CHAPTER 10
1661-1664

.  LAVAL AND DUMESNIL.

THOUGH the proposals of Avaugottr's memorial were not adopted, it seems to have produced a strong impression at court.  For this impression the minds of the King and his minister had already been prepared.  Two years before, the inhabitants of Canada had sent one of their number, Pierre Boucher, to represent their many grievances and ask for aid.1 Boucher had had an audience of the young King, who listened with interest to his statements; and when in the following year he returned to Quebec, he was accompanied by an officer named Dumont, who had under his command a hundred soldiers for the colony, and was commissioned to report its condition and resources.1 The movement seemed to betoken that the government was wakening at last from its long inaction.

Meanwhile the Company of New France, feudal lord of Canada, had also shown signs of returning life.  Its whole history had been one of mishap, followed by discouragement and apathy; and it is difficult to say whether its ownership of Canada had been more hurtful to itself or to the colony.  At the eleventh hour it sent out an agent invested with powers of controller-general, intendant, and supreme judge, to inquire into the state of its affairs.  This agent, Pe’ronne Dumesnil, arrived early in the autumn of 1660, and set himself with great vigor to his work.  He was an advocate of the Parliament of Paris, an active, aggressive, and tenacious person, of a temper well fitted to rip up an old abuse or probe a delinquency to the bottom.  His proceedings quickly raised a storm at Quebec.

It may be remembered that, many years before, the company had ceded its monopoly of the fur-trade to the inhabitants of the colony, in consideration of that annual payment in beaver-skins which had been so tardily and so rarely made.  The direction of the trade had at that time been placed in the hands of a council composed of the governor, the superior of the Jesuits, and several other members.  Various changes had since taken place, and the trade was now controlled by another council, established without the consent of the company,1 and composed of the principal persons in the colony.  The members of this council, with certain prominent merchants in league with them, engrossed all the trade, so that the inhabitants at large profited nothing by the right which the company had ceded; and as the councillors controlled not only the trade, but all the financial affairs of Canada, while the remoteness of their scene of operations made it difficult to supervise them, they were able, with little risk, to pursue their own profit, to the detriment both of the company and the colony.  They and their allies formed a petty trading oligarchy, as pernicious to the prosperity of Canada as the Iroquois war itself.

The company, always anxious for its beaver-skins, made several attempts to control the proceedings of the councillors and call them to account, but with little success, till the vigorous Dumesnil undertook the task; when, to their wrath and consternation, they and their friends found themselves attacked by wholesale accusations of fraud and embezzlement.  That these charges were exaggerated there can be little doubt; that they were unfounded is incredible, in view of the effect they produced.

The councillors refused to acknowledge Dumesnil's powers as controller, intendant, and judge, and declared his proceedings null.  He retorted by charging them with usurpation.  The excitement increased, and Dumesnil’s life was threatened.

He had two sons in the colony.  One of them, Pe"ronne de Maze", was secretary to Avaugour, then on his way up the Saint Lawrence to assume the government.  The other, Pe’ronne des Touches, was with his father at Quebec.  Towards the end of August this young man was attacked in the street in broad daylight, and received a kick which proved fatal.  He was carried to his father's house, where he died on the twenty-ninth.  Dumesnil charges four persons, all of whom were among those into whose affairs he had been prying, with having taken part in the outrage; but it is very uncertain who was the immediate cause of Des Touches's death.  Dumesnil, himself the supreme judicial officer of the colony, made complaint to the judge in ordinary of the company; but he says that justice was refused, the complaint suppressed by authority, his allegations torn in pieces, and the whole affair hushed.

At the time of the murder, Dumesnil was confined to his house by illness.  An attempt was made to rouse the mob against him, by reports that he had come to the colony for the purpose of laying taxes; but he sent for some of the excited inhabitants, and succeeded in convincing them that he was their champion rather than their enemy.  Some Indians in the neighborhood were also instigated to kill him, and he was forced to conciliate them by presents.

He soon renewed his attacks, and in his quality of intendant called on the councillors and their allies to render their accounts, and settle the long arrears of debt due to the company.  They set his demands at naught.  The war continued month after month.  It is more than likely that when in the spring of 1662 Avaugour dissolved and reconstructed the council, his action had reference to these disputes; and it is clear that when in the following August Laval sailed for France, one of his objects was to restore the tranquillity which Dumesnil's proceedings had disturbed.  There was great need; for, what with these proceedings and the quarrel about brandy, Quebec was a little hell of discord, the earthquake not having as yet frightened it into propriety.

