The Fighting Governor | Page 2

servant.
But, though the crown had destroyed the political power of the nobles,
it left intact their social pre-eminence. The king was as supreme as a
Christian ruler could be. Yet by its very nature the monarchy could not

exist without the nobles, from whose ranks the sovereign drew his
attendants, friends, and lieutenants. Versailles without its courtiers
would have been a desert. Even the Church was a stronghold of the
aristocracy, for few became bishops or abbots who were not of gentle
birth.
The great aim of government, whether at home or in the colonies, was
to maintain the supremacy of the crown. Hence all public action flowed
from a royal command. The Bourbon theory required that kings should
speak and that subjects should obey. One direct consequence of a
system so uncompromisingly despotic was the loss of all local initiative.
Nothing in the faintest degree resembling the New England
town-meeting ever existed in New France. Louis XIV objected to
public gatherings of his people, even for the most innocent purposes.
The sole limitation to the power of the king was the line of cleavage
between Church and State. Religion required that the king should
refrain from invading the sphere of the clergy, though controversy often
waxed fierce as to where the secular ended and the spiritual began.
When it became necessary to provide institutions for Canada, the
organization of the province in France at once suggested itself as a fit
pattern. Canada, like Normandy, had the governor and the intendant for
her chief officials, the seigneury for the groundwork of her society, and
mediaeval coutumes for her laws.
The governor represented the king's dignity and the force of his arms.
He was a noble, titled or untitled. It was the business of the governor to
wage war and of the intendant to levy taxes. But as an expedition could
not be equipped without money, the governor looked to the intendant
for funds, and the intendant might object that the plans of the governor
were unduly extravagant. Worse still, the commissions under which
both held office were often contradictory. More than three thousand
miles separated Quebec from Versailles, and for many months
governor and intendant quarrelled over issues which could only be
settled by an appeal to the king. Meanwhile each was a spy as well as a
check upon the other. In Canada this arrangement worked even more
harmfully than in France, where the king could make himself felt

without great loss of time.
Yet an able intendant could do much good. There are few finer
episodes in the history of local government than the work of Turgot as
intendant of the Limousin. [Footnote: Anne Robert Jacques Turgot
(1727-81), a statesman, thinker, and philanthropist of the first order. It
was as intendant of Limoges that Turgot disclosed his great powers. He
held his post for thirteen years (1761- 74), and effected improvements
which led Louis XVI to appoint him comptroller-general of the
Kingdom.] Canada also had her Talon, whose efforts had transformed
the colony during the seven years which preceded Frontenac's arrival.
The fatal weakness was scanty population. This Talon saw with perfect
clearness, and he clamoured for immigrants till Colbert declared that he
would not depopulate France to people Canada. Talon and Frontenac
came into personal contact only during a few weeks, but the colony
over which Frontenac ruled as governor had been created largely by the
intelligence and toil of Talon as intendant. [Footnote: See The Great
Intendant.]
While the provincial system of France gave Canada two chief
personages, a third came from the Church. In the annals of New France
there is no more prominent figure than the bishop. Francois de Laval de
Montmorency had been in the colony since 1659. His place in history is
due in large part to his strong, intense personality, but this must not be
permitted to obscure the importance of his office. His duties were to
create educational institutions, to shape ecclesiastical policy, and to
represent the Church in all its dealings with the government.
Many of the problems which confronted Laval had their origin in
special and rather singular circumstances. Few, if any, priests had as
yet been established in fixed parishes--each with its church and
presbytere. Under ordinary conditions parishes would have been
established at once, but in Canada the conditions were far from
ordinary. The Canadian Church sprang from a mission. Its first
ministers were members of religious orders who had taken the
conversion of the heathen for their chosen task. They had headquarters
at Quebec or Montreal, but their true field of action was the wilderness.

Having the red man rather than the settler as their charge, they became
immersed, and perhaps preoccupied, in their heroic work. Thus the
erection of parishes was delayed. More than one historian