Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

It does not appear that the ordinance of April 1679 improved the situation in the least. The law continued to be violated, as Duchesneau affirms, with the connivance of the governor, and, as Frontenac says, with the active assistance (in favour of his special friends) of the intendant. In the month of November 1680 Duchesneau writes to the minister, observing that the only thing to do is to try and find the best means to induce these men to return "without prejudice to the absolute submission they owe to the king's will." He proceeds to hint at something like a conditional amnesty, lenient treatment to be promised to all those who, returning home promptly on the publication of the king's proclamation, should "make a sincere and frank declaration in court of the time they have been absent, for what persons they were trading in the Indian country, who furnished them with goods, how many skins they procured, and how they disposed of them." Evidently M. Jacques Duchesneau was in pursuit of information; and there can be little doubt with what intent. What Frontenac wrote on the subject is not on record. It seems probable that he too suggested an amnesty; but we may doubt whether he recommended the condition proposed by his friend the intendant. The court in the month of May following granted an amnesty, the sole condition of which was that the persons concerned should return to their homes immediately on being notified to do so. This was not to imply any indulgence for the offence in future, as another edict was passed in the course of the same month, providing severer punishments than had previously been prescribed—flogging and branding on a first conviction, and perpetual servitude in the galleys on a second. When these edicts reached Quebec it was noticed that to the council was given the duty, not only of registering, but of publishing and executing them. The governor, however, intervened, and, upon his promising to take the whole responsibility upon himself, the council agreed to leave the publication and execution in his hands. "Under this pretext," says M. Lorin, "Frontenac could send officers to all the posts of the upper country; and if he was anxious to do so, it was less to participate, despite the king's orders, in the fur trade, than to control the proceedings of the merchants and missionaries." The word "less" can hardly be said to imply unambiguous praise. Moreover who can say what motive was predominant?

Under the edict of 1679 the governor had the power of issuing an unlimited number of permits for hunting exclusively. The privilege had clearly been abused; and orders were now issued that in future twenty-five permits only should be granted each year, the holder of a permit to be entitled to take or send one canoe only with three men. In this way the amount of trade which could be done under a permit was limited. In all only twenty-five canoe loads of merchandise could be sent out annually. Moreover the intention in granting these permits was less to promote trade at a distance—an object the court never had at heart—than to reward certain supposedly meritorious individuals. It was a species of patronage which was placed in the governor's hands, and which he was expected to distribute in a judicious manner. If the holder of a permit did not wish to use it himself, he could sell it to some one else; and it not infrequently happened that a single trader would buy a number of permits, and send quite a little fleet of canoes up the river. The era of "trusts" was not as yet, but even here we can see the trust in germ.

CHAPTER VI

THE LIFE OF A COLONY

The great trouble in Canada was that it was an over-governed country. The whole population when Frontenac arrived was but little over six thousand souls, scattered over a territory stretching from Matane and Tadousac in the east, to the western limit of the Island of Montreal. What these people needed in the first place was freedom to seek their living in their own way, and secondly, an extremely simple form of government. Instead of this they were hampered in their trade, and made continually to feel their dependence on the central power; while, in the matter of political organization, they were placed under the precise system which prevailed in the provinces of the French kingdom. In the Sovereign Council they had the equivalent of a parliament in the French—by no means in the English—sense; that is to say, a body for registering, and so bestowing a final character of validity upon, the decrees of the sovereign, and for administering justice. The executive power was divided between governor and intendant with very doubtful results. Below the Sovereign Council, as a judicial body, was the court of the Prévôté. The one thing the people were not allowed to have was anything in the way of representative institutions. Colbert, perhaps by immediate royal direction, gave the keynote of monarchical absolutism when he said, in words already quoted: "Let every man speak for himself; let no one presume to speak for all." Thus was the king in his strength and majesty placed over against the solitary protesting individual. Doubtless self-government in the full sense would not have been possible at the time, seeing that self-government implies, as its first condition, pecuniary independence, and the country was not in a position to provide all the money required for its civil and military expenditure. However, possible or impossible, the thing was not thought of, or to be thought of, at the time. The result of the elaborate organization actually established was that administrators and councillors, having far too little to do, fell to quarrelling with one another in the manner already seen and yet to be seen. The Canadian colony was not really peculiar in this respect. Any one who reads in Clément's great work the voluminous correspondence of Colbert will see that strife and jealousy was the rule throughout the whole colonial service. The same spirit, in fact, prevailed which was exhibited in the daily life of the court, where every one was desperately struggling for the sunshine of royal favour, and where, consequently, questions of precedence and etiquette were regarded as of surpassing importance. And now a most serious question of this nature was to blaze forth in Canada.

