bound to furnish Spain with thirty-eight thousand negroes during the ten years of the contract, but in case of peace, with forty-eight thousand. Each negro that the Company could procure was let to it for 33-1/3 piastres, in pieces of India. In consequence of this treaty, the ports of Chili and Peru, and those in the South Sea, from which all other nations were excluded, stood open to the French, who carried into them vast quantities of merchandise besides the slaves, and brought home great sums in coin and bars. The raw gold and silver alone which they imported for the year 1709 was reckoned at thirty millions of livres.
But at the Peace of Utrecht, Louis XIV., exhausted by an unprofitable war, relinquished his asiento to the English, who were eager enough to take it. It was for this advantage that Marlborough had been really fighting; at least, it was the only one of consequence that Blenheim and Malplaquet secured to his country.
The reign of Louis XV. commenced in 1715. By letters-patent which he issued on the 16th of January, 1716, he granted permission to all the merchants in his kingdom to engage in the African trade, provided their ships were fitted out only in the five ports of Rouen, Rochelle, Bordeaux, Nantes, and St. Malo; nine articles were specially framed to encourage the trade in slaves, as by the Peace of Utrecht all the South-Sea ports were closed to the French, and only their own colonies remained. France no longer made great sums of money by the trade in slaves, but her colonies began to thrive and demand a new species of labor. The poor white emigrants were exhausted and demoralized by an apprenticeship which had all the features of slavery, and by a climate which will not readily permit a white man to become naturalized even when he is free.
It is the opinion of some French anti-slavery writers that the engagés might have tilled the soil of Hayti to this day, if they had labored for themselves alone. This is doubtful; the white man can work in almost every region of the Southern States, but he cannot raise cotton and sugar upon those scorching plains. It is not essential for the support of an anti-slavery argument to suppose that he can. Nor is it of any consequence, so far as the question of free-labor is concerned, either to affirm or to deny that the white man can raise cotton in Georgia or sugar in Louisiana. The blacks themselves, bred to the soil and wonted to its products, will organize free-labor there, and not a white man need stir his pen or his hoe to solve the problem.
At first it seems as if the letters-patent of Louis XV. were inspired by some new doctrine of free-trade. And he did cherish the conviction that in the matter of the slave-trade it was preferable to a monopoly; but his motive sprang from the powerful competition of England and Holland, which the Guinea Company faced profitably only while the War of Succession secured to it the asiento. The convention of merchants which Louis XIV. called in Paris, during the year 1701, blamed monopolies in the address which it drew up, and declared freedom of trade to be more beneficial to the State; but this was partly because the Guinea Company arbitrarily fixed the price of slaves too high, and carried too few to the colonies.
So a free-trade in negroes became at last a national necessity. Various companies, however, continued to hold or to procure trading privileges, as the merchants were not restrained from engaging in commerce in such ways as they preferred. The Cape-Verde, the South-Sea, the Mississippi or Louisiana, and the San-Domingo Companies tried their fortunes still. But they were all displaced, and free-trade itself was swallowed up, by the union of all the French Antilles under the great West-India Company of 1716. This was hardly done before the Government discovered that the supply of negroes was again diminishing, partly because so extensive a company could not undertake the peculiar risks and expenses of a traffic in slaves. So in the matter of negroes alone trade was once more declared free in 1741, burdened only with a certain tax upon every slave imported.
At this time the cultivation of sugar alone in the principal French islands consumed all the slaves who could be procured. The cry for laborers was loud and exacting, for the French now made as much sugar as the English, and were naturally desirous that more negroes should surrender the sweets of liberty to increase its manufacture. In less than forty years the average annual export of French sugar had reached 80,000 hogsheads. In 1742 it was 122,541 hogsheads, each of 1200 pounds. The English islands brought into the market for the same year only 65,950 hogsheads, a decrease which the planters attributed to the freedom enjoyed by the French of carrying their crops directly to Spanish consumers without taking them first to France. But whatever may have been the reason, the French were determined to hold and develop the commercial advantage which this single product gained for them. The English might import as many slaves and lay fresh acres open to the culture, but the French sugar was discovered to be of a superior quality; that of San Domingo, in particular, was the best in the world.
The French planter took his slaves on credit, and sought to discharge his debt with the crops which they raised. This increased the consumption of negroes, and he was constantly in debt for fresh ones. To stimulate the production of sugar, the Government lifted half the entry-tax from each negro who was destined for that culture.
A table which follows shortly will present the exports for 1775 of the six chief products of San Domingo, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Cayenne. But we must say something first about the value of the livre.
In the Merovingian times, the right of coining money belonged to many churches and abbeys,—among others, to St. Martin de Tours. There were seigniorial and episcopal coins in France till the reign of Philip Augustus, who endeavored to reduce all the coin in his kingdom to a uniform type. But he was obliged still to respect the money of Tours, although he had acquired the old right of coinage that belonged to it. So that there was a livre of Paris and a livre of Tours, called livre tournois: the latter being worth five deniers less than the livre of Paris. The tendency of the Crown to absorb all the local moneys of France was not completely successful till the reign of Louis XIV., who abolished the Paris livre and made the livre tournois the money of account. The earliest livre was that of Charlemagne, the silver value of which is representable by eighty cents. It steadily depreciated, till it was worth in the reign of Louis XIV-about sixty cents, from which it fell rapidly to the epoch of the Revolution, when its value was only nineteen cents, and the franc took its place.
It is plain from this, that, when livres are spoken of during a period of a hundred years, their precise equivalent in English or American money cannot be stated,—still less their market-relations to all the necessaries of life. The reader can therefore procure from the statistics of these periods only an approximative idea of the values of crops and the wealth created by their passing into trade.
A great deal of the current specie of the island consisted of Spanish and Portuguese coin, introduced by illegal trade. A Spanish piastre gourde in 1776 was rated at 7-1/2 livres, and sometimes was worth 8-1/4 livres. A piastre gourde was a dollar. If we represent this dollar by one hundred cents, we can approach the value of the French livre, because the gourde passed in France for only 5-1/4 livres; that is, a livre had already fallen to the value of the present franc, or about nineteen cents.
The difference of value between Paris and the colony was the cause of great embarrassment. Projects for establishing an invariable money were often discussed, but never attempted. All foreign specie ought to have become merchandise in the colony, and to have passed according to its title and weight. Exchange of France with San Domingo was at 66-2/3: that is, 66 livres, 13 sols, 4 deniers tournois were worth a hundred livres in the Antilles. Deduct one-third from any sum to find the sum in livres tournois.
Pounds. Livres.
Sugar, {To France, 166,353,834 for 61,849,381
{Abroad, 104,099,866 " 38,703,720
Coffee, {To France, 61,991,699 " 29,421,039
{Abroad, 50,058,246 " 23,757,464
Indigo, {To France, 2,067,498 " 17,573,733
{Abroad, 1,130,638 " 9,610,423
Cacao, {To France, 1,562,027 " 1,093,419
