Part 31 (1/2)
[Footnote 561: _Memoires sur le Canada_, 1749-1760.]
[Footnote 562: _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Oct. 1759._]
[Footnote 563: _Ibid., 7 Nov. 1759._]
[Footnote 564: _Ibid., 6 Aout, 1758._]
Administrative corruption was not the only bane of Canada. Her financial condition was desperate. The ordinary circulating medium consisted of what was known as card money, and amounted to only a million of francs.
This being insufficient, Bigot, like his predecessor Hocquart, issued promissory notes on his own authority, and made them legal tender. They were for sums from one franc to a hundred, and were called _ordonnances_. Their issue was blamed at Versailles as an encroachment on the royal prerogative, though they were recognized by the Ministry in view of the necessity of the case. Every autumn those who held them to any considerable amount might bring them to the colonial treasurer, who gave in return bills of exchange on the royal treasury in France. At first these bills were promptly paid; then delays took place, and the notes depreciated; till in 1759 the Ministry, aghast at the amount, refused payment, and the utmost dismay and confusion followed.[565]
[Footnote 565: _Reflections sommaires sur le Commerce qui s'est fait en Canada. etat present du Canada_. Compare Stevenson, _Card Money of Canada_, in _Transactions of the Historical Society of Quebec_, 1873-1875.]
The vast jarring, discordant mechanism of corruption grew incontrollable; it seized upon Bigot, and dragged him, despite himself, into perils which his prudence would have shunned. He was becoming a victim to the rapacity of his own confederates, whom he dared not offend by refusing his connivance and his signature of frauds which became more and more recklessly audacious. He asked leave to retire from office, in the hope that his successor would bear the brunt of the ministerial displeasure. Pean had withdrawn already, and with the fruits of his plunder bought land in France, where he thought himself safe. But though the Intendant had long been an object of distrust, and had often been warned to mend his ways,[566] yet such was his energy, his executive power, and his fertility of resource, that in the crisis of the war it was hard to dispense with him. Neither his abilities, however, nor his strong connections in France, nor an ally whom he had secured in the bureau of the Colonial Minister himself, could avail him much longer; and the letters from Versailles became appalling in rebuke and menace.
[Footnote 566: _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres, 1751-1758._]
”The s.h.i.+p 'Britannia,'” wrote the Minister, Berryer, ”laden with goods such as are wanted in the colony, was captured by a privateer from St.
Malo, and brought into Quebec. You sold the whole cargo for eight hundred thousand francs. The purchasers made a profit of two millions.
You bought back a part for the King at one million, or two hundred thousand more than the price which you sold the whole. With conduct like this it is no wonder that the expenses of the colony become insupportable. The amount of your drafts on the treasury is frightful.
The fortunes of your subordinates throw suspicion on your administration.” And in another letter on the same day: ”How could it happen that the small-pox among the Indians cost the King a million francs? What does this expense mean? Who is answerable for it? Is it the officers who command the posts, or is it the storekeepers? You give me no particulars. What has become of the immense quant.i.ty of provisions sent to Canada last year? I am forced to conclude that the King's stores are set down as consumed from the moment they arrive, and then sold to His Majesty at exorbitant prices. Thus the King buys stores in France, and then buys them again in Canada. I no longer wonder at the immense fortunes made in the colony.”[567] Some months later the Minister writes: ”You pay bills without examination, and then find an error in your accounts of three million six hundred thousand francs. In the letters from Canada I see nothing but incessant speculation in provisions and goods, which are sold to the King for ten times more than they cost in France. For the last time, I exhort you to give these things your serious attention, for they will not escape from mine.”[568]
[Footnote 567: _Le Ministre a Bigot, 19 Jan. 1759._]
[Footnote 568: _Ibid., 29 Aout, 1759._]
”I write, Monsieur, to answer your last two letters, in which you tell me that instead of sixteen millions, your drafts on the treasury for 1758 will reach twenty-four millions, and that this year they will rise to from thirty-one to thirty-three millions. It seems, then, that there are no bounds to the expenses of Canada. They double almost every year, while you seem to give yourself no concern except to get them paid. Do you suppose that I can advise the King to approve such an administration? or do you think that you can take the immense sum of thirty-three millions out of the royal treasury by merely a.s.suring me that you have signed drafts for it? This, too, for expenses incurred irregularly, often needlessly, always wastefully; which make the fortune of everybody who has the least hand in them, and about which you know so little that after reporting them at sixteen millions, you find two months after that they will reach twenty-four. You are accused of having given the furnis.h.i.+ng of provisions to one man, who under the name of commissary-general, has set what prices he pleased; of buying for the King at second or third hand what you might have got from the producer at half the price; of having in this and other ways made the fortunes of persons connected with you; and of living in splendor in the midst of a public misery, which all the letters from the colony agree in ascribing to bad administration, and in charging M. de Vaudreuil with weakness in not preventing.”[569]
[Footnote 569: _Le Ministre a Bigotu, 29 Aout, 1759_ (second letter of this date).]
