"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, I 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 curés; 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 Chevrières 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 Mézy, 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."[26] Denonville, 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 drinking-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 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.
CHAPTER VIII
GOVERNORSHIP OF MARQUIS DE DENONVILLE
1685 TO 1689
The Marquis de Denonville was sent to Canada to retrieve a difficult and dangerous situation. He was a soldier by profession, and had had thirty years' experience of military life. His courage and honour were alike beyond question. In morals he was irreproachable. He was one of those laymen who are half churchmen; and on the voyage from France he greatly edified Saint Vallier by the gravity of his conduct and his punctilious observance of all the forms and practices of religion. "He spent," Saint Vallier himself tells us, "nearly all his time in prayer and the reading of good books. The Psalms of David were always in his hands. In all the voyage I never saw him do anything wrong; and there was nothing in his words or acts which did not show a solid virtue and a consummate prudence, as well in the duties of the Christian life as in the wisdom of this world." Three years later Saint Vallier speaks of him in terms of equal praise, adding that "there is no need to be astonished at the benedictions which God is bestowing upon his government and upon his enterprises against the Indians." Unfortunately, this interpretation of the ways of Providence preceded by just a year the greatest calamity in early Canadian history, the massacre of Lachine.