Thus was the question referred back to Canada, and an appeal actually made, after a fashion, to public opinion. The meeting ordered by the king was held at Quebec on the 26th October. The persons composing it were chosen by Frontenac and Duchesneau jointly, and were beyond doubt as influential men as could be found in the country--nineteen in all, exclusive of those who attended in an official capacity. The sense of the meeting was overwhelmingly against the suppression of the traffic, and against the stand taken by the bishop in making a "reserved case" of the selling of liquor to the Indians, or, in other words, excluding from the sacraments all who were guilty of that act. Two of the delegates, the seigneurs of Berthier and Sorel, said that the prohibition which was then nominally, and to a considerable degree practically, in force worked injury, not only to trade, but to the Indians themselves. They could get all the liquor they wanted from the Dutch of Orange (Albany); and the Dutch rum was not nearly so good as the French brandy. The last time the Indians came to trade at Cataraqui, they had forty barrels of Dutch spirits with them, having laid in a supply owing to their apprehension that they might not be able to obtain any from the French. But of course they would cease coming to Cataraqui or trading with the French at all, if they could not get liquor. They denied that the drinking of brandy prevented the Indians from becoming Christians. Did not the Christian Indians in the missions near Montreal drink brandy? Yet they remained docile to their teachers, and were not often seen drunk--a statement which certainly might have been challenged. Others urged the argument with which we are already familiar that, if the Indians had to get their liquor from the Dutch and English, they would either imbibe heresy at the same time, or be left in their heathenism. Others again said that the disorders caused by drink amongst the savages had been greatly exaggerated, and moreover things of the same nature occurred among Indians who made no use of spirituous liquors. The "reserved case" was doing no good; on the contrary it was troubling consciences, and had possibly already caused the damnation of some inhabitants. Drunkenness, another delegate remarked, was not confined to the Indians. In the most civilized countries, where all were Christians, it was a common vice; yet no one thought of making a "reserved case" for the liquor sellers. One speaker went so far as to say that the Indians would never become Christians unless they were allowed the same liberties as the French, and that the clandestine sale of liquor promoted immoderate drinking. Robert Cavelier de la Salle was strongly in favour of the trade being left open. It was for laymen, he said, to decide what was good or bad in relation to commerce, and not for ecclesiastics. There had been but little disorder, upon the whole, amongst the savages as the result of drink. He thought they were less given to intoxication than the French, and much less than the English of New York. Two delegates were entirely opposed to the trade as being hurtful to religion, and the source of moral disorders. Two others thought it should be restricted to the settlements, and that no liquor should be sold in the woods.[18]