These drastic utterances seem to have been partly due to a letter written by Montcalm in cipher to the Marechal de Belleisle, then minister of war. It painted the deplorable condition of Canada, and exposed without reserve the peculations and robberies of those intrusted with its interests. ”It seems,” said the General, ”as if they were all hastening to make their fortunes before the loss of the colony; which many of them perhaps desire as a veil to their conduct.” He gives among other cases that of Le Mercier, chief of Canadian artillery, who had come to Canada as a private soldier twenty years before, and had so prospered on fraudulent contracts that he would soon be worth nearly a million. ”I have often,” continues Montcalm, ”spoken of these expenditures to M. de Vaudreuil and M. Bigot; and each throws the blame on the other.”[570] And yet at the same time Vaudreuil was a.s.suring the Minister that Bigot was without blame.
[Footnote 570: _Montcalm au Ministre de la Guerre, Lettre confidentielle, 12 Avril,_ 1759.]
Some two months before Montcalm wrote this letter, the Minister, Berryer, sent a despatch to the Governor and Intendant which filled them with ire and mortification. It ordered them to do nothing without consulting the general of the French regulars, not only in matters of war, but in all matters of administration touching the defence and preservation of the colony. A plainer proof of confidence on one hand and distrust on the other could not have been given.[571]
[Footnote 571: _Le Ministre a Vaudreuil et Bigot, 20 Fev. 1759._]
One Querdisien-Tremais was sent from Bordeaux as an agent of Government to make investigation. He played the part of detective, wormed himself into the secrets of the confederates, and after six months of patient inquisition traced out four distinct combinations for public plunder.
Explicit orders were now given to Bigot, who, seeing no other escape, broke with Cadet, and made him disgorge two millions of stolen money.
The Commissary-General and his partners became so terrified that they afterwards gave up nearly seven millions more.[572] Stormy events followed, and the culprits found shelter for a time amid the tumults of war. Peculation did not cease, but a day of reckoning was at hand.
[Footnote 572: _Proces de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Memoirs pour Francois Bigot, 3'me partie_.]
NOTE: The printed doc.u.ments of the trial of Bigot and the other peculators include the defence of Bigot, of which the first part occupies 303 quarto pages, and the second part 764. Among the other papers are the arguments for Pean, Varin, Saint-Blin, Boishebert, Martel, Joncaire-Chabert and several more, along with the elaborate _Jugement rendue_, the _Requetes du Procureur-General,_ the _Reponse aux Memoires de M. Bigot et du Sieur Pean,_ etc., forming together five quarto volumes, all of which I have carefully examined. These are in the Library of Harvard University. There is another set, also of five volumes, in the Library of the Historical Society of Quebec, containing most of the papers just mentioned, and, bound with them, various others in ma.n.u.script, among which are doc.u.ments in defence of Vaudreuil (printed in part); Estebe, Corp.r.o.n, p.e.n.i.sseault, Maurin, and Breard. I have examined this collection also. The ma.n.u.script _Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres_, 1757-1760, as well as the letters of Vaudreuil, Bougainville, Daine, Doreil, and Montcalm throw much light on the maladministration of the time; as do many contemporary doc.u.ments, notably those ent.i.tled _Memoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie, etat present du Canada,_ and _Memoire sur le Canada_ (Archives Nationales). The remarkable anonymous work printed by the Historical Society of Quebec under the t.i.tle _Memoires sur le Canada depuis 1749 jusqu'ae 1760, is full of curious matter concerning Bigot and his a.s.sociates which squares well with other evidence. This is the source from which Smith, in his _History of Canada_ (Quebec, 1815), drew most of his information on the subject. A ma.n.u.script which seems to be the original draft of this valuable doc.u.ment was preserved at the Bastile, and, with other papers, was thrown into the street when that castle was destroyed. They were gathered up, and afterwards bought by a Russian named Dubrowski, who carried them to St. Petersburg. Lord Dufferin, when minister there, procured a copy of the ma.n.u.script in question, which is now in the keeping of Abbe H. Verreau at Montreal, to whose kindness I owe the opportunity of examining it. In substance it differs little from the printed work, though the language and the arrangement often vary from it. The author, whoever he may have been, was deeply versed in Canadian affairs of the time, and though often caustic, is generally trustworthy.
Chapter 18
1757, 1758
Pitt