1661-62.]

THE BRANDY QUARREL.

179

ter Colbert to the Marquis de Tracy, "and you must have known his talents, as well as his bizarre and somewhat impracticable temper." On landing, he would have no reception, being, as Father Lalemant observes, "an enemy of all ceremony." He went, however, to see the Jesuits, and "took a morsel of food in our refectory." "1 Laval was prepared to receive him with all solemnity at the Church; but the governor would not go. He soon set out on a tour of observation as far as Montreal, whence he returned delighted with the country, and immediately wrote to Colbert in high praise of it, observing that the St. Lawrence was the most beautiful river he had ever seen.2

It was clear from the first that, while he had a prepossession against the bishop, he wished to be on good terms with the Jesuits. He began by placing some of them on the council; but they and Laval were too closely united; and if Avaugour thought to separate them, he signally failed. A few months only had elapsed when we find it noted in Father Lalemant's private journal that the governor had dissolved the council and appointed a new one, and that other "changes and troubles" had befallen. The inevitable quarrel had broken out; it was a complex one, but the chief occasion of dispute was fortunate for the ecclesiastics, since it placed them, to a certain degree, morally in the right.

1 Lalemant, Journal des Jésuites, Septembre, 1661.

2 Lettre d'Avaugour au Ministre, 1661.

The question at issue was not new. It had agitated the colony for years, and had been the spring of some of Argenson's many troubles. Nor did it › cease with Avaugour, for we shall trace its course hereafter, tumultuous as a tornado. It was simply the temperance question, not as regards the colonists, though here, too, there was great room for reform, but as regards the Indians.

Their inordinate passion for brandy had long been the source of excessive disorders. They drank expressly to get drunk, and when drunk they were like wild beasts. Crime and violence of all sorts ensued; the priests saw their teachings despised and their flocks ruined. On the other hand, the sale of brandy was a chief source of profit, direct or indirect, to all those interested in the fur-trade, including the principal persons of the colony. In Argenson's time, Laval launched an excommunication against those engaged in the abhorred traffic; for nothing less than total prohibition would content the clerical party, and besides the spiritual penalty, they demanded the punishment of death against the contumacious offender. Death, in fact, was decreed. Such was the posture of affairs when Avaugour arrived; and, willing as he was to conciliate the Jesuits, he permitted the decree to take effect, although, it seems, with great repugnance. A few weeks after his arrival, two men were shot and one whipped, for selling brandy to Indians. An extreme though

1 Journal des Jésuites, Octobre, 1661.