It was also shown that this fur trade was by no means sufficient to sustain a colony of such importance as Canada unquestionably might become under a different system of management; for whether the beaver should finally become extinct through the greed of the traders, or so cheapened by glutting the market abroad as to lose its place in commerce entirely, it was evident that precisely the same result would be reached. In any case, the business was a precarious one. It limited the number of persons who could be profitably employed; it bred them up to habits of indolence and vice without care for the future; and it kept them in ignorance and poverty to the last. But, what was worst of all, this all-engrossing pursuit kept the population from cultivating the soil, the true and only source of prosperity to any country. Other cogent reasons were given, but these most conclusively set forth what a mercantile monopoly having its silent partners in the local government and church, as well as in the royal palace itself, had been able to do in the way of retarding the development of the great native resources of Canada. It was so ably done that no voice was raised against it. And with this most lucid and fearless exposé of the puerile use thus far made of those resources the memorialist statesmen hoped to open the king’s eyes. The two Raudots offer a Remedy. They now proposed to wholly reorganize this unsound commercial system by directing capital and labor into new channels. Such natural productions of the country as masts, boards, ship-timber, flax, hemp, plaster, iron and copper ores, dried fish, whale and seal oils, and salted meats, might be exported, they said, with profit to the merchant and advantage to the laboring class, provided a suitable port were secured, at once safe, commodious, and well situated for collecting all these commodities, and shipping them abroad. Cape Breton brought to Notice. To this end, these intendants now first brought to notice the advantages of Cape Breton for such an establishment. Strangely enough, up to this time little or no attention had been paid to this island. Three or four insignificant fishing ports existed on its coasts, but as yet the whole interior was a shaggy wilderness, through which the Micmac Indians roamed as freely as their fathers had done before Cartier ascended the St. Lawrence. Its valuable deposits of coal and gypsum lay almost untouched in their native beds; its stately timber trees rotted where they grew; its unrivalled water-ways, extending through the heart of the island, served no better purpose than as a highway for wandering savages. Acadia to be helped.