Corruption in Canada

A writer of the time exclaimed: “This is the land of abuses, ignorance, prejudice and all that is monstrous in government. Peculation, monopoly and plunder have become a bottomless abyss.”

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

Previously in Montcalm and Wolfe, Volume 7 of the French in Canada series. Continuing Chapter 17.

Foremost among these was Joseph Cadet, son of a butcher at Quebec, who at thirteen went to sea as a pilot’s boy, then kept the cows of an inhabitant of Charlebourg and at last took up his father’s trade and prospered in it.[1] In 1756 Bigot got him appointed commissary-general and made a contract with him which flung wide open the doors of peculation. In the next two years Cadet and his associates, Péan, Maurin, Corpron and Penisseault, sold to the King, for about twenty-three million francs, provisions which cost them eleven millions, leaving a net profit of about twelve millions. It was not legally proved that the Intendant shared Cadet’s gains; but there is no reasonable doubt that he did so. Bigot’s chief profits rose, however, from other sources. It was his business to see that the King’s storehouses for the supply of troops, militia and Indians were kept well stocked. To this end he and Bréard, naval comptroller at Quebec, made a partnership with the commercial house of Gradis and Son at Bordeaux. He next told the Colonial Minister that there were stores enough already in Canada to last three years and that it would be more to the advantage of the King to buy them in the colony than to take the risk of sending them from France.[2] Gradis and Son then shipped them to Canada in large quantities, while Bréard or his agent declared at the custom-house that they belonged to the King and so escaped the payment of duties. They were then, as occasion rose, sold to the King at a huge profit, always under fictitious names. Often they were sold to some favored merchant or speculator, who sold them in turn to Bigot’s confederate, the King’s storekeeper; and sometimes they passed through several successive hands, till the price rose to double or triple the first cost, the Intendant and his partners sharing the gains with friends and allies. They would let nobody else sell to the King; and thus a grinding monopoly was established, to the great profit of those who held it.[3]

[1: Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire François Bigot. Compare Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

[2: Bigot au Ministre, 8 Oct. 1749.]

[3: Procés de Bigot, Cadet, et autres. Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie. Compare Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

Under the name of a trader named Claverie, Bigot, some time before the war, set up a warehouse on land belonging to the King and not far from his own palace. Here the goods shipped from Bordeaux were collected, to be sold in retail to the citizens and in wholesale to favored merchants and the King. This establishment was popularly known as La Friponne, at Montreal, which was leagued with that of Quebec and received goods from it.

Bigot and his accomplices invented many other profitable frauds. Thus he was charged with the disposal of the large quantity of furs belonging to his master, which it was his duty to sell at public auction, after due notice, to the highest bidder. Instead of this, he sold them privately at a low price to his own confederates. It was also his duty to provide transportation for troops, artillery, provisions and stores, in which he made good profit by letting to the King, at high prices, boats or vessels which he had himself bought or hired for the purpose.

[4: Jugement rendu souverainement dans l’Affaire du Canada.]

Yet these and other illicit gains still left him but the second place as public plunderer. Cadet, the commissary-general, reaped an ampler harvest and became the richest man in the colony. One of the operations of this scoundrel, accomplished with the help of Bigot, consisted in buying for six hundred thousand francs a quantity of stores belonging to the King and then selling them back to him for one million four hundred thousand.[5] It was further shown on his trial that in 1759 he received 1,614,354 francs for stores furnished at the post of Miramichi, while the value of those actually furnished was but 889,544 francs; thus giving him a fraudulent profit of more than seven hundred and twenty-four thousand.[6] Cadet’s chief resource was the falsification of accounts. The service of the King in Canada was fenced about by rigid formalities. When supplies were wanted at any of the military posts, the commandant made a requisition specifying their nature and quantity, while, before pay could be drawn for them, the King’s storekeeper, the local commissary and the inspector must set their names as vouchers to the list and finally Bigot must sign it.[7] But precautions were useless where all were leagued to rob the King. It appeared on Cadet’s trial that by gifts of wine, brandy, or money he had bribed the officers, both civil and military, at all the principal forts to attest the truth of accounts in which the supplies furnished by him were set at more than twice their true amount. Of the many frauds charged against him there was one peculiarly odious. Large numbers of refugee Acadians were to be supplied with rations to keep them alive. Instead of wholesome food, moldered and unsalable salt cod was sent them and paid for by the King at inordinate prices.[8] It was but one of many heartless outrages practiced by Canadian officials on this unhappy people.

