ther existing trade worth capturing
there seemed to be some kinds worth creating. Murray held
out well-grounded hopes of the fisheries and forests. 'A
Most immense Cod Fishery can be established in the River
and Gulph of St Lawrence. A rich tract of country on the
South Side of the Gulph will be settled and improved,
and a port or ports furnished with every material requisite
to repair ships.' He then went on to enumerate the other
kinds of fishery, the abundance of whales, seals, and
walruses in the Gulf, and of salmon up all the tributary
rivers. Burton recommends immediate attention to the iron
mines behind Three Rivers. All the governors expatiate
on the vast amount of forest wealth and remind the home
government that under the French regime the king, when
making out patents for the seigneurs, reserved the right
of taking wood for ship-building and fortifications from
any of the seigneuries. Agriculture was found to be in
a very backward state. The habitants would raise no more
than they required for their own use and for a little
local trade. But the fault was attributed to the gambling
attractions of the fur trade, to the bad governmental
system, and to the frequent interruptions of the _corvee_,
a kind of forced labour which was meant to serve the
public interest, but which Bigot and other thievish
officials always turned to their own private advantage.
On the whole, the reports were most encouraging in the
prospects they held out to honest labour, trade, and
government.

While Murray and his lieutenants had been collecting
information for their reports the home government had
been undergoing many changes for the worse. The
master-statesman Pitt had gone out of power and the
back-stairs politician Bute had come in. Pitt's 'bloody
and expensive war'--the war that more than any other,
laid the foundations of the present British Empire--was
to be ended on any terms the country could be persuaded
to bear. Thus the end of the Seven Years' War, or, as
the British part of it was more correctly called, the
'Maritime War,' was no more glorious in statesmanship
than its beginning had been in arms. But the spirit of
its mighty heart still lived on in the Empire's grateful
memories of Pitt and quickened the English-speaking world
enough to prevent any really disgraceful surrender of
the hard-won fruits of victory.

The Treaty of Paris, signed on the 10th of February 1763,
and the king's proclamation, published in O