“The ship ‘Britannia,’” wrote the Minister, Berryer, “laden with goods such as are wanted in the colony, was captured by a privateer from St. Malo, and brought into Quebec.  You sold the whole cargo for eight hundred thousand francs.  The purchasers made a profit of two millions.  You bought back a part for the King at one million, or two hundred thousand more than the price which you sold the whole.  With conduct like this it is no wonder that the expenses of the colony become insupportable.  The amount of your drafts on the treasury is frightful.  The fortunes of your subordinates throw suspicion on your administration.”  And in another letter on the same day:  “How could it happen that the small-pox among the Indians cost the King a million francs?  What does this expense mean?  Who is answerable for it?  Is it the officers who command the posts, or is it the storekeepers?  You give me no particulars.  What has become of the immense quantity of provisions sent to Canada last year?  I am forced to conclude that the King’s stores are set down as consumed from the moment they arrive, and then sold to His Majesty at exorbitant prices.  Thus the King buys stores in France, and then buys them again in Canada.  I no longer wonder at the immense fortunes made in the colony."[567] Some months later the Minister writes:  “You pay bills without examination, and then find an error in your accounts of three million six hundred thousand francs.  In the letters from Canada I see nothing but incessant speculation in provisions and goods, which are sold to the King for ten times more than they cost in France.  For the last time, I exhort you to give these things your serious attention, for they will not escape from mine."[568]

[Footnote 567:  Le Ministre a Bigot, 19 Jan. 1759.]

[Footnote 568:  Ibid., 29 Aout, 1759.]

“I write, Monsieur, to answer your last two letters, in which you tell me that instead of sixteen millions, your drafts on the treasury for 1758 will reach twenty-four millions, and that this year they will rise to from thirty-one to thirty-three millions.  It seems, then, that there are no bounds to the expenses of Canada.  They double almost every year, while you seem to give yourself no concern except to get them paid.  Do you suppose that I can advise the King to approve such an administration? or do you think that you can take the immense sum of thirty-three millions out of the royal treasury by merely assuring me that you have signed drafts for it?  This, too, for expenses incurred irregularly, often needlessly, always wastefully; which make the fortune of everybody who has the least hand in them, and about which you know so little that after reporting them at sixteen millions, you find two months after that they will reach twenty-four.  You are accused of having given the furnishing of provisions to one man, who under the name of commissary-general, has set what prices he pleased; of buying for the King at second or third hand what you might have got from the producer at half the price; of having in this and other ways made the fortunes of persons connected with you; and of living in splendor in the midst of a public misery, which all the letters from the colony agree in ascribing to bad administration, and in charging M. de Vaudreuil with weakness in not preventing."[569]