|
THE
successors of Frontenac and Duchesneau received their appointments
in the month of May 1682, and arrived at Quebec towards the end of
the following September. They were, respectively, a military officer
named Lefebvre de la Barre who had served with some distinction in
the West Indies; and a man of whose previous career little or
nothing is known, one M. Jacques de Meulles. If the fault of
Frontenac had been the assumption of too much state and dignity, and
the exercise of too much self-will, the fault of La Barre was that
he possessed too little dignity and extremely little firmness of
character. The recall of Frontenac had practically been one more
triumph for the ecclesiastical authorities, who caused it to be
understood that, if Duchesneau had also been recalled, it was simply
to save Frontenac from too open humiliation. La Barre prudently
determined, therefore, from the first not to come into collision
with the clergy, whatever else he might do. On the other hand the
Abbé Dudouyt writing from Paris, enjoins prudence on the bishop,
lest "it should seem as if he could not keep on good terms with
anybody/' With such dispositions on both sides, it is not surprising
that, during the whole of La Barre's administration his relations
with the church were extremely harmonious. The Abbd Gosselin says
that he and Meulles " revived the happy times of the highly
Christian administration of M. de Tracy." The king, however, did not
view the situation with equal approval; the despatches of the period
show that he thought that deference to the views of the clergy was
being carried too far.
We have seen that, towards the close of
Frontenac's administration, the Indian situation was again becoming
critical. The arrangement patched up by him in the month of August
was far from being of a very solid character; and when La Barre
assumed the reins of government he found a widespread feeling of
insecurity as to the continuance of peace. He thought it prudent,
therefore, to summon, as Frontenac had done previously, a conference
of persons specially competent to advise on the Indian question. The
meeting took place on the 10th of October at Quebec, before
Frontenac had left the country. He might, therefore, have attended
it, had he chosen; and we cannot help feeling surprised that he did
not. The general opinion expressed by those who took part in the
deliberations was that the Iroquois were planning hostilities, and
that the king should be asked to send out more troops. La Barre
wrote home to this effect; but the same vessel that bore his
despatch carried the returning ex-governor, who, on arriving in
France, seems to have made it his business to throw cold water on
the appeal for help. It was doubtless to Frontenac's interest to
represent that he had left the country in a peaceful and secure
condition; but his conduct would appear in a better light had he
gone before the conference at Quebec, and there explained, in the
presence of those possessing local information, why he considered
that there was no danger. La Barre could then in writing to the
government have given his reasons and those of his advisers for
dissenting from the ex-governor's views, and the latter could
honourably have made his own representations to the court. As it
was, the man who had ceased to be responsible was allowed to thwart
the policy of the actual administrator on whom the whole
responsibility for the safety of the country rested. La Barre is not
a man who attracts our admiration or sympathy, but, in this matter
at least, it is difficult to feel that he received fair treatment.
Remembering all the trouble there had been
between the former governor and the intendant, La Barre hastens to
inform the court that he and Meulles are on the very best of terms.
As they had scarcely been two months in the country when this
despatch was written, the announcement seems a little hasty. Meulles
on his part does not make any such statement, and his letters of the
following and subsequent years show that he had not formed a very
high opinion of his superior officer. He complains that the meetings
of the Sovereign Council are held in the governor's own antechamber,
amid the noise of servants going and coming and the clatter of the
guards in an adjoining room. The minister takes no notice of this;
and a year later Meulles returns to the charge, stating that the
governor held the meetings "in his own chimney corner where his
wife, his children and his servants were always in the way." The
intendant was a man of business, and liked to see things done in a
business-like way. If he did not admire the disorderly methods of
the governor, neither did he approve of the dilatory methods of the
council. When matters were brought before him for adjudication he
dealt with them promptly ; and, in his desire to save delays, he
disposed of some cases which the council considered as falling
within its sole jurisdiction. Frontenac, it will be remembered, had
packed off young d'Auteuil, who had been nominated by Duchesneau as
attorney-general, to France to justify, if he could, the conduct he
had been pursuing. The youth had come back a full-fledged
attorney-general, and at once fell foul of the intendant, accusing
him of exceeding his powers. Meulles was a prudent man and contrived
to make his peace with the council. M. Lorin says there was probably
as much real dissension as in Frontenac's time, but that it was
hushed up. There is no evidence of this. Some dissension there may
have been; but La Barre was not as fiery as Frontenac, nor was
Meulles as intriguing as Duchesneau. The same elements of discord
were, therefore, not present.