The bishop's success at court was triumphant.  Not only did he procure the removal of Avaugour, but he was invited to choose a new governor to replace him.1 This was not all; for he succeeded in effecting a complete change in the government of the colony.  The Company of New France was called upon to resign its claims; and by a royal edict of April, 1663, all power, legislative, judicial, and executive, was vested in a council composed of the governor whom Laval had chosen, of Laval himself, and of five councillors, an attorney-general, and a secretary, to be chosen by Laval and the governor jointly.2 Bearing with them blank commissions to be filled with the names of the new functionaries, Laval and his governor sailed for Quebec, where they landed on the fifteenth of September.  With them came one Gaudais Dupont, a royal commissioner instructed to inquire into the state of the colony.  No sooner had they arrived than Laval and Me’zy, the new governor, proceeded to construct the new council.  Me’zy knew nobody in the colony, and was, at this time, completely under Laval's influence.  The nominations, therefore, were virtually made by the bishop alone, in whose hands, and not in those of the governor, the blank commissions had been placed.  Thus for the moment he had complete control of the government; that is to say, the Church was mistress of the civil power.  

Laval formed his council as follows: Jean Bourdon for attorney-general; Rouer de Villeray, Juchereau de la Fertc, Ruette d'Auteuil, Le Gardeur de Tilly, andMatthieu D'Amours for Councellors; and Peuvret de Mesnu for secretary.  The royal commissioner, Gaudais, also took a prominent place at the board.1 This functionary was on the point of marrying his niece to a son of Robert Giffard, who had a strong interest in suppressing Dumesnil's accusations.  Dumesnil had laid his statements before the commissioner, who quickly rejected them, and took part with the accused.

Of those appointed to the new council, their enemy Dumesnil says that they were "incapable persons;" and their associate Gaudais, in defending them against worse charges, declares that they were "unlettered, of little experience, and nearly all unable to deal with affairs of importance." This was, perhaps, unavoidable; for except among the ecclesiastics, education was then scarcely known in Canada.  But if Laval may be excused for putting incompetent men in office, nothing can excuse him for making men charged with gross public offences the prosecutors and judges in their own cause; and his course in doing so gives color to the assertion of Dumesnil that he made up the council expressly to shield the accused and smother the accusation.

The two persons under the heaviest charges received the two most important appointments,  Bourdon, attorney-general; and Villeray, keeper of the seals.  La Ferte’ was also one of the accused.  Of Villeray, the governor Argenson had written in 1659: "Some of his qualities are good enough, but confidence cannot be placed in him on account of his instability." In the same year he had been ordered to France, " to purge himself of sundry crimes where with he stands charged." He was not yet free of suspicion, having returned to Canada under an order to make up and render his accounts, which he had not yet done.  Dumesnil says that he first came to the colony in 1651, as valet of the governor Lauson, who had taken him from the jail at Kochelle, where he was imprisoned for a debt of seventy one francs, "as appears by the record of the jail of date July eleventh in that year." From this modest beginning he became in time the richest man in Canada.  He was strong in orthodoxy, and an ardent supporter of the bishop and the Jesuits.  He is alternately praised and blamed, according to the partisan leanings of the writer.

Bourdon, though of humble origin, was, perhaps, the most intelligent man in the council.  He was chiefly known as an engineer, but he had also been a baker, a painter, a syndic of the inhabitants, chief gunner at the fort, and collector of customs for the company.  Whether guilty of embezzlement or not, he was a zealous devotee, and would probably have died for his creed.  Like Villeray, he was one of Laval's stanchest supporters, while the rest of the council were also sound in doctrine and sure in allegiance.

In virtue of their new dignity, the accused now claimed exemption from accountability; but this was not all.  The abandonment of Canada by the company, in leaving Dumesnil without support, and depriving him of official character, had made his charges far less dangerous.  Nevertheless, it was thought best to suppress them altogether, and the first act of the new government was to this end.

On the twentieth of September, the second day after the establishment of the council, Bourdon, in his character of attorney-general, rose and demanded that the papers of Jean Pe’ronne Dumesnil should be seized and sequestered.  The council consented; and, to complete the scandal, Villeray was commissioned to make the seizure in the presence of Bourdon.  To color the proceeding, it was alleged that Dumesnil had obtained certain papers unlawfully from the greffe, or record office.  "As he was thought," says Gaudais, "to be a violent man," Bourdon and Villeray took with them ten soldiers, well armed, together with a locksmith and the secretary of the council.  Thus prepared for every contingency, they set out on their errand, and appeared suddenly at Dumesnil's house between seven and eight o'clock in the evening.  "The aforesaid Sieur Dumesnil," further says Gaudais, " did not refute the opinion entertained of his violence; for he made a great noise, shouted robbers! and tried to rouse the neighborhood, outrageously abusing the aforesaid Sieur de Villeray and the attorney-general, in great contempt of the authority of the council, which he even refused to recognize."

