In the case of grave public scandals de Maisonneuve had recourse to the sentence of banishment. A soldier of the garrison, having been appointed to be on guard at Point St. Charles, was accused of daily absenting himself from the guardhouse of the redoubt, and being found annoying an honest woman with his unseemly and scandalous discourse. In his sentence of November 4, 1658, Maisonneuve says: "We have cast him out of the garrison and condemned him to pay a penalty of 200 _livres_, applicable to some poor girls, to help them to get married at Ville Marie." In 1660 Maisonneuve, who was no respecter of persons, ordered perpetual banishment to one of the principal men of Montreal[81] for an offence with a woman; and her he permitted the husband either to send back to her father and mother, or to keep her shut up for the rest of her days.
We have referred to an ordinance issued in 1658 to insure public safety. He had now to issue proclamations to safeguard public morals. Accordingly, as his short notice of July 9th forbidding, under pain of confiscation, liquor to be smuggled from the boats arriving in the harbour, and requiring his permission, had not apparently been sufficiently observed, on the 18th day of January, 1659, he drew up a long proclamation, that was posted up by Basset, the official clerk of justice, at the parish church next day at the end of vespers, so that no one might be ignorant of it.
Maisonneuve, forced by circumstances revealed in the proclamation, was determined to put down the passion for games of chance, strong drink and blasphemy, as soon as they should show themselves. It is not difficult to imagine excesses creeping in during the long winter evenings in a small enclosed garrison town, where there was no outlet for higher forms of amusement, especially as fear of invasion kept the inhabitants closely confined. Three of his garrison, Sébastien Dupuis, Nicholas Duval and Pierre Papin, having, through drink and gambling, found themselves unable to pay their debts, had deserted the garrison and fled the neighbourhood. They were arrested at a distance of only four leagues from Ville Marie, brought back and confined in irons in the fort on January 8, 1659.