We have seen that the court did not seem to take
any serious notice of the charges of trading reciprocally brought by
Frontenac and Duches-ncau against one another; and in this matter La
Barre appears to have assumed from the first that for him there was
an " open door." At a very early period of his residence in the
country, he formed intimate relations with certain prominent
traders; it soon became evident, indeed, that he had placed himself
and his policy largely in their hands. They were in the main the
same men with whom Frontenac had accused Duchesneau of having
underhand dealings, La Chesnaye, Lebert and one or two others.
According to Meulles, the governor not only carried on trade on his
own account contrary to the king's regulations, but trade in its
most illegal form, that is to say with the English. His Majesty's
representative found out without much trouble what the Indians were
well aware of, that the English paid a much better price for furs
than could be got in Canada from the king's farmers who controlled
the fur trade of the country. He talks freely indeed of the English
in a despatch dated in May 1683, and says that they both sell goods
cheap to the Indians and give them full price for their furs. It is
a saying among the English, he adds, that the French do not
trade with the Indians but
rob them. It is no wonder he was anxious
to send his own wares to so good a market. If the intendant may be
trusted, indeed the governor was continually receiving at the
chateau at (Quebec Englishmen and Dutchmen who
were simply his agents at New York. La Hontan avers that he saw two
canoe loads of his stuff at Chambly on their way to that emporium.
A man so devoted to money-making as La
Barre could hardly be
expected to take a very deep interest in the wider schemes of
exploration and territorial expansion which appealed to the
imagination of a La Salle.
Possibly he thought he could curry favour with the court by
disparaging the achievements of the latter. In a despatch of the
30th May 1683 we find him saying that he did not think much of the
discovery of the mouth of the Mississippi, and that in any case
there was a
great deal of falsehood mixed up with the tales that were told of
it. If the remark was meant to please, it seems to have been
successful, for the king in his reply, under date 5th August
following, says : " I am persuaded with you that
Sieur de la Salle's discovery is very useless, and such enterprises
must be prevented hereafter, as they tend
only to debauch the inhabitants by the hope of gain and to diminish
the revenue from the beaver." Could the power of official narrowness
and banality go further ? A man, taking his life in his hand,
penetrates forest and jungle, commits himself to unknown waters,
braves the encounter of hostile peoples, takes the risk of treachery
among his own followers, faces every form of privation and all
extremities of fatigue, travels a thousand leagues, and adds a
continent to the possessions of 176 his sovereign, only to have the
verdict pronounced by that sovereign that his discoveries are very
useless, and that similar expeditions must be prevented for the
future lest the beaver trade of Canada suffer!
• La Salle's great discovery was made in the
month of April 1682. Returning northwards in the autumn, with the
intention of proceeding to France, and making a full report of his
proceedings to the king, he heard, on reaching Michili-mackinac,
that the Iroquois were preparing a hostile movement against the
Illinois. He determined at once to go back with a picked body of men
to protect his threatened allies. The news of his discovery was
therefore carried to France by the R^collet, Father Z^nobe, who
reached Quebec just as the ships were leaving, and may possibly have
sailed in the same vessel as Frontenac. He does not seem to have
given any information, in passing, to La Barre. The latter was
expecting La Salle's return, and chose to put an unfavourable
construction on his failure to appear. In writing to the minister he
says that Fort Frontenac has been abandoned. The truth was that La
Salle had left it in charge of one La Forest, and that subsequently
a cousin of the explorer's, named Plet, had come from France to look
after the trade of the fort in the interest of the parties in France
who had advanced money for its construction and equipment. It is
doubtful whether the place was ever left even temporarily
unoccupied; but certainly La Salle had no intention of abandoning
it. On the contrary, not knowing of Frontenac's recall, he had.