They tried to silence him by threats, but without effect; upon which they seized him and held him fast in a chair, " me," writes the wrathful Dumesnil, "who had lately been their judge." The soldiers stood over him and stopped his mouth, while the others broke open and ransacked his cabinet, drawers, and chest, from which they took all his papers, refusing to give him an inventory, or to permit any witness to enter the house.  Some of these papers were private; among the rest were, he says, the charges and specifications, nearly finished, for the trial of Bourdon and Villeray, together with the proofs of their "peculations, extortions, and malversations." The papers were enclosed under seal, and deposited in a neighboring house, whence they were afterwards removed to the council chamber, and Dumesnil never saw them again.  It may well be believed that this, the inaugural act of the new council, was not allowed to appear on its records.

On the twenty first, Villeray made a formal report of the seizure to his colleagues; upon which, "by reason of the insults, violences, and irreverences therein set forth against the aforesaid Sieur de Villeray, commissioner, as also against the authority of the council," it was ordered that the offending Dumesnil should be put under arrest; but Gaudais, as he declares, prevented the order from being carried into effect.  

Dumesnil, who says that during the scene at his house he had expected to be murdered like his son, now, though unsupported and alone, returned to the attack, demanded his papers, and was so loud in threats of complaint to the King that the council were seriously alarmed.  They again decreed his arrest and imprisonment, but resolved to keep the decree secret till the morning of the day when the last of the returning ships was to sail for France.  In this ship Dumesnil had taken his passage, and they proposed to arrest him unexpectedly on the point of embarkation, that he might have no time to prepare and despatch a memorial to the court.  Thus a full year must elapse before his complaints could reach the minister, and seven or eight months more before a reply could be returned to Canada.  During this long delay the affair would have time to cool.  Dumesnil received a secret warning of this plan, and accordingly went on board another vessel, which was to sail immediately.  The council caused the six cannon of the battery in the Lower Town to be pointed at her, and threatened to sink her if she left the harbor; but she disregarded them, and proceeded on her way.

On reaching France, Dumesnil contrived to draw the attention of the minister Colbert to his accusations, and to the treatment they had brought upon him.  On this Colbert demanded of Gaudais, who had also returned in one of the autumn ships, why he had not reported these matters to him.  Gaudais made a lame attempt to explain his silence, gave his statement of the seizure of the papers, answered in vague terms some of Dumesnil's charges against the Canadian financiers, and said that he had nothing to do with the rest.  In the following spring Colbert wrote as follows to his relative Terron, intendant of marine: 

" I do not know what report M.  Gaudais has made to you, but family interests and the connections which he has at Quebec should cause him to be a little distrusted.  On his arrival in that country, having constituted himself chief of the council, he despoiled an agent of the Company of Canada of all his papers, in a manner very violent and extraordinary ; and this proceeding leaves no doubt whatever that these papers contained matters the knowledge of which it was wished absolutely to suppress.  I think it will be very proper that you should be informed of the statements made by this agent, in order that, through him, an exact knowledge may be acquired of everything that has taken place in the management of affairs."

Whether Terron pursued the inquiry does not appear.  Meanwhile new quarrels had arisen at Quebec, and the questions of the past were obscured in the dust of fresh commotions.  Nothing is more noticeable in the whole history of Canada, after it came under the direct control of the Crown, than the helpless manner in which this absolute government was forced to overlook and ignore the disobedience and rascality of its functionaries in this distant transatlantic dependency.

As regards Dumesnil's charges, the truth seems to be, that the financial managers of the colony, being ignorant and unpractised, had kept imperfect and confused accounts, which they themselves could not always unravel; and that some, if not all of them, had made illicit profits under cover of this confusion.  That their stealings approached the enormous sum at which Dumesnil places them is not to be believed.  But, even on the grossly improbable assumption of their entire innocence, there can be no apology for the means, subversive of all justice, by which Laval enabled his partisans and supporters to extricate themselves from embarrassment.  

NOTE.   Dumesnil's principal memorial, preserved in the archives of the Marine and Colonies, is entitled Memoire concernant les Affaires du Canada,.  It forms in the copy before me thirty-eight pages of manuscript, and bears no address, but seems meant for Colbert, or the council of state.  There is a second memorial, which is little else than an abridgment of the first.  A third, bearing the address Au Roy et d nos Seigneurs du Conse.il (d'Etat), and signed Peronne Dumesnil, is a petition for the payment of 10,132 livres due to him by the company for his services in Canada, 

Gaudais, in compliance with the demands of Colbert, gives his statement in a long memorial, 

Dumesnil, in his principal memorial, gives a list of the alleged defaulters, with the special charges against each, and the amounts for which he reckons them liable.  The accusations cover a period of ten or twelve years, and sometimes more.  Some of them are curiously suggestive of more recent " rings." Thus Jean Gloria makes a charge of thirty-one hundred livres (francs) for fireworks to celebrate the King's marriage, when the actual cost is said to have been about forty livres.  Others are alleged to have embezzled the funds of the company, under cover of pretended payments to imaginary creditors; and Argenson himself is said to have eked out his miserable salary by drawing on the company for the pay of soldiers who did not exist.

The records of the Council preserve a guarded silence about this affair.  I find, however, under date 20 Sept., 1663.