In 1663, we read, Canada became a Royal Province. It passed out of the keeping of a company and came under the direct control of the French King and his ministers. The statement requires some modification, for in 1664 Colbert created a new Chartered Company, the Company of the West, whose sphere, like that of the Netherlands West India Company, included the whole of the western half of the world, so far as it was or might be French--America North and South, the West Indies, and West Africa. Canada was within the terms of its charter, which included a monopoly of trade for forty years and, on paper, sovereign rights within the wide limits to which the charter extended. Thus the members of the company claimed to be feudal Seigniors of the soil of New France and to nominate the Council of Government, with the exception of the Governor and Intendant; while from the dues which they levied the cost of government was to be defrayed. Such was the outline and the intention of the scheme: the actual result was that the carrying trade was monopolized by the company, together with one-fourth of the beaver skins of all Canada, and the whole of the traffic of the lower St. Lawrence, which centred at Tadoussac. Out of their monopoly they paid all or part of the expenses of government, {94} but the administration practically remained in the hands of the Crown. Like its predecessor, this company was a miserable failure. It lasted for ten years only, and during those years it was an incubus on Canada. [Sidenote: _Chartered Companies ill suited to France._] The truth was that Chartered Companies were alien to the genius of France, or at any rate of Roman Catholic France--the France of the Bourbons. Her greatest ministers, Richelieu and Colbert, were, it is true, loth to discard the system. They wished to give French merchants a direct interest in building up a colonial empire. They saw the English working by means of companies. They saw the Dutch giving to the state the outward semblance of private enterprise. Companies, they argued, would promote French trade and colonization, as they had promoted the trade and colonization of rival nations. But Richelieu and Colbert were despotic ministers of arbitrary Kings; the companies which they created were as lifeless and as helpless as their titles were high-sounding and pretentious. They lasted as long, and only as long, as they were backed by the Crown. They were swept away as easily as they were formed; and they left no lasting impress on French colonial history. [Sidenote: _Canada under the Crown._]