lost a chance for useful co-operation by
hugging prejudices and prepossessions which sprang in part from his own
love of power and in part from antipathy towards the Jesuits in France.
He might not like the Jesuits, but they were a great force in Canada
and had done things which should have provoked his admiration. In any
case, it was his duty to work with them on some basis and not dislocate
the whole administration by brawling. As to Duchesneau, Frontenac was
the broader man of the two, and may be excused some of the petulance
which the intendant's pin-pricks called forth.

Frontenac's enemies were fond of saying that he used his position to
make illicit profits {157} from the fur trade. Beyond question he
traded to some extent, but it would be harsh to accuse him of venality
or peculation on the strength of such evidence as exists. There is a
strong probability that the king appointed him in the expectation that
he would augment his income from sources which lay outside his salary.
Public opinion varies from age to age regarding the latitude which may
be allowed a public servant in such matters. Under a democratic regime
the standard is very different from that which has existed, for the
most part, under autocracies in past ages. Frontenac was a man of
distinction who accepted an important post at a small salary. We may
infer that the king was willing to allow him something from
perquisites. If so, his profits from the fur trade become a matter of
degree. So long as he kept within the bounds of reason and decency,
the government raised no objection. Frontenac certainly was not a
governor who pillaged the colony to feather his own nest. If he took
profits, they were not thought excessive by any one except Duchesneau.
The king recalled him not because he was venal, but because he was
quarrelsome.

Assuming the standards of his own age, a {158} reasonable plea can also
be made on Frontenac's behalf respecting the conduct of his wars.
'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn' in our own
day no less than in the seventeenth century; while certain facts of
recent memory are quite lurid enough to be placed in comparison with
the border raids which, under Frontenac, were made by the French and
their Indian allies. It is dreadful to know that captured Iroquois
were burned alive by the French, but after the Lachine massacre and the
tortures which French captives endured, this was an almost inevitab