[5: Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Requête du Procureur-Général, 19 Dec. 1761.]

[6: Procès de Bigot, Cadet, et autres, Mémoire pour Messire François Bigot.]

[7: Mémoire sur le Canada (Archives Nationales).]

[8: Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

Cadet told the Intendant that the inhabitants were hoarding their grain and got an order from him requiring them to sell it at a low fixed price, on pain of having it seized. Thus, nearly the whole fell into his hands. Famine ensued; and he then sold it at a great profit, partly to the King and partly to its first owners. Another of his devices was to sell provisions to the King which, being sent to the outlying forts, were falsely reported as consumed; on which he sold them to the King a second time. Not without reason does a writer of the time exclaim: “This is the land of abuses, ignorance, prejudice and all that is monstrous in government. Peculation, monopoly and plunder have become a bottomless abyss.”

[Considérations sur l’État présent du Canada.]

The command of a fort brought such opportunities of making money that, according to Bougainville, the mere prospect of appointment to it for the usual term of three years was thought enough for a young man to marry upon. It was a favor in the gift of the Governor, who was accused of sharing the profits. These came partly from the fur-trade and still more from frauds of various kinds. For example, a requisition was made for supplies as gifts to the Indians in order to keep them friendly or send them on the warpath; and their number was put many times above the truth in order to get more goods, which the commandant and his confederates then bartered for furs on their own account, instead of giving them as presents. “And,” says a contemporary, addressing the Colonial Minister, “those who treat the savages so basely are officers of the King, depositaries of his authority, ministers of that Great Onontio whom they call their father.”[9] At the post of Green Bay, the partisan officer Marin and Rigaud, the Governor’s brother, made in a short time a profit of three hundred and twelve thousand francs.[10] “Why is it,” asks Bougainville, “that of all which the King sends to the Indians two thirds are stolen and the rest sold to them instead of being given?”[11]

[9: Considérations sur l’État présent du Canada.]

[10: Mémoire sur les Fraudes commises dans la Colonie. Bougainville, Mémoire sur l’État de la Nouvelle France.]

[11: Bougainville, Journal.]

The transportation of military stores gave another opportunity of plunder. The contractor would procure from the Governor or the local commandant an order requiring the inhabitants to serve him as boatmen, drivers, or porters, under a promise of exemption that year from duty as soldiers. This saved him his chief item of expense and the profits of his contract rose in proportion.

A contagion of knavery ran through the official life of the colony; and to resist it demanded no common share of moral robustness. The officers of the troops of the line were not much within its influence; but those of the militia and colony regulars, whether of French or Canadian birth, shared the corruption of the civil service. Seventeen of them, including six chevaliers of St. Louis and eight commandants of forts, were afterwards arraigned for fraud and malversation, though some of the number were acquitted. Bougainville gives the names of four other Canadian officers as honorable exceptions to the general demoralization, — Benoît, Repentigny, Lainé and Le Borgne; “not enough,” he observes, “to save Sodom.”

