68 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
America. Both sides recognized that active hostilities were again 
inevitable and made their preparations accordingly. Louisburg 
once more became the great French centre of trade and of piracy until 
the latter was dignified by the name of war, on the formal declaration 
of hostilities in Europe. 
During the period before and during the final struggle for su- 
premacy in America, the normal trade of the country was obliterated 
in the great local demands for soldiers, labourers, and supplies of every 
kind requisitioned or purchased for the Imperial Service. But for 
the extent to which Canada, in the latter period of the struggle, became 
the theatre of war, the situation should not have been very different 
from that which prevailed during the war of 1812. 
The French Government was spending vast sums in the colony. 
The prices charged to the Government were abnormally high, but, in 
the first place, such prices were seldom paid in anything but paper, 
while the supplies being requisitioned by the Intendant at arbitrarily 
fixed prices, the chief profits were taken by the notorious Bigot and his 
agents. The paper money in which the habitants were paid for their 
services and supplies from 1756 onward, while practically the same in 
form and operation as the army bills afterwards issued by the British 
Government during the war of 1812, differed from the latter in the 
simple but essential feature of not being promptly redeemed in specie 
or bills of exchange, in fact, in most cases, in not being redeemed at all. 
Thus, in the final conflict in Canada, what would normally have been 
a period of considerable, if not great prosperity to the inhabitants, not 
directly in the theatre of war, turned out to be a period of exceptional 
distress and disaster. It is, perhaps, worth observing that the argu- 
ment advanced by Bigot for an almost exclusive use of paper money in 
the purchase of supplies of all kinds from Canada, was practically the 
same as that advanced by the German financiers of the present time, 
namely that it promotes the loyalty and devotion of the people to the 
monarch, inasmuch as should he lose, the people are not likely to 
realize much on, their paper wealth. The sequel proved the argument | 
to be perfectly sound in the case of Canada. ‘“Gorged with money 
and dying of hunger”’ is Bigot’s illuminating phrase in description of 
the condition of the Canadian people during the last months of French 
rule. 
The chief economic sequel to the peace which transferred Canada 
from France to England, was a very marked improvement in the con- 
dition of the common people, but considerable distress on the part of 
the Seigneurs, including the military and official classes, so far as they 
remained in the country, Though the market for the products of the 
country was not so good as during the period of war, yet the prices 