written to him in October 1682 asking him to maintain La Forest in
command and to let him have a sufficient number of men for purposes
of defence. What is singular is that he does not appear to have
given Frontenac any more information regarding his discovery than
Father Z4nobe
gave to La Barre. Possibly he had some hope, as the latter hints, of
organizing a separate government in the new territory he had
discovered. In no case, however, can LaBarre's proceedings towards
him be justified. On the pretext that Fort Frontenac had been
abandoned, he took possession of it, and turned it, if we are to
credit Meulles, into a trading-post for himself and his friends. He
had a barque built there, professedly for the king's service on the
lake, but used it mainly, the intendant says, for his own trade.
La Salle spent the winter in the Illinois
country. In the spring of 1683 he wrote to La Barre from his fort of
St. Louis, announcing his discovery, and expressing the hope that
the kindly treatment which he had always received from the previous
governor would continue to be extended to him. His financial affairs
had for some time been in a very unsatisfactory state, but he
expected, he said, to be able in the course of the then current year
to place them on a sound footing, and prove that he had not
undertaken more than it was in his power to .accomplish. He had
meantime sent men to Montreal for supplies, but these did not
return, nor did he get any reply from La Barre either to this letter
or to a later one written in June. Instead of replying, La Barre
sent an officer named Baugy to take possession of Fort St. Louis. La
Salle, who had started for Quebec, met Baugy on the way, and sent
back word to his men at the fort not to resist the seizure. Du Lhut,
under instructions from the governor, followed shortly after,
confiscated the merchandise stored in the fort, and brought it to
Montreal. La Salle on arriving at Quebec saw La Barre, and obtained
from him restitution of Fort Frontenac, but could not get any
compensation for the loss he had sustained through the interruption
of his trading operations at that point. He consequently proceeded
to France in the fall of the year, and in the course of the winter
presented a full statement of the case to the minister, M. de
Seignelay. Only a few months before, the king had expressed the
opinion above quoted as to the uselessness, or worse than
uselessness, of such explorations as La Salle had been engaged in ;
but when the explorer himself appeared upon the scene, a change came
over the views of the court. The king writes to the intendant that,
not only is the fort which the governor had wrongfully seized to be
handed over to La Salle, but that full reparation is to be made for
all the loss which he has sustained, and that the intendant is to
see that this is done. Writing to La Barre himself, the king informs
him that he takes La Salle under his particular protection, and
cautions the governor not to do anything against his interest. La
Salle's agent, La Forest, is to be placed in charge of Fort St.
Louis.
Settling down to business, as he did, almost
immediately on his arrival in the country, La Barre was naturally
anxious that the persons to whom he issued hunting and trading
permits under the regulations established in Frontenac's time
should, as far as possible, be screened from competition, and he
therefore most ill-advisedly gave the Iroquois tribes to understand
that they might treat as they pleased any persons found trading who
were unprovided with permits signed by him. The Iroquois, greatly
pleased to have a pretext for such operations, proceeded to plunder
some canoes belonging to the governor's own friends, who were still
in the woods on the authority of permits issued by Frontenac. This
alarmed the governor not a little, and caused him, in the spring of
1683, to send a special vessel to France with an earnest request for
military reinforcements. Worse news came to hand very shortly after.
La Salle's fort of St. Louis having been seized, the governor wished
to stock it with goods, and had despatched thither seven canoe loads
to the value of fifteen or sixteen thousand francs. As these canoes
were passing through the Illinois country, where the Iroquois were
on the war-path, the latter, who were not in a humour for fine
discrimination, seized them, explaining afterwards that they
supposed them to belong to La Salle, whose property they claimed to
have the governor's permission to plunder. La Barre writes to the
king, under date 5th June, in still stronger terms, and says that,
with or.without reinforcements, he will move against the Senecas
about the middle of August. This was mere bluster, as no
preparations had at that time been made for a campaign. The king
sent out one hundred and fifty men in August; but these did not
arrive till the 10th October. It was then decided that war should be
waged the following year. The intendant appears to have agreed
entirely with the governor that war was inevitable; his chief fear
seems to have been that the governor, in whose stability of
character he had very little confidence, would change his mind on
the subject, and fall back on some weak and futile scheme of
conciliation.
