Trade and the Jesuits

The Jesuits entered also into other branches of trade and industry with a vigor and address which the inhabitants of Canada might have emulated with advantage.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Previously in The Old Regime In Canada. Continuing chapter 18

Their case was a strong one; but so was the case of their opponents. There was real and imminent danger that the thirsty savages, if refused brandy by the French, would seek it from the Dutch and English of New York. It was the most potent lure and the most killing bait. Wherever it was found, thither the Indians and their beaver-skins were sure to go, and the interests of the fur trade, vital to the colony, were bound up with it. Nor was this all, for the merchants and the civil powers insisted that religion and the saving of souls were bound up with it no less; since, to repel the Indians from the Catholic French, and attract them to the heretic English, was to turn them from ways of grace to ways of perdition. [1] The argument, no doubt, was dashed largely with hypocrisy in those who used it; but it was one which the priests were greatly perplexed to answer.

[1: “Ce commerce est absolument nécessaire pour attirer les sauvages dans les colonies françoises, et par ce moyen leur donner les premières teintures de la foy.” Mémoire de Colbert, joint à sa lettre à Duchesneau du 24 Mai, 1678.]

In former days, when Canada was not yet transformed from a mission to a colony, the Jesuits entered with a high hand on the work of reform.

It fared hard with the culprit caught in the act of selling brandy to Indians. They led him, after the sermon, to the door of the church; where, kneeling on the pavement, partially stript and bearing in his hand the penitential torch, he underwent a vigorous flagellation, laid on by Father Le Mercier himself, after the fashion formerly practiced in the case of refractory school-boys. [2] Bishop Laval not only discharged against the offenders volleys of wholesale excommunication but he made of the offence a “reserved case;” that is, a case in which the power of granting absolution was reserved to himself alone. This produced great commotion, and a violent conflict between religious scruples and a passion for gain. The bishop and the Jesuits stood inflexible; while their opponents added bitterness to the quarrel by charging them with permitting certain favored persons to sell brandy, unpunished, and even covertly selling it themselves. [3]

[2: Mémoire de Dumesnil, 1671.]

[3: Lettre de Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye, 24 Oct., 1693. After speaking of the excessive rigor of the bishop, he adds: “L’on dit, et il est vrai, que dans ces temps si fâcheux, sous prétexte de pauvreté dans les familles, certaines gens avoient permission d’en traiter, je crois toujours avec la réserve de ne pas enivrer.” Dumesnil, Mémoire de 1671, says that Laval excommunicated all brandy- sellers, “à l’exception, néanmoins, de quelques particuliers qu’il voulait favoriser.” He says further that the bishop and the Jesuit Ragueneau had a clerk whom they employed at 500 francs a year to trade with the Indians, paying them in liquors for their furs; and that for a time the ecclesiastics had this trade to themselves, their severities having deterred most others from venturing into it. La Salle, Mémoire de 1678, declares that, “Ils (les Jésuites) refusent l’absolution a ceux qui ne veulent pas promettre de n’en plus vendre, et s’ils meurent en cet état, ils les privent de la sépulture ecclésiastique: au contraire, ils so permettent à eux mesmes sans aucune difficulté ce mesme trafic, quoyque toute sorte de trafic soit interdite à tous les ecclésiastiques par les ordonnances du Roy et par une bulle expresse du Pape.” I give these assertions as I find them, and for what they are worth.]

Appeal was made to the king, who, with his Jesuit confessor, guardian of his conscience on one side, and Colbert, guardian of his worldly interests on the other, stood in some perplexity. The case was referred to the fathers of the Sorbonne, and they, after solemn discussion, pronounced the selling of brandy to Indians a mortal sin. [4] It was next referred to an assembly of the chief merchants and inhabitants of Canada, held under the eye of the governor, intendant, and council, in the Chateau St. Louis. Each was directed to state his views in writing. The great majority were for unrestricted trade in brandy; a few were for a limited and guarded trade; and two or three declared for prohibition. [5] Decrees of prohibition were passed from time to time, but they were unavailing. They were revoked, renewed, and revoked again. They were, in fact, worse than useless; for their chief effect was to turn traders and coureurs de bois into troops of audacious contrabandists. Attempts were made to limit the brandy trade to the settlements, and exclude it from the forest country, where its regulation was impossible; but these attempts, like the others, were of little avail. It is worthy of notice that, when brandy was forbidden everywhere else, it was permitted in the trade of Tadoussac, carried on for the profit of government. [6]

[4: Délibération de la Sorbonne sur la Traite des Boissons, 8 Mars, 1676.]

[5: Procès-verbal de l’Assemblée tenue au Château de St. Louis de Québec, le 26 Oct., 1676, et jours suivants.]

[6: Lettre de Charles Aubert de la Chesnaye, 24 Oct., 1693. In the course of the quarrel a severe law passed by the General Court of Massachusetts against the sale of liquors to Indians was several times urged as an example to be imitated. A copy of it was sent to the minister, and is still preserved in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.]