Conspicuous among these military thieves was Major Péan, whose qualities as a soldier have been questioned but who nevertheless had shown almost as much vigor in serving the King during the Ohio campaign of 1753 as he afterwards displayed effrontery in cheating him. “Le petit Péan” had married a young wife, Mademoiselle Desméloizes, Canadian like himself, well born and famed for beauty, vivacity and wit. Bigot, who was near sixty, became her accepted lover; and the fortune of Péan was made. His first success seems to have taken him by surprise. He had bought as a speculation a large quantity of grain, with money of the King lent him by the Intendant. Bigot, officially omnipotent, then issued an order raising the commodity to a price far above that paid by Péan, who thus made a profit of fifty thousand crowns.[12] A few years later his wealth was estimated at from two to four million francs. Madame Péan became a power in Canada, the dispenser of favors and offices; and all who sought opportunity to rob the King hastened to pay her their court. Péan, jilted by his own wife, made prosperous love to the wife of his partner, Penisseault; who, though the daughter of a Montreal tradesman, had the air of a woman of rank and presided with dignity and grace at a hospitable board where were gathered the clerks of Cadet and other lesser lights of the administrative hierarchy. It was often honored by the presence of the Chevalier de Lévis, who, captivated by the charms of the hostess, condescended to a society which his friends condemned as unworthy of his station. He succeeded Péan in the graces of Madame Penisseault and after the war took her with him to France; while the aggrieved husband found consolation in the wives of the small functionaries under his orders.[13]

[12: Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760. Mémoire sur les Fraudes, etc. Compare Pouchot, I. 8.]

[13: Mémoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

Another prominent name on the roll of knavery was that of Varin, commissary of marine and Bigot’s deputy at Montreal, a Frenchman of low degree, small in stature, sharp witted, indefatigable, conceited, arrogant, headstrong, capricious and dissolute. Worthless as he was, he found a place in the Court circle of the Governor and aspired to supplant Bigot in the intendancy. To this end, as well as to save himself from justice, he had the fatuity to turn informer and lay bare the sins of his confederates, though forced at the same time to betray his own. Among his comrades and allies may be mentioned Deschenaux, son of a shoemaker at Quebec and secretary to the Intendant; Martel, King’s storekeeper at Montreal; the humpback Maurin, who is not to be confounded with the partisan officer Marin; and Corpron, a clerk whom several tradesmen had dismissed for rascality but who was now in the confidence of Cadet, to whom he made himself useful and in whose service he grew rich.

From Montcalm and Wolfe, Chapter 17 by Francis Parkman

To be continued.

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Preface to this book.

A very large amount of unpublished material has been used in its preparation, consisting for the most part of documents copied from the archives and libraries of France and England, especially from the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and the Archives Nationales at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the British Museum at London. The papers copied for the present work in France alone exceed six thousand folio pages of manuscript, additional and supplementary to the “Paris Documents” procured for the State of New York under the agency of Mr. Brodhead. The copies made in England form ten volumes, besides many English documents consulted in the original manuscript. Great numbers of autograph letters, diaries, and other writings of persons engaged in the war have also been examined on this side of the Atlantic.

I owe to the kindness of the present Marquis de Montcalm the permission to copy all the letters written by his ancestor, General Montcalm, when in America, to members of his family in France. General Montcalm, from his first arrival in Canada to a few days before his death, also carried on an active correspondence with one of his chief officers, Bourlamaque, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. These autograph letters are now preserved in a private collection. I have examined them and obtained copies of the whole. They form an interesting complement to the official correspondence of the writer, and throw the most curious side-lights on the persons and events of the time.

Besides manuscripts, the printed matter in the form of books, pamphlets, contemporary newspapers, and other publications relating to the American part of the Seven Years’ War, is varied and abundant; and I believe I may safely say that nothing in it of much consequence has escaped me. The liberality of some of the older States of the Union, especially New York and Pennsylvania, in printing the voluminous records of their colonial history, has saved me a deal of tedious labor.

The whole of this published and unpublished mass of evidence has been read and collated with extreme care, and more than common pains have been taken to secure accuracy of statement. The study of books and papers, however, could not alone answer the purpose. The plan of the work was formed in early youth; and though various causes have long delayed its execution, it has always been kept in view. Meanwhile, I have visited and examined every spot where events of any importance in connection with the contest took place, and have observed with attention such scenes and persons as might help to illustrate those I meant to describe. In short, the subject has been studied as much from life and in the open air as at the library table.

BOSTON, Sept. 16, 1884.

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