Yet, unless he had, like Count Frontenac, great force of character, or was in favour at the Court of Versailles, and when war was not imminent, his influence was hardly more, it was often less, than that of the Intendant. The Governor was the representative of the Crown. The Intendant was the King's agent, the steward of his province, his own man. He was a civilian, usually a lawyer, and therefore, in most cases, of greater business capacity, and more skilled in penmanship, than the Governor with his military training. His intimate relations with King and minister, coupled with experience of legal advocacy, tended to give more weight to his representations than to those of the Governor at the Court of France. The Intendant, not the Governor, presided at the Council; and as legislator or judge, he was responsible to the King alone. In time of peace, and in matters of internal administration, he had perhaps more real power than the Governor, and even when fighting times called the soldier to the front, the Intendant, dealing with supplies and accounts, controlled in great measure the sinews of war.
| The bishop. |
By the side of the Governor and the Intendant at the council sat the bishop, spiritually supreme, and with power by no means confined to spiritual matters. How strong, politically, was the Church in France before the Revolution, the cardinal prime ministers bear witness, and the priest-ridden wives and mistresses of the Bourbon Kings. It was stronger still in Canada. Priests formed no small part of the scanty population of New France; they made a large part of its history. The schools and hospitals were built by the Church, and the Church owned much of the land. Well organized and disciplined, with clear and definite aims, the ministers of the Church made their power felt in council chamber and in palace; too often they ruled the rulers; and the first and greatest bishop of Canada, Bishop Laval, made or unmade the Governors of New France.
| Defects in the political system of New France. Centralization of power. |
Such was the political system of Canada, while Canada was a province of France. Power was centralized, and the ordinary safeguards of freedom were wholly wanting. Executive, legislative, and judicial functions were placed in the same hands. There was not a shred of popular representation, there was not even a vestige of municipal rights.4 Canada was good for priests and, to some extent, for soldiers; there was room in it and a living for an agricultural peasantry, and for the trapper and backwoodsman, who was a law to himself. Where the St. Lawrence flowed by the island of Montreal, or under the rock of Quebec, there were the beginnings of cities with dwellers in them, but there were no citizens in Canada.
4 Count Frontenac on first arriving in Canada attempted to give the Canadians some voice in the government by calling together the three estates, and by allowing the citizens of Quebec to elect three aldermen. He incurred the royal displeasure by his proceedings, and his measures came to nothing. See Parkman's Count Frontenac and New France (14th ed.), pp. 16, &c., and see [below].
| Friction between the officials. |
Though power was centralized, it was not entrusted locally to one man alone. The maxim of despotism is Divide et impera; and on this principle the Kings of France ruled Canada. The Governor and the Intendant each corresponded directly with the King and his minister. Each was wholly independent of the other, and yet their respective functions were not clearly enough defined to prevent friction and deadlock. The other members of the Council were subordinate neither to the Governor nor to the Intendant, in so far that they were appointed, and could be removed, by the King alone. For this division of authority there was some excuse. On the assumption that both the Governor and the Intendant might be thieves, it was prudent to set a thief to catch a thief. The system minimized the possibility of tyranny in a distant dependency, where the colonists had no voice in making the laws, and no control over the administration. One all-powerful officer might have become a tyrant; but two or more, if evilly disposed, might be trusted to expose each other's misdoings with a view to securing favour at home. Chartered Companies took the same line in this respect as the French Kings. The British East India Company held their Governor-General in check through his Council; the Dutch East India Company created in their dependencies the office of Independent Fiscal, which corresponded in great measure to that of Intendant.5 But the plan devised by Louis XIV and Colbert for the government of Canada had grave defects. Division of authority meant weakness, where strength was urgently needed; it led to personal jealousy, to party feeling, to corruption, and to intrigue; it lessened the sense of responsibility, for each officer could throw the blame on another; and it left the fortunes of Canada in the hands of the man who, for the time being, had, irrespective of any office he held, the strongest character, or the least scruple, or the largest share of Court favour.
5 See vol. iv of this series, pt. 1, p. 75 and notes.