In various despatches from the court, Frontenac had been spoken of as "President of the Sovereign Council," though that office had never in any formal way been attached to the governorship. Shortly after Duchesneau's appointment as intendant, a royal ordinance was issued conferring the title in question upon him. In this there was no intention whatever to diminish the rank or prestige of the governor. The idea was rather to relieve him from the drudgery of presiding at meetings of the council, by giving to the latter a permanent working head in the person of the intendant, a man assumed to be accustomed to routine business and to have the trained official's capacity for details. Any other man than Frontenac would have seen the matter in this light, and rejoiced that a substitute had been found for him in a most uninteresting duty. He still had access to the council, and whenever he chose to attend, he occupied the seat of honour as the king's immediate representative, while a lower functionary would act as chairman, put questions to the vote, and sign the minutes. To the mind of Frontenac, unfortunately, the thing presented itself in a very different light; he saw his prerogative attacked, his dignity impaired. If he was not president of the council, why was he ever so addressed in official despatches? M. Duchesneau, on the other hand, took his stand on the stronger ground of a special ordinance appointing him to the office. Behold the elements of a mighty quarrel!

In the early days of Frontenac's governorship the preamble of the proceedings in council used to read: "The council having assembled, at which presided the high and mighty lord, Messire Louis de Buade Frontenac, chevalier, Comte de Palluau," etc. Later it was simplified so as to read: "At which presided his Lordship, the governor-general." After the arrival of Duchesneau a new formula was adopted. In the minutes of the 23rd September 1675, the intendant is mentioned as "having taken his seat as president"; and in those of 30th September we find the words "acting as president according to the declaration of the king." The bickering began almost from the date of Duchesneau's arrival; but it was not till the winter of 1678-9 that it developed into actual strife. The minister received many tiresome communications on the subject, and in April 1679 he seems to think that the chief fault is on the side of the intendant, for he writes to him sharply: "You continually speak as if M. de Frontenac was always in the wrong. . . . You seem to put yourself in a kind of parallel with him. The only reply I can make to all these despatches of yours is that you must strive to know your place, and get a proper idea into your head of the difference between a governor and lieutenant-general representing the person of the sovereign, and an intendant." This was hard enough, but what follows is a shade worse: he is told that in making his reports, particularly when they contain accusations, he "should be very careful not to advance anything that is not true." Finally, he is warned that until he learns the difference between the king's representative and himself, he will be in danger, not only of being rebuked, but of being dismissed. Frontenac's turn came a few months later. Colbert writes in December of the same year, and tells him that the king is getting very tired of all this squabbling, and has come to the conclusion that he (Frontenac) "is not capable of that spirit of union and conciliation which is necessary to prevent the troubles that are continually arising, and which are so fraught with ruin to a new colony." The king had heard of the trouble that was being made over this petty question, and Colbert expresses his Majesty's surprise that Frontenac should bother his head about such a thing.

When this despatch reached Canada, Frontenac had gone much further in the matter than either the king or the minister suspected. Peuvret, clerk of the council, had been imprisoned because he would not disobey the orders of the council, in the matter of his minutes, in order to obey those of the governor. During four months the routine business of the council had been suspended while this wretched business was being fought over. Three of the councillors had been banished from Quebec, being ordered to remain in their country-houses till permitted to return. A more discreditable state of things could not well be imagined, nor one of worse example for the country. At last a compromise was proposed by d'Auteuil, the attorney-general, which was that the minutes should mention the presence of the governor and intendant at the meetings of the council, without speaking of either as presiding or as president. Frontenac at first would not have anything to do with such an arrangement, but finally he consented to it till the king's pleasure could be known.