In spite of the Sorbonne, in spite of Père La Chaise, and of the Archbishop of Paris, whom he also consulted, the king was never at heart a prohibitionist. [7] His Canadian revenue was drawn from the fur trade; and the singular argument of the partisans of brandy, that its attractions were needed to keep the Indians from contact with heresy, served admirably to salve his conscience. Bigot as he was, he distrusted the Bishop of Quebec, the great champion of the anti-liquor movement. His own letters, as well as those of his minister, prove that he saw or thought that he saw motives for the crusade very different from those inscribed on its banners. He wrote to Saint-Vallier, Laval’s successor in the bishopric, that the brandy trade was very useful to the kingdom of France; that it should be regulated, but not prevented; that the consciences of his subjects must not be disturbed by denunciations of it as a sin; and that “it is well that you (the bishop) should take care that the zeal of the ecclesiastics is not excited by personal interests and passions.” [8] Perhaps he alludes to the spirit of encroachment and domination which he and his minister in secret instructions to their officers often impute to the bishop and the clergy, or perhaps he may have in mind other accusations which had reached him from time to time during many years, and of which the following from the pen of the most noted of Canadian governors will serve as an example. Count Frontenac declares that the Jesuits greatly exaggerate the disorders caused by brandy, and that they easily convince persons “who do not know the interested motives which have led them to harp continually on this string for more than forty years…. They have long wished to have the fur trade entirely to themselves, and to keep out of sight the trade which they have always carried on in the woods, and which they are carrying on there now.” [9]

[7: See, among other evidence, Mémoire sur la Traite des Boissons, 1678.]

[8: Le Roy à Saint-Vallier, 7 Avril, 1691]

[9: Frontenac au Ministre, 29 Oct., 1676.]

As I have observed in a former volume, the charge against the Jesuits of trading in beaver-skins dates from the beginning of the colony. In the private journal of Father Jerome Lalemant, their superior, occurs the following curious passage, under date of November, 1645:

Pour la traite des castors. Le 15 de Nov. le bruit estant qu’on s’en alloit icy publier la defense qui auoit esté publiée aux Trois Riuieres que pas vu n’eut à traiter avec les sauvages, le P. Vimont demanda à Mons. des Chastelets commis general si nous serions de pire condition soubs eux que soubs Messieurs de la Compagnie. La conclusion fut que non et que cela iroit pour nous à U ordinaire, mais que nous le fissions doucement.”

[Journal des Jésuites.]

Two years after, on the request of Lalemant, the governor Montmagny, and his destined successor Aillebout, gave the Jesuits a certificate to the effect that “les pères de la compagnie de Jésus sont innocents de la calomnie qui leur a été imputée, et ce qu’ils en ont fiait a été pour le bien de la communauté et pour un bon sujet.” This leaves it to be inferred that they actually traded, though with good intentions. In 1664, in reply to similar “calumnies,” the Jesuits made by proxy a declaration before the council, stating, “que les dits Révérends Pères Jésuites n’ont fait jamais aucune profession de vendre et n’ont jamais rien vendu, mais seulement que les marchandises qu’ils donnent aux particuliers ne sont que pour avoir leurs nécessités.” This is an admission in a thin disguise. The word nécessités is of very elastic interpretation. In a memoir of Talon, 1667, he mentions, “la traite de pelleteries qu’on assure qu’ils (les Jésuites) font aux Outaouacks et au Cap de la Madeleine; ce que je ne sais pas de science certaine.”

That which Talon did not know with certainty is made reasonably clear for us by a line in the private journal of Father Le Mercier, who writes under date of 17 August, 1665,

Le Père Frémin remonte supérieur au Cap de la Magdeleine, ou le temporel est en bon estât. Comme il est delivre de tout soin d’aucune traite, il doit s’appliquer à l’instruction tant des Montagnets que des Algonquins.”

Father Charles Albanel was charged, under Frémin, with the affairs of the mission, including doubtless the temporal interests, to the prosperity of which Father Le Merciei alludes, and the cares of trade from which Father Frémin was delivered. Cavelier de la Salle declared in 1678,

Le père Arbanelle (Albanel) jésuite a traité au Cap (de la Madeleine) pour 700 pistoles de peaux d’orignaux et de castors; luy mesme me l’a dit en 1667. Il vend le pain, le vin, le bled, le lard, et il tient magazin au Cap aussi bien que le frère Joseph à Québec. Ce frère gagne 500 pour 100 sur tous les peuples. Ils (les Jésuites) ont bâti leur collège en partie de leur traite et en partie de l’emprunt.”

La Salle further says that Frémin, being reported to have made enormous profits,

ce père répondit au gouverneur (qui lui en avait fait des plaintes) par un billet que luy a conservé, que c’estoit une calomnie que ce grand gain prétendu; puisque tout ce qui se passoit par ses mains ne pouvoit produire par an que quatre mille de revenant bon, tous frais faits, sans comprendre les gages des domestiques.”

La Salle gives also many other particulars, especially relating to Michillimackinac, where, as he says, the Jesuits had a large stock of beaver-skins. According to Peronne Dumesnil, Mémoire de 1671, the Jesuits had at that time more than 20,000 francs a year, partly from trade and partly from charitable contributions of their friends in France.

The king repeatedly forbade the Jesuits and other ecclesiastics in Canada to carry on trade. On one occasion he threatened strong measures should they continue to disobey him. Le Roi à Frontenac, 28 Avril, 1677. In the same year the minister wrote to the intendant Duchesneau: “Vous ne sauriez apporter trop de precautions pour abolir entièrement la coustume que les Ecclesiastiques séculiers et réguliers avaient pris de traitter ou de faire traitter leurs valets,” 18 Avril, 1677.

The Jesuits entered also into other branches of trade and industry with a vigor and address which the inhabitants of Canada might have emulated with advantage. They were successful fishers of eels. In 1646, their eel-pots at Sillery are said to have yielded no less than forty thousand eels, some of which they sold at the modest price of thirty sous a hundred. [10] The members of the order were exempted from payment of duties, and in 1674 they were specially empowered to construct mills, including sugar-mills, and beep slaves, apprentices, and hired servants. [11]

[10: Ferland, Notes sur les Registres de N. D. de Québec, 82.]

[11: Droit Canadien, 180.]

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 18 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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