The winter of 1683-4 was not marked by any
notable event. In the following spring, pursuant to the plan which
he had communicated to the French government, the governor sent
instructions to the post commanders in the West, La Durantaye, Du
Lhut, and Nicolas Perrot, to rendezvous at Niagara with as many men
of the different Ottawa tribes as they could persuade to follow
them. At that point they would find awaiting them provisions, arms,
and ammunition, with means of transportation to the scene of action.
Home levies of militia and of mission Indians
were at the same time being raised and equipped. At this stage of
the proceedings it occurred to La Barre that it would be a good
thing to inform the governor of New York, Colonel Dongan, of his
intention to make war upon the Senecas. The communication happened
to be particularly ill-timed. The English of Maryland and Virginia
had been having their own troubles with the Iroquois, who had made
many destructive raids into their territory.; and in the early
summer of 1684
Lord Howard of Effingham, governor of Virginia, had gone to New York
to consult with the governor there as to the measures to be adopted,
and thence had gone on to Albany, Colonel Dongan accompanying him,
to hold a conference with the offending tribes—in this case the
Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas. Delegates from the Mohawks, who had
not broken the peace, were also present; and one of them, Cadianne
by name, made ample acknowledgment of the wrongs done by his
brethren of the other tribes, to whom he took the opportunity of
addressing some very severe and wholesome remarks. Shortly
afterwards delegates from the Senecas also arrived, when a general
treaty of peace and good-will was made betweenthe Five Nations on
the one hand, and the English and their Indians on the other. It was
in the midst of these proceedings that Dongan received La Barre's
letter. He replied by saying that the King of England exercised
sovereignty over the whole Iroquois confederacy,
and that if the Senecas had committed the depredations complained of
he would see that they made reparation ; he hoped that La Barre, in
the interest of peace, would refrain from invading British
territory. He then took occasion of the conference to inform the
tribes of the French designs, his object being to draw from them an
acknowledgment of the sovereignty of the English king in return for
a promise of protection against the French. The tribes, who had some
time before requested that the arms of the Duke of York (now James
II) should be raised over their fortresses, consented to this, but
with the not altogether consistent proviso that they should still be
considered a free people. The subject was further debated at the
chief town of the Onondagas, the central nation of the confederacy,
a few weeks later. Dongan was represented by Arnold Viele, a
Dutchman. It happened that Charles Le Moyne of Montreal was also
there, having been sent by La Barre to invite the Onondagas to a
conference, as well as the Jesuit, Father Lamberville. Very little
progress was made with the diplomatic question; but the Seneca
deputies expressed very savage sentiments in regard to the French,
promising themselves a feast of French flesh as the result of the
coming war.
This was in the month of August, and La Barre,
at the head of an expedition consisting of seven hundred Canadian
militia, one hundred and thirty regular troops, and two hundred
Indians, had left Montreal on the 27th July, expecting to be joined
by about one thousand Indian auxiliaries from the north and west. It
took about two weeks to reach Fort Frontenac, where a delay of two
or three weeks occurred, during which time the army began to sicken.
