sed by the traffic in strong liquors would perhaps have obtained a
fortunate result, but thinking that his presence at the court would be
still more efficacious, he set out. He managed to find in his charity
and the goodness of his heart such eloquent words to depict the evils
wrought upon the Church in Canada by the scourge of intoxication, that
Louis XIV was moved, and commissioned his confessor, Father La Chaise,
to examine the question conjointly with the Archbishop of Paris.
According to their advice, the king expressly forbade the French to
carry intoxicating liquors to the savages in their dwellings or in the
woods, and he wrote to Frontenac to charge him to see that the edict was
respected. On his part, Laval consented to maintain the _cas reserve_
only against those who might infringe the royal prohibition. The Bishop
of Quebec had hoped for more; for nothing could prevent the Indians from
coming to buy the terrible poison from the French, and moreover,
discovery of the infractions of the law would be, if not impossible, at
least most difficult. Nevertheless, it was an advantage obtained over
the dealers and their protectors, who aimed at nothing less than an
unrestricted traffic in brandy. A dyke was set up against the
devastations of the scourge; the worthy bishop might hope to maintain
it energetically by his vigilance and that of his coadjutors.
Unfortunately, he could not succeed entirely, and little by little the
disorders became so multiplied that M. de Denonville considered brandy
as one of the greatest evils of Canada, and that the venerable superior
of St. Sulpice de Montreal, M. Dollier de Casson, wrote in 1691: "I have
been twenty-six years in this country, and I have seen our numerous and
flourishing Algonquin missions all destroyed by drunkenness."
Accordingly, it became necessary later to fall back upon the former
rigorous regulations against the sale of intoxicating liquors to the
Indians.

Before his departure for France the Bishop of Quebec had given the
devoted priests of St. Sulpice a mark of his affection: he constituted
the parish of Notre-Dame de Montreal according to the canons of the
Church, and joined it in perpetuity to the Seminary of Ville-Marie, "to
be administered, under the plenary authority of the Bishops of Quebec,
by such ecclesiastics as might be chosen by the superior of the said
seminary. The priests of St. Sulpice having by their efforts and their
labours produced during s