Difficulties of another sort fixed between the spiritual and the temporal chiefs of the colony a still deeper gulf; they arose from the trade in brandy with the savages. It had been formerly forbidden by the Sovereign Council, and this measure, urged by the clergy and the missionaries, put a stop to crimes and disorders. However, for the purpose of gain, certain men infringed this wise prohibition, and Mgr. de Laval, aware of the extensive harm caused by the fatal passion of the Indians for intoxicating liquors, hurled excommunication against all who should carry on the traffic in brandy with the savages. "It would be very difficult," writes M. de Latour, "to realize to what an excess these barbarians are carried by drunkenness. There is no species of madness, of crime or inhumanity to which they do not descend. The savage, for a glass of brandy, will give even his clothes, his cabin, his wife, his children; a squaw when made drunk--and this is often done purposely--will abandon herself to the first comer. They will tear each other to pieces. If one enters a cabin whose inmates have just drunk brandy, one will behold with astonishment and horror the father cutting the throat of his son, the son threatening his father; the husband and wife, the best of friends, inflicting murderous blows upon each other, biting each other, tearing out each other's eyes, noses and ears; they are no longer recognizable, they are madmen; there is perhaps in the world no more vivid picture of hell. There are often some among them who seek drunkenness in order to avenge themselves upon their enemies, and commit with impunity all sorts of crimes under the pretext of this fine excuse, which passes with them for a complete justification, that at these times they are not free and not in their senses." Drunken savages are brutes, it is true, but were not the whites who fostered this fatal passion of intoxication more guilty still than the wretches whom they ignominiously urged on to vice? Let us see what the same writer says of these corrupters. "If it is difficult," says he, "to explain the excesses of the savage, it is also difficult to understand the extent of the greed, the hypocrisy and the rascality of those who supply them with these drinks. The facility for making immense profits which is afforded them by the ignorance and the passions of these people, and the certainty of impunity, are things which they cannot resist; the attraction of gain acts upon them as drunkenness does upon their victims. How many crimes arise from the same source? There is no mother who does not fear for her daughter, no husband who does not dread for his wife, a libertine armed with a bottle of brandy; they rob and pillage these wretches, who, stupefied by intoxication when they are not maddened by it, can neither refuse nor defend themselves. There is no barrier which is not forced, no weakness which is not exploited, in these remote regions where, without either witnesses or masters, only the voice of brutal passion is listened to, every crime of which is inspired by a glass of brandy. The French are worse in this respect than the savages."