The heat was intense, and the camp had been established on low
malarial ground. La Barre himself became dangerously ill. Finally a
move was made to the southern side of Lake Ontario, the army
encamping at the mouth of what is now known as the Salmon River, a
little east of Oswego. The place at that time was known by the
ill-omened name of La Famine. In point of unwholesomeness the place
was quite as bad as Fort Frontenac; and a large part of the army
fell into a most deplorable condition of debility. Moreover,
provisions ran short, and those whom malaria and other diseases had
spared were face to face with hunger. Discontent was rife in the
camp. All chance of taking the offensive against the Senecas was at
an end. La Barre's one hope was that Charles Le Moyne's mission to
the Onondagas had been successful, and that, through the good
offices of that tribe, he might be able to make peace with some
little show of honour. Most opportunely Le Moyne arrived on the 3rd
September, bringing with him a celebrated Onondaga orator and
politician named Ourouehati, otherwise known as Grande Gueule, or,
as Colden, historian of the Five Indian Nations, has it, Garangula,
together with twelve other deputies, eight of his own people, two
Oneidas, and two Cayugas. To conceal as far as possible his real
situation, La Barre had sent away his sick, and pretended to have
come with a mere escort, the body of his army being at Fort
Frontenac. Nevertheless, in his speech, while professing a desire
for peace, he threatened war unless complete satisfaction were
rendered by the Senecas and others for the mischief they had done,
and pledges given for their future good conduct. Perfectly informed
as to the real weakness of the French governor's position, Grande
Gueule(BigMouth) did not mince matters in replying to him. He
thanked Onontio for bringing back the calumet of peace, and
congratulated him that he had not dug up the hatchet that had so
often been red with the blood of his countrymen. Onontio, he said,
pretended to have come to smoke the calumet of peace, but the
pretence was false : he had come to make war, and would have done so
but for the sickness of his men. If the Iroquois had pillaged
Frenchmen, it was because the latter were carrying arms to the
Illinois. (This of course was not true as regards the seven canoes
which the governor and his friends had sent forward ; but Big Mouth
was a diplomatist) As regards conducting certain English traders to
the lakes, which was one of the points complained of by La Barre,
they were acting perfectly within their rights. They were free to go
where they pleased, and to take with them whom they pleased. They
were also quite justified in making war on the Illinois, who had
hunted on their lands, and would give no pledge to refrain from
attacking them in future. In this respect
they had done less than the English and French, who had dispossessed
many tribes and made settlements in their country.
This was a forenoon's work. In the afternoon
another session was held, and the day concluded with the settlement
of the terms of peace. La Barre was not to attack the Senecas, and
Big Mouth undertook that reparation should be made for the acts of
plunder committed. He refused entirely to pledge his people to
desist from war on the Illinois; they would fight them to the death
; and La Barre, notwithstanding what he had said about the king's
determination to protect his western children, was obliged to give
way. Next morning he broke up camp and set out on the return
journey. Sickness continued to plague his force, and eighty men died
on the way to Montreal.
But this was not all. The commanders in the West
had acted on their orders to raise as many men as they could amongst
the Indian allies in the region of the Great Lakes, and to lead them
to Niagara. Du Lhut and La Durantaye had great difficulty in
executing their task. Only the Hurons seemed in the least disposed
to move. Nicolas Perrot, however, possessed more influence; and,
mainly through his persuasions, a force was gathered of about five
hundred men, drawn from the Hurons, Ottawas, and other neighbouring
tribes. Accompanying these were about one hundred Frenchmen of the
coureur de bois class, who in manners and
customs were at times hardly distinguishable from their native
companions. Having got the force together, the next thing to do was
to start them and keep them on the march. The commanders had a hard
time of it: certain accidents happened on the way which to the
Indians were of evil omen; and it was difficult to prevent whole
bands from deserting. Finally, however, the expedition reached
Niagara just about the time that La Barre was making terms with Big
Mouth. They found there neither provisions, nor arms, nor
instructions. In a short time a sail appeared. It. was a boat sent
by La Barre to tell them that he had made peace with the Iroquois,
and that they might go home. The indignation and disgust of the
warriors, the disappointment and mortification of the French
leaders, may be imagined. The Indian allies said they had been
betrayed, and expressed their opinion of the French in no measured
terms. Some of the more hot-headed ones urged that, as they had
started on the war-path, they should go on and attack the Senecas by
themselves. Wiser counsels prevailed. The chief men had not been
eager for the war from the first; and, calming the spirits of their
followers, they induced them to turn their faces homewards. Some of
them had come a thousand miles, and now that long journey had to
be retraced with nothing accomplished. It
was a desperate blow to French influence in all the region of the
Great Lakes.
The only man who gave La Barre any comfort in
these depressing circumstances was P&re Lamber-ville, missionary
among the Onondagas. This amiable and kindly priest, who had written
to Frontenac some valued words of commendation when he was leaving
the country, wrote to La Barre to tell him that he had acted most
wisely in making peace. So doubtless he had, in comparison with
making war just at that time ; but none the less the peace was one
which made the colonists hang their heads with shame. Meulles in his
despatch to the minister did not help to put the matter in a more
favourable light. Speaking of the governor he said : " He signed the
peace just as he decided on the war, without consulting any one but
a few merchants; and he has uselessly expended forty-five thousand
francs, of which he alone will owe an account to the king." So much
severity on the intendant's part was hardly necessary; the facts
spoke for themselves ; and the king, when they were brought to his
knowledge, wrote to the discomfited governor, under date the 10th
March 1685, the following gently worded letter:—
"Monsieur
de la Barre,—Having
been informed that your years make it impossible for you to support
the fatigues inseparable from your office of governor and
lieutenant-general in Canada, send you
this letter to acquaint you that I have selected M. de Denonville to
serve in your place ; and my intention is that, on his arrival,
after resigning to him the command, with all instructions concerning
it, you embark for your return to France."
Thus ended an administration that cannot be
regarded as a happy or a creditable one. In no respect was M. de la
Barre on a level with the office he held. He had no clear policy of
his own, and was, therefore, more or less, at the mercy of
incompetent or interested advisers. As is not uncommonly the case
with such men, he was sometimes foolishly impulsive. In a letter,
dated 10th
April 1684,
the king expresses the greatest surprise that the governor should
have actually proposed to hang, of his own authority, a colonist who
was preparing to remove to the English settlements. He reminds him
that, except in military matters, he possesses no judicial power
whatever, and adds the sage observation that the exercise of such
constraint would certainly increase the desire of the French
inhabitants to go where they would enjoy more liberty. In the matter
of ecclesiastical policy, La Barre failed to carry out the views of
the king. His instructions were to afford all the help in his power
to the clergy in their efforts for the good of the country, but to
see that they did not extend their authority beyond its proper
bounds. In his first despatch he indulges in a little criticism of
the bishop for his delay in establishing permanent
cures, as desired by the king; but this
is his sole exhibition of anything like independence of the
ecclesiastical power. There was a question pending at the time as to
the emoluments to be secured to the country
cures', and La Barre and Meulles are both
blamed by the court for having allowed the bishop to appropriate a
larger amount out of the royal grant for church purposes than the
king had authorized or intended.
In the matter just referred to, however, the
bishop may well have been substantially in the right. He knew the
country, its needs, and its possibilities better than the king; and
he had the interests both of his clergy and of his people sincerely
at heart. It seems a little surprising that, just at this time, when
his relations with the secular power were so satisfactory, he should
have formed the intention of resigning the office which he had been
so eager to obtain only a few years before, and of confining himself
to the oversight of the Seminary. The explanation is to be found
partly in the state of his health, and partly in the expectation he
entertained of being able to find a man to replace him as bishop who
would adopt and carry out all his views with the utmost fidelity and
exactness, and thus give him even greater influence than he had had
in the. past. If a bishop alone could make headway against all the
opposition of the civil power, what might not be expected of a
bishop of sound opinions supported by such
an ex-bishop as Laval himself? With these views
he sailed for France in the fall of 1684 to tender his resignation
to the king; and, with these views also, he not long afterwards
recommended as his successor a pious ecclesiastic of noble family,
M. Jean Baptiste de la Croix Chevrieres de Saint Vallier, who,
though only thirty-two years of age, had already refused two
bishoprics. Once before Laval had chosen a man for his piety, M. de
M£zy, and- it had not turned out well. The Reverend M. Gosselin, in
his life of Saint Vallier, says that the day of his nomination was a
regular "day of dupes." The appointment did not take place till the
year 1688 ; but meantime M. de Saint Vallier consented to go out to
Canada in the capacity of vicar-general, and make acquaintance with
the diocese. Thus it happened that he and the Marquis de Denonville,
La Barre's successor, came out together in the same ship, arriving
at Quebec on the 1st August 1685. The vessel which brought the new
governor was accompanied by two others carrying troops to the number
of three hundred. Fever broke out on the way, as was so often the
case in those days, and there were many deaths. Amongst those who
succumbed were two priests, who, in their attendance on the sick,
had caught the malady. Their fate inspired Saint Vallier with
intense regret that he had not taken passage on the same vessel, so
that he might have shared so glorious a death. The sentiment seems
strange on the part of a man at his time of life, just entering on a
career in which he might reasonably hope for long years of the most
exalted usefulness. He did not in fact die till the year 1727.
