of the governor Avaugour (1661-63) a tariff of prices
had been published, which the merchants were compelled
to observe. Again, in 1664 the council had decided that
the merchants might charge fifty-five per cent above cost
price on dry goods, one hundred per cent on the more
expensive wines and spirits, and one hundred and twenty
per cent on the cheaper, the cost price in France being
determined by the invoice-bills. In 1666 a new tariff
was enacted by the council, in which the price of one
hogshead of Bordeaux wine was fixed at eighty livres,
and that of Brazil tobacco at forty sous a pound. In 1667
again changes took place: on dry goods the merchants were
allowed seventy per cent above cost; on spirits and wines,
one hundred or one hundred and twenty per cent as in
1664. The merchants did not accept these rulings without
protest. In 1664 the most important Quebec trader, Charles
Aubert de la Chesnaye, was prosecuted for contravention,
and made this bold declaration in favour of commercial
freedom: 'I have always deemed that I had a right to the
free disposal of my own, especially when I consider that
I spend in the colony what I earn therein.' Prosecutions
for violating the law were frequent. During the month of
June 1667, at a sitting of the Sovereign Council, Tracy,
Courcelle, Talon, and Laval being present, the attorney-
general Bourdon made out a case against Jacques de la
Mothe, a merchant, for having sold wines and tobacco at
higher prices than those of the tariff. The defendant
acknowledged that he had sold his wine at one hundred
livres and his tobacco at sixty sous, but alleged that
his wine was the best Bordeaux, that his hogsheads had