y asked too much for its goods; while the company complained that
a forbidden trade, fatal to its interests, went on through all the
region of the upper lakes. It was easy to ordain a monopoly, but
impossible to enforce it. The prospects of the new establishment were
deplorable; and Cadillac lost no time in presenting his views of the
situation to the court. "Detroit is good, or it is bad," he writes to
Ponchartrain. "If it is good, it ought to be sustained, without allowing
the people of Canada to deliberate any more about it. If it is bad, the
court ought to make up its mind concerning it as soon as may be. I have
said what I think. I have explained the situation. You have felt the
need of Detroit, and its utility for the glory of God, the progress of
religion, and the good of the colony. Nothing is left me to do but to
imitate the governor of the Holy City,--take water, and wash my hands of
it." His aim now appears. He says that if Detroit were made a separate
government, and he were put at the head of it, its prospects would
improve. "You may well believe that the company cares for nothing but to
make a profit out of it. It only wants to have a storehouse and clerks;
no officers, no troops, no inhabitants. Take this business in hand,
Monseigneur, and I promise that in two years your Detroit shall be
established of itself." He then informs the minister that as the company
complain of losing money, he has told them that if they will make over
their rights to him, he will pay them back all their past outlays. "I
promise you," he informs Ponchartrain, "that if they accept my proposal
and you approve it, I will make our Detroit flourish. Judge if it is
agreeable to me to have to answer for my actions to five or six
merchants [the directors of the company], who not long ago were blacking
their masters' boots." He is scarcely more reserved as to the Jesuits.
"I do what I can to make them my friends, but, impiety apart, one had
better sin against God than against them; for in that case one gets
one's pardon, whereas in the other the offence is never forgiven in this
world, and perhaps never would be in the other, if their credit were as
great there as it is here."[37]

The letters of Cadillac to the court are unique. No governor of New
France, not even the audacious Frontenac, ever wrote to a minister of
Louis XIV. with such off-hand freedom of language as this singular
personage,--a mere captain in the colony troops; and to