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CHAPTER VII

GOVERNORSHIP OF M. DE LA BARRE

1682 TO 1685

HE 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 Abbé 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

THE NEW GOVERNOR CRITICIZED

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 attorneygeneral, 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.

A ZEALOUS TRADER

We have seen that the court did not seem to take any serious notice of the charges of trading reciprocally brought by Frontenac and Duchesneau 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