[Footnote 561:  Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

[Footnote 562:  Vaudreuil au Ministre, 15 Oct. 1759.]

[Footnote 563:  Ibid., 7 Nov. 1759.]

[Footnote 564:  Ibid., 6 Aout, 1758.]

Administrative corruption was not the only bane of Canada.  Her financial condition was desperate.  The ordinary circulating medium consisted of what was known as card money, and amounted to only a million of francs.  This being insufficient, Bigot, like his predecessor Hocquart, issued promissory notes on his own authority, and made them legal tender.  They were for sums from one franc to a hundred, and were called ordonnances.  Their issue was blamed at Versailles as an encroachment on the royal prerogative, though they were recognized by the Ministry in view of the necessity of the case.  Every autumn those who held them to any considerable amount might bring them to the colonial treasurer, who gave in return bills of exchange on the royal treasury in France.  At first these bills were promptly paid; then delays took place, and the notes depreciated; till in 1759 the Ministry, aghast at the amount, refused payment, and the utmost dismay and confusion followed.[565]

[Footnote 565:  Reflections sommaires sur le Commerce qui s’est fait en Canada.  Etat present du Canada.  Compare Stevenson, Card Money of Canada, in Transactions of the Historical Society of Quebec, 1873-1875.]

The vast jarring, discordant mechanism of corruption grew incontrollable; it seized upon Bigot, and dragged him, despite himself, into perils which his prudence would have shunned.  He was becoming a victim to the rapacity of his own confederates, whom he dared not offend by refusing his connivance and his signature of frauds which became more and more recklessly audacious.  He asked leave to retire from office, in the hope that his successor would bear the brunt of the ministerial displeasure.  Pean had withdrawn already, and with the fruits of his plunder bought land in France, where he thought himself safe.  But though the Intendant had long been an object of distrust, and had often been warned to mend his ways,[566] yet such was his energy, his executive power, and his fertility of resource, that in the crisis of the war it was hard to dispense with him.  Neither his abilities, however, nor his strong connections in France, nor an ally whom he had secured in the bureau of the Colonial Minister himself, could avail him much longer; and the letters from Versailles became appalling in rebuke and menace.

[Footnote 566:  Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres, 1751-1758.]