policy could be better settled by the colonists themselves than by cloistered scholars.  Guided by this suggestion, the King asked for a limited plebiscite; the governor of New France was requested to call together “the leading inhabitants of the colony” and to obtain from each one his opinion in writing.  Here was an inkling of colonial self-government, and it is unfortunate that the King did not resort more often to the same method of solving the colony’s problems.

On October 26, 1678, Frontenac gathered the “leading inhabitants” in the Chateau at Quebec.  Apart from the officials and military officers on the one hand and the clergy on the other, most of the solid men of New France were there.  One after another their views were called for and written down.  Most of those present expressed the opinion that the evils of the traffic had been exaggerated, and that if the French should prohibit the sale of brandy to the savages they would soon lose their hold upon the western trade.  There were some dissenters, among them a few who urged a more rigid regulation of the traffic.  One hard-headed seigneur, the Sieur Dombourg, raised the query whether the colony was really so dependent for its existence upon the fur trade as the others had assumed to be the case.  If there were less attention to trade, he urged, there would be more heed paid to agriculture, and in the long run it would be better for the colony to ship wheat to France instead of furs.  “Let the western trade go to the English in exchange for their rum; it would neither endure long nor profit them much.”  This was sound sense, but it did not carry great weight with Dombourg’s hearers.

The written testimony was put together and, with comments by the governor, was sent to France for the information of the King and his ministers.  Apparently it had some effect, for, without altogether prohibiting the use of brandy in the western trade, a royal decree of 1679 forbade the coureurs-de-bois to carry it with them on their trips up the lakes.  The issue of this decree, however, made no perceptible change in the situation, and brandy was taken to the western posts as before.  So far as one can determine from the actual figures of the trade, however, the quantity of intoxicants used by the French in the Indian trade has been greatly exaggerated by the missionaries.  Not more than fifty barrels (barriques) ever went to the western regions in the course of a year.  A barrel held about two hundred and fifty pints, so that the total would be less than one pint per capita for the adult Indians within the French sphere of influence.  That was a far smaller per capita consumption than Frenchmen guzzled in a single day at a Breton fair, as La Salle once pointed out.  The trouble was, however, that thousands of Indians got no brandy at all, while a relatively small number obtained too much of it.  What they got, moreover, was poor stuff, most of it, and well diluted with water.  The Indian drank to get drunk, and when brandy constituted the other end of the bargain he would give for it the very furs off his back.