We have two accounts of the condition of Canada
at this time; one from the pen of the bishop designate, the other
from that of the new governor after a residence of a little over
three months in the country. Strange to say, the two do not in the
very least agree. Saint Vallier sees everything
couleur de rose, and detects the odour of
sanctity everywhere. Denonville, on the contrary, sees license,
insubordination, idleness, luxury, debauchery, running riot
throughout the land. " The Canadian people," says Saint Vallier,
"is, generally speaking, as devout as the clergy is holy. One
remarks among them something resembling the disposition which we
recognize and admire in the Christians of the early centuries." Even
in the distant settlements where a priest is rarely seen, the people
are constant in the practice of virtue, the fathers making up for
the lack of priests, so far as the training of their children is
concerned, "by their wise counsels and firm discipline."1Denonville,
just about the same time, undertakes to give the minister an account
of the disorders prevailing not only in the woods, but, as he
states, in the settlements as well. " These arise," he says, " from
the idleness of young persons, and the great liberty which fathers,
mothers, and guardians have for a long time given them of going into
the forest under pretence of hunting or trading. One great evil," he
continues, "is the infinite number of drink-ing-shops. . . . All the
rascals and idlers of the country are attracted into this business
of tavern-keeping. They never dream of tilling the soil; on the
contrary, they deter other inhabitants, and end by ruining them." Of
the two pictures, it is probable that the governor's was nearer the
truth ; though probably his ascetic turn of mind led him to
exaggerate the evils that existed. Saint Vallier, when he came to
the country as bishop in 1688, was not long in discovering how
greatly he had overrated the virtue and piety of the inhabitants. He
took an early opportunity of repairing his error as far as possible
by preaching a sermon on the sins which he found prevailing. "We
thought," he said, "before we knew our flock, that the Iroquois and
the English were the only wolves we had to fear; but, God having
opened our eyes, we are forced to confess that our most dangerous
foes are drunkenness, luxury, impurity, and slander." We cannot
think very highly of the judgment of a man who has to repudiate his
own statements so completely in regard to facts fully open to
observation.
It is allowable, fortunately, to take a more
favourable view of the Canadian people than either the governor, or
the bishop in his revised opinion, expresses. They were careless and
ease-loving, more fond of adventure than of steady toil; they
were vain and given to luxury ; but these
qualities were in a large measure the result of the circumstances in
which they were placed and the general influences of the time. How
could they fail to be fond of adventure when incitements to it
presented themselves on every hand, and the rewards that it promised
were so much more tempting than those to be derived from the tillage
of the soil? It was human nature in those days to prefer the gun to
the spade, and the paddle to the scythe. If they were vain and fond
of luxury and show, it proceeded in part from innate taste, and in
part from the example of those above them, who, in turn, reflected
the manners, the habits, and the tone of the most luxurious court in
Europe. It soon began to be observed that a given class in Canada
represented a higher degree of refinement and culture than a similar
class in European France. The reason was that, in the vast spaces
and free air of a new continent, human nature had more scope for
expansion; ambition was stirred; thought and imagination were
quickened. The old seed was germinating with new power in a virgin
soil. The people were gay, chivalrous, courteous, and brave, with an
underlying tenacity of purpose and power of industry ready to be
revealed in due season under more settled conditions of life. That
intemperance was a serious evil there can be no doubt; but that,
too, was more or less incidental to the times. The physique of the
people was good ; and, if their moral habits were not all that
194 their spiritual guides could have
wished, they were at least free from serious corruption. In a word,
the Canadians of that period lived, on the whole, healthy lives, and
were planting a hardy and enduring race on the soil they had made
their own. |
