trances against the late decrees of the Intendant, and arrets of
the high court of justice confirming the right of the Grand Company to
exercise certain new monopolies of trade.

The discussions were earnest, and sometimes warm, on these important
questions. La Corne St. Luc assailed the new regulations of the
Intendant in no measured terms of denunciation, in which he was
supported by Rigaud de Vaudreuil and the Chevalier de Beauharnais. But
Bigot, without condescending to the trouble of defending the ordinances
on any sound principle of public policy, which he knew to be useless and
impossible with the clever men sitting at the table, contented himself
with a cold smile at the honest warmth of La Corne St. Luc, and simply
bade his secretary read the orders and despatches from Versailles, in
the name of the royal ministers, and approved of by the King himself in
a Lit de Justice which had justified every act done by him in favor of
the Grand Company.

The Governor, trammelled on all sides by the powers conferred upon the
Intendant, felt unable to exercise the authority he needed to vindicate
the cause of right and justice in the colony. His own instructions
confirmed the pretensions of the Intendant, and of the Grand Company.
The utmost he could do in behalf of the true interests of the people
and of the King, as opposed to the herd of greedy courtiers and selfish
beauties who surrounded him, was to soften the deadening blows they
dealt upon the trade and resources of the Colony.

A decree authorizing the issue of an unlimited quantity of paper bills,
the predecessors of the assignats of the mother country, was strongly
advocated by Bigot, who supported his views with a degree of financial
sophistry which showed that he had effectively mastered the science of
delusion and fraud of which Law had been the great teacher in France,
and the Mississippi scheme, the prototype of the Grand Company, the
great exemplar.

La Corne St. Luc opposed the measure forcibly. "He wanted no paper
lies," he said, "to cheat the husbandman of his corn and the laborer of
his hire. If the gold and silver had all to be sent to France to pamper
the luxuries of a swarm of idlers at the Court, they could buy and sell
as they had done in the early days of the Colony, with beaver skins for
livres, and muskrat skins for sous. These paper bills," continued he,
"had been tried on a small scale by the Intendant Hoquart, and on
a small scale had robb