The jealousy of colonial manufactures shown by England appears but rarely in the relations of France with Canada. According to its light, the French government usually did its best to stimulate Canadian industry, with what results we have just seen. There was afterwards some improvement. In 1714, the intendant Bégon reported that coarse fabrics of wool and linen were made; that the sisters of the congregation wore cloth for their own habits as good as the same stuffs in France; that black cloth was made for priests, and blue cloth for the pupils of the colleges. The inhabitants, he says, have been taught these arts by necessity. They were naturally adroit at handiwork of all kinds; and during the last half century of the French rule, when the population had settled into comparative stability, many of the mechanic arts were practised with success, notwithstanding the assertion of the Abbé La Tour that every thing but bread and meat had still to be brought from France. This change may be said to date from the peace of Utrecht, or a few years before it. At that time, one Duplessis had a new vessel on the stocks. Catalogne, who states the fact, calls it the beginning of ship-building in Canada, evidently ignorant that Talon had made a fruitless beginning more than forty years before. Of the arts of ornament not much could have * Beauharnois et Raudot au Ministre, 1705. been expected; but, strangely enough, they were in somewhat better condition than the useful arts. The nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu made artificial flowers for altars and shrines, under the direction of Mother-Juchereau; * and the boys of the seminary were taught to make carvings in wood for the decoration of churches. ** Pierre, son of the merchant Le Ber, had a turn for painting, and made religious pictures, described as very indifferent. *** His sister Jeanne, an enthusiastic devotee, made embroideries for vestments and altars, and her work was much admired. The colonial finances were not prosperous. In the absence of coin, beaver-skins long served as currency. In 1669, the council declared wheat a legal tender, at four francs the _minot_ or three French bushels; **** and, five years later, all creditors were ordered to receive moose-skins in payment at the market rate. (v) Coin would not remain in the colony. If the company or the king sent any thither, it went back in the returning ships. The government devised a remedy. A coinage was ordered for Canada one-fourth less in value than that of France. Thus the Canadian livre or franc was worth, in reality, fifteen sous instead of twenty. (v*) This shallow expedient produced only a nominal rise of prices, and coin fled the colony as before. * Juchereau, Hist, de l'Hôtel-Dieu, 244. ** Abeille, II., 13. *** Faillon, Vie de Mlle. Le Ber, 331. **** Edits et Ord., II. 47. (v) Ibid., II. 55. (v*) This device was of very early date. See Boucher, Hist. Véritable chap, xiv