Nature Of The Government.—The Governor.—The Council, Courts and Judges.—The Intendant.—His Grievances.—Strong Government.—Sedition and Blasphemy.—Royal Bounty.—Defects and Abuses.
The government of Canada was formed in its chief features after the government of a French province. Throughout France the past and the present stood side by side. The kingdom had a double administration; or rather, the shadow of the old administration and the substance of the new. The government of provinces had long been held by the high nobles, often kindred to the Crown; and hence, in former times, great perils had arisen, amounting during the civil wars to the danger of dismemberment. The high nobles were still governors of provinces; but here, as elsewhere, they had ceased to be dangerous. Titles, honors, and ceremonial they had in abundance; but they were deprived of real power. Close beside them was the royal intendant, an obscure figure, lost amid the vainglories of the feudal sunset, but in the name of the king holding the reins of government; a check and a spy on his gorgeous colleague. He was the king’s agent: of modest birth, springing from the legal class; owing his present to the king, and dependent on him for his future; learned in the law and trained to administration. It was by such instruments that the powerful centralization of the monarchy enforced itself throughout the kingdom, and, penetrating beneath the crust of old prescriptions, supplanted without seeming to supplant them. The courtier noble looked down in the pride of rank on the busy man in black at his side; but this man in black, with the troop of officials at his beck, controlled finance, the royal courts, public works, and all the administrative business of the province.
The governor-general and the intendant of Canada answered to those of a French province. The governor, excepting in the earliest period of the colony, was a military noble; in most cases bearing a title and sometimes of high rank. The intendant, as in France, was usually drawn from the gens de robe, or legal class. * The mutual relations of the two officers were modified by the circumstances about them. The governor was superior in rank to the intendant; he commanded the troops, conducted relations with foreign colonies and Indian tribes, and took precedence on all occasions of ceremony. Unlike a provincial
* The governor was styled in his commission, Gouverneur et
Lieutenant-Général en Canada, Acadie, Isle de Terreneuve, et
autres pays de la France Septentrionale; and the intendant,
Intendant de la Justice, Police, et Finances in Canada,
Acadie, Terreneuve, et autres pays de la France
Septentrionale
governor in France, he had great and substantial power, The king and the minister, his sole masters, were a thousand leagues distant, and he controlled the whole military force. If he abused his position, there was no remedy but in appeal to the court, which alone could hold him in check. There were local governors at Montreal and Three Rivers; but their power was carefully curbed, and they were forbidden to fine or imprison any person without authority from Quebec. *
The intendant was virtually a spy on the governor-general, of whose proceedings and of every thing else that took place he was required to make report. Every year he wrote to the minister of state, one, two, three, or four letters, often forty or fifty pages long, filled with the secrets of the colony, political and personal, great and small, set forth with a minuteness often interesting, often instructive, and often excessively tedious. ** The governor, too, wrote letters of pitiless length; and each of the colleagues was jealous of the letters of the other. In truth, their relations to each other were so critical, and perfect harmony so rare, that they might almost be described as natural enemies. The court, it is certain, did not desire their perfect accord; nor, on the other hand, did it wish them to quarrel: it aimed to keep them on such terms
* The Sulpitian seigniors of Montreal claimed the right of
appointing their own local governor. This was denied by the
court, and the excellent Sulpitian governor, Maisonneuve,
was removed by De Tracy, to die in patient obscurity at
Paris. Some concessions were afterwards made in favor of the
Sulpitian claims.
** I have carefully read about two thousand pages of these
letters.
that, without deranging the machinery of administration, each should be a check on the other. *
The governor, the intendant, and the supreme council or court, were absolute masters of Canada under the pleasure of the king. Legislative, judicial, and executive power, all centred in them. We have seen already the very unpromising beginnings of the supreme council. It had consisted at first of the governor, the bishop, and five councillors chosen by them. The intendant was soon added to form the ruling triumvirate; but the appointment of the councillors, the occasion of so many quarrels, was afterwards exercised by the king himself. ** Even the name of the council underwent a change in the interest of his autocracy, and he commanded that it should no longer be called the Supreme, but only the Superior Council. The same change had just been imposed on all the high tribunals of France. *** Under the shadow of the fleur-de-lis, the king alone was to be supreme.
In 1675, the number of councillors was increased to seven, and in 1703 it was again increased to twelve; but the character of the council or court