172 LA BOURDONNAIS AND DUPLETX. CHAP. IV. 1746. voice. But it requires also that the conclusion, which shall be arrived at after discussion, whatever be the nature of the affair, be carried out by him without opposition, even though it should concern the disposing of all the ships of the Company which he may com- mand." These orders appeared to Dupleix to be too clear to be disputed ; lie, therefore, sent a copy of them the same day to La Bourdonnais with the additional intimation, that they had been approved of by the new Minister.*
- The date of this letter— Octo-
ber 6, 1745, a date exactly two months antecedent to the appoint- ment of M. Machanlt as Controller- General— together with the state- ment made by Dupleix that its con- tents "had been approved by the new Minister," afforded an opportu- nity to La Bourdonnais, of which he took full advantage, to contest its validity. "How is it possible,"-he observes in substance in his memoirs, 4 ' that the new Minister should have sent M. Dupleix orders, dated Octo- ber 6, when his appointment dates only from December 6, and I myself received by the same opportunity letters from M. Orry, the old Minis- ter, dated November 25?" He pro- ceeds, on this, to speak of it as a " pretended letter." But this reason- ing, plausible as it is, his no founda- tion. It is perfectly true that M. Machault's appointment as Con- troller-General dates only from De- cember 6, 1745, but it is no less so, that for several months prior to that date he had been designated as the successor of Orry, who was in dis- grace, and that he had been con- sulted on all the arrangements that were under discussion. Dupleix merely states in his letter, that the orders he had received from the Com- pany had been " approved of "by the new Minister. What was more na- tural than that such imp Ttant orders had been submitted, before trans- mission to a distant settlement, to the man who was virtually, though not actually, Minister, and who would be intrusted with their execu- tion ? That such was the practice is certain, and the very word used by Dupleix implies that the practice was carried out on this occasion. The very ships which carried out the orders sailed from France before the actual nomination of Machault ; it would have been a transparent false- hood — for which there was neither necessity or excuse — for Dupleix to have employed the expression which he did use, if it had not been founded upon fact. Of the authenticity of the order there can be no doubt. But there is another f)oint. La Bourdonnais adds that the etter of Orry to him was a continu- ation of his independent authority in the Indian seas, and he quotes two garbled extracts from it to prove this. We give here, entire, the two hist paragraphs from which those extracts are taken,believingthatthey strongly confirm the view we are supporting. It must be remembered that the letter is addressed to La Bourdonnais, as Governor of the Isles of France and Bourbon, and that at the time it was despatched Orry had not the smallest idea that La Bourdonnais would have been able to succeed, beforj its re- ceipt, in fitting out a fleet for the Indies. He believed him, in fact, to be still at the Isle of France. The letter runs thus: — " The Company will send you this year, sir, six of its vessels, of which five will sail at the beginning of next month, and the sixth in the course of February. It has determined to address them all to you, leaving you master, to dispose of them according to circum- stances, and the news you may re- ceive from the Indies. It ought, however, to be your chief duty to send to Pondiohery, at a proper sea-
