self throw the door wide open for trade at the western
establishments. But as time went on the plan was much abused by the
granting of private licenses to the friends of the officials at
Quebec, and "God knows how many of these were issued," as one writer
of the time puts it. Traders often went, moreover, without any license
at all, and especially in the matter of carrying brandy into the
forest they frequently set the official orders at defiance.

This brandy question was, in fact, the great troubler in Israel. It
bulks large in every chronicle, every memoir, every _Relation_, and
in almost every official dispatch during a period of more than fifty
years. It worried the King himself; it set the officers of the Church
and State against each other; and it provoked more friction throughout
the western dominions of France than all other issues put together.

As to the ethics of the liquor traffic in New France, there was
never any serious disagreement. Even the secular authorities readily
admitted that brandy did the Indians no good, and that it would be
better to sell them blankets and kettles. But that was not the point.
The traders believed that, if the western Indians could not secure
brandy from the French, they would get rum from the English. The
Indian would be no better off in that case, and the French would lose
their hold on him into the bargain. Time and again they reiterated the
argument that the prohibition of the brandy trade would make an end to
trade, to French influence, and even to the missionary's own labors.
For if the Indian went to the English for rum, he would get into touch
with heresy as well; he would have Protestant missionaries come to his
village, and the day of Jesuit propaganda would be at an end.

This, throughout the whole trading period, was the stock argument of
publicans and sinners. The Jesuit missionaries combated it with all
their power; yet they never fully convinced either the colonial or the
home authorities. Louis XIV, urged by his confessor to take one stand
and by his ministers to take the other, was sorely puzzled. He wanted
to do his duty as a Most Christian King, yet he did not want to have
on his hands a bankrupt colony. Bishop Laval pleaded with Colbert that
brandy would spell the ruin of all religion in the new world, but the
subtle minister calmly retorted that the _eau-de-vie_ had not yet
overcome the ancient church in older lands. To set his conscience
right, the King