tance of Canada; and after 1685 he was supported
by James in the attempt to divert the fur trade from Montreal to Albany
by bringing the Iroquois Indians under English control. The scheme,
which involved nothing less than the ruin of Canada, was by no means a
visionary one. The Five Nations, lying south of the chain of lakes,
could profit but little by the fur trade while it remained in French
hands. But let Albany replace Montreal as the chief market, and they
would become the indispensable middle carriers between the northern
tribes and the English. And the northern tribes were themselves not
ill-disposed to such a change. Undoubtedly the French had better manners
than the English; undoubtedly French fire-water was of excellent flavor.
But the traders whom Dongan sent to Michilimackinac proved beyond cavil
that English goods were cheap; and so long as a beaver skin was the
price of a debauch on French brandy, whereas a mink skin was sufficient
to attain the same exaltation by means of English rum, the French
control of the fur trade rested on a precarious basis. The chief
obstacle to Dongan's scheme was the division of executive authority in
the colonies, the apathy of colonial assemblies, and the lack of an
adequate military force to protect the Iroquois from the enmity of the
French. It was precisely to change these conditions, and to avoid the
very evils which soon came to pass, that James II, who had at least the
merit of an intelligent interest in the colonies, placed all New England
under the single jurisdiction of Andros in 1686, and, in 1688, united
New York and the Jerseys to New England.

The Revolution which drove James from the throne discredited his
measures, but the twenty years of war with France which the Revolution
brought in its train proved the wisdom of his policy. When Indian
massacres inspired at Quebec made a desolate waste of the New England
frontier, while Boston and New York merchants filled their pockets by
supplying the enemy with munitions of war, the inadequacy of the
colonial system for defense, as well as all the worst evils of illicit
trade, stood clearly revealed. Until 1715, the Board of Trade, which
William appointed in 1696, maintained the traditions, if it did not
exhibit all the efficiency, of the old committee of the Lords of Trade.
The Navigation Act of 1696, providing for nearly thirty officials at an
annual cost of L1605, for the first time systematically extended the
English