minister, “to bear every thing from him and report to you;” and he proceeds to recount his grievances Again, "the attorney-general is bold to insolence, and needs to be repressed. The king’s interposition is necessary.” He modestly adds that the intendant is the only man in Canada whom his Majesty can trust, and that he ought to have more power. *
These were far from being his only troubles. The enormous powers with which his commission clothed him were sometimes retrenched by contradictory instructions from the king; ** for this government, not of laws but of arbitrary will, is marked by frequent inconsistencies. When he quarrelled with the governor, and the governor chanced to have strong friends at court, his position became truly pitiable. He was berated as an imperious master berates an offending servant. “Your last letter is full of nothing but complaints.” “You have exceeded your authority.” “Study to know yourself and to understand clearly the difference there is between a governor and an intendant.” “Since you fail to comprehend the difference between you and the officer who represents the king’s person, you are in danger of being often condemned, or rather of being recalled, for his Majesty cannot endure so many petty complaints, founded on nothing but a certain quasi equality between the governor and you, which you assume, but which
* Meules au Ministre, 12 Nov., 1684.
** Thus, Meules is flatly forbidden to compel litigants to
bring causes before him (Instruction pour le Sieur de
Meules, 1682), and this prohibition is nearly of the same
date with the commission in which the power to do so is
expressly given him.
does not exist.” “Meddle with nothing beyond your functions.” “Take good care to tell me nothing but the truth.” “You ask too many favors for your adherents.” “You must not spend more than you have authority to spend, or it will be taken out of your pay.” In short, there are several letters from the minister Colbert to his colonial man-of-all-work, which, from beginning to end, are one continued scold. *
The luckless intendant was liable to be held to account for the action of natural laws. “If the population does not increase in proportion to the pains I take,” writes the king to Duchesneau, “you are to lay the blame on yourself for not having executed my principal order (to promote marriages) and for having failed in the principal object for which I sent you to Canada.” **
A great number of ordinances of intendants are preserved. They were usually read to the people at the doors of churches after mass, or sometimes by the curé from his pulpit. They relate to a great variety of subjects,—regulation of inns and markets, poaching, preservation of game, sale of brandy, rent of pews, stray hogs, mad dogs, tithes, matrimonial quarrels, fast driving, wards and guardians, weights and measures, nuisances, value of coinage, trespass on lands, building churches, observance of Sunday, preservation of timber, seignior and vassal, settlement of boundaries, and many
* The above examples are all taken from the letters of
Colbert to the intendant Duchesneau. It is an extreme case,
but other intendants are occasionally treated with scarcely
more ceremony.
** Le Roi à Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680.
other matters. If a curé with some of his parishioners reported that his church or his house needed repair or rebuilding, the intendant issued an ordinance requiring all the inhabitants of the parish, “both those who have consented and those who have not consented,” to contribute materials and labor, on pain of fine or other penalty. * The militia captain of the cote was to direct the work and see that each parishioner did his due part, which was determined by the extent of his farm; so, too, if the grand voyer, an officer charged with the superintendence of highways, reported that a new road was wanted or that an old one needed mending, an ordinance of the intendant set the whole neighborhood at work upon it, directed, as in the other case, by the captain of militia. If children were left fatherless, the intendant ordered the curé of the parish to assemble their relations or friends for the choice of a guardian. If a censitaire did not clear his land and live on it, the intendant took it from him and gave it back to the seignior. **
Chimney-sweeping having been neglected at Quebec, the intendant commands all householders promptly to do their duty in this respect, and at the same time fixes the pay of the sweep at six sous a chimney. Another order forbids quarrelling in church. Another assigns pews in due order of precedence to the seignior, the captain of militia, and the wardens. The intendant Raudot, who seems
* See, among many examples, the ordinance of 24th December,
1716. Edits et Ordonnances, II. 443.
** Compare the numerous ordinances printed in the second
and third volumes of Edits et Ordonnances.