The Fighting Governor | Page 2

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 has upbraided Laval for thinking so much of the mission that he neglected the spiritual needs of the colonists. However this may be, the colony owed much to the missionaries--particularly