which have ended in the nearly total extermination of the Indians of the North American continent, wherever they have come in contact with the Europeans and their descendants. But little success attended the first colonization on the banks of the St. Lawrence; in 1622, fourteen years after its establishment, Quebec had not a population exceeding fifty souls.[3] The mischievous policy of making religion (and that of the Jesuit caste) a part of the colonial policy, long hampered the French settlers; and to remedy the distressed condition of the colony, the commerce of Canada, heretofore vested in the hands of one or two individuals, was transferred in 1627 to a powerful association, called the _Company of a hundred Partners_, composed of clergy and laity, under the special management of the celebrated Cardinal Richelieu. The primary object of the Company was the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith, by means of zealous Jesuits; the secondary, an extension of the fur trade, of commerce generally, and the discovery of a route to the Pacific Ocean and to China, through the great rivers and lakes of New France. This Company held Canada or New France, with the extensive privileges of a feudal seigniory under the king, to whom were owing fealty and homage, and the presentation of a crown of gold at every new accession to the throne. With the right of soil, a monopoly of trade was granted, the king reserving for the benefit of all his subjects only the cod and whale fisheries in the gulf and coast of St. Lawrence; and to such colonists as might not be servants of the Company, was secured the right of trading with the Indians for _peltries_ (skins), it being understood that on pain of confiscation they should bring all their beaver skins to the factors of the Company, who were bound to purchase them at 40 sous a-piece. Under the new system, “protestants and other heretics,” as well as Jews, were entirely excluded from the colony, and a Jesuit corps was to be supported by the Company. Thus monopoly and bigotry went hand in hand, and no auspicious Providence attended the efforts of such a selfish and fanatic project.