To the credit of the better class of Montreal merchants of this period we must clearly dissociate the names of men who like James McGill and others have deserved the city’s most grateful remembrance, from the inferior “grafters,” to use a modern term, then exploiting the people. These were disapproved of by many of their own race. Carleton’s report of them to Lord Hillsborough dated Quebec, 28th of March, 1770, clearly designates the “rascals” of the day. “Your Lordship has already been informed that the Protestants who have settled, or rather sojourned here since the conquest, are composed only of Traders, disbanded soldiers and officers, the latter, one or two excepted, below the Rank of Captains, of those in the Commission of the Peace such as prospered in business could not give up their time to sit as Judges, and when several from accidents and ill-judged undertakings became Bankrupts they naturally sought to repair their broken fortunes at the expense of the people; hence a variety of schemes to increase their business and their own emoluments. Bailiffs of their own creation, mostly French soldiers either disbanded or Deserters, dispersed through the parishes with blank citations, catching at every little feud or dissension among the people, exciting them on to their Ruin and in a manner forcing them to litigate what, if left to themselves, might have been easily accommodated, putting them to extravagant Costs for the Recovery of very small sums; their Lands, at a time there is the greatest scarcity of money and consequently but few Purchasers, exposed to hasty sales for the Payment of the most trifling debts, and the money arising from these sales consumed in exorbitant Fees, while the Creditors reaped little benefit from the Destruction of their unfortunate Debtors. This, My Lords, is but a very faint sketch of the Distresses of the Canadians and the cause of much Reproach to our National Justice and the King’s Government.” (Report Canadian Archives for 1890.)
[1] For their action in this case Carleton removed their names from the council.
[2] List of the grand jury of the district of Montreal before which bills were laid against the prisoners charged with the assault on Thomas Walker: