continual quarrels between the governor and the intendant; insomuch that justice having been administered by cabal and animosity, the inhabitants have hitherto been far from the tranquillity and repose which cannot be found in a place where everybody is compelled to take side with one party or another.” *
Nevertheless, on ordinary local questions between the habitants, justice seems to have been administered on the whole fairly; and judges of all grades often interposed in their personal capacity to bring parties to an agreement without a trial. From head to foot, the government kept its attitude of paternity.
Beyond and above all the regular tribunals, beyond and above the council itself, was the independent jurisdiction lodged in the person of the king’s man, the intendant. His commission empowered him, if he saw fit, to call any cause whatever before himself for judgment; and he judged exclusively the cases which concerned the king, and those involving the relations of seignior and vassal. ** He appointed subordinate judges, from whom there was appeal to him; but from his decisions, as well as from those of the superior council, there was no appeal but to the king in his council of state.
On any Monday morning one would have found the superior council in session in the antechamber
* Instruction du Roy pour le Sieur de Meules, 1682.
** See the commissions of various intendants, in Edits et
Ordonnances
of the governor’s apartment, at the Chateau St. Louis. The members sat at a round table. At the head was the governor, with the bishop on his right, and the intendant on his left. The councillors sat in the order of their appointment, and the attorney-general also had his place at the board. As La Hontan says, they were not in judicial robes, but in their ordinary dress, and all but the bishop wore swords.1 The want of the cap and gown greatly disturbed the intendant Meules, and he begs the minister to consider how important it is that the councillors, in order to inspire respect, should appear in public in long black robes, which on occasions of ceremony they should exchange for robes of red. He thinks that the principal persons of the colony would thus be induced to train up their children to so enviable a dignity; “and,” he concludes, “as none of the councillors can afford to buy red robes, I hope that the king will vouchsafe to send out nine such. As for the black robes, they can furnish those themselves.” ** The king did not respond, and the nine robes never arrived.
The official dignity of the council was sometimes exposed to trials against which even red gowns might have proved an insufficient protection. The same intendant urges that the tribunal ought to be provided immediately with a house of its own.
"It is not decent,” he says, “that it should sit in the governor’s antechamber any longer. His guards and valets make such a noise, that we
* Compare La Poterie, I. 260, and La Tour, Vie de Laval,
Liv. VII.
** Meules au Ministre, 28 Sept. 1685.
cannot hear each other speak. I have continually to tell them to keep quiet, which causes them to make a thousand jokes at the councillors as they pass in and out.” * As the governor and the council were often on ill terms, the official head of the colony could not always be trusted to keep his attendants on their good behavior. The minister listened to the complaint of Meules, and adopted his suggestion that the government should buy the old brewery of Talon, a large structure of mingled timber and masonry on the banks of the St. Charles. It was at an easy distance from the chateau; passing the Hôtel Dieu and descending the rock, one reached it by a walk of a few minutes. It was accordingly repaired, partly rebuilt, and fitted up to serve the double purpose of a lodging for the intendant and a court-house. Henceforth the transformed brewery was known as the Palace of the Intendant, or the Palace of Justice; and here the council and inferior courts long continued to hold their sessions.