losing money. Negotiations were therefore entered into between the inhabitants, represented by M. de Repentigny, who went to France for the purpose, and the officers of the company. The result being that, in the month of January 1645, a treaty, as it was called, was made between the company on the one hand, and the inhabitants, through their delegate, on the other, by which the former, while retaining all their sovereign proprietary and feudal rights, with power of nominating the governor and the judges, threw open to the latter, not individually but as a community, the fur trade of Canada on condition that they should assume all expenses of civil administration and military defence, pay the salaries of the clergy, bring into the country every year twenty new colonists, and finally hand over to the company annually one thousand pounds weight of assorted beaver skins. The inhabitants were, by this arrangement, which received the royal sanction on the 6th March 1645, formed into a corporation, afterwards called the "New Company," to distinguish it from the Company of New France or the "Old Company." It was understood that the New Company would elect its own managers; while the Old Company reserved the right to keep certain officials of its own in the country to watch over its interests, throwing the cost of their maintenance, however, on the inhabitants in their corporate capacity. This arrangement was received at the time with some satisfaction by the colonists, but in reality it was a most illiberal one, under which it was impossible for the country to thrive. Its immediate effect was to send nearly all the men of the settlement into the woods, and to turn the wilder and more daring spirits into _coureurs de bois_, a class of men who will figure largely in our subsequent narrative. Two years later we find the inhabitants complaining to the king that the new scheme was working very badly, and giving rise to serious "abuses and malversations." The king did not know very well what to do about it; but by the advice of certain of his ministers he decided to place the government of the colony on a slightly wider basis, with just the least particle in it of a representative element. To this end he created a council which was to consist of the governor, the ex-governor, if he were in the country, the superior of the Jesuits, pending the appointment of a bishop, and two inhabitants to be selected by the council, or three if the ex-governor were not residing in the country. In addition, the three settlements of Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers could each elect a "syndic," to hold office for three years, and to have a deliberative voice in the council, but no vote.