10 JOHN READI'^ 



was retreating northward but still plentiful at the Company's posts, Tadousac, Temis- 

 camiug, etc. The English were charged with enticing the Indians with brandy, but it 

 was also acknowleged that they gave a better price for the skins. The Three Rivers iron 

 mines are mentioned, as are also the copper mines of Lake Superior. The ship-building 

 industry at Quebec was growing in favour. Thirty nations of Indians were described as 

 occupying the continent of Canada. 



The last days of the old Régime. 



Another mémoire, dated twelve years later (lYSS) and attributed to M. Querdisien 

 Trémais, is written with spirit and force but is not cheerful reading, as it gives a most, 

 gloomy picture of the state of the country and brings scathing charges of malfeasance 

 and dishonesty against the public functionaries of the time. The population is set down 

 at 80,000, of whom 15,000 were able to bear arms. The state of misery to which the 

 country is represented as having been brought mainly by corrupt administration is so 

 intolerable, that if the document had been prepared expressly to show that the time had 

 come when Canada must shake off the paralysing grasp of Louis XV and his agents, it 

 could not have been more pertinent or more vigorously worded. Canada had to pass 

 through some severe trials under the new régime, but none of them can be compared with 

 the cureless wretchedness set forth with unconscious pathos in this prosaic state-paper. 

 Well might the elder Papineau contrast the freedom of British institutions, even such as 

 they were before the expiry of the 18th century, with the tyranny and rapacity of such 

 men as Intendant Bigot. (The Mémoires quoted from are those included in the Collection 

 de Mémoires et de Relations sur Vhistoire ancienne du Canada, published by the Literary and 

 Historical Society of Quebec, 1840). 



The recital of M. Ti-émais may well lead us to believe, with Abbé Ferland and 

 M. LeMoiue, that there was more than indifference in the manner in which Canada was 

 allowed to pass from the hands of France. It was the interest of the infamous Bigot 

 coterie to conceal their own malfeasance under the common ruin, just as the scoundrel 

 will burn the house whose inmates he has murdered, in order to hide the traces of his 

 crime. {Album du Touriste, pp. 59 and 9*7). 



When M. Trémais' mémoire was penned, there was no obvious reason to fear that the 

 system of rule which it so damagingly accused was near its termination. Montcalm had 

 won a victory over one of the finest British forces that ever offered battle to foe on this, 

 continent. Wolfe was engaged in a work of retaliation unworthy of his genius and cha- 

 racter. But in the book of fate the knell had sounded, and the brave and chivalrous Mont- 

 calm was soon to lie dying and helpless, leaving to the care of de Eamezay the honour of 

 France, the safety of the army and the defence of Canada. 



The Remnant and the New-comebs. 



As at the capture of Quebec by Kirkt in 1629, so at the conquest of 1*760, only a com- 

 paratively small number of the people abandoned their country. The words of M. Suite, 

 relating to both occasions, are applicable in this place : " Those who remained in tn© 



