The Seigneurs of Old Canada: A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism | Page 8

should have their grants revoked. But the seigneurs who
were most at fault in this regard were usually the ones who had most
influence in the little administrative circle at Quebec. Hence the king's
orders were never enforced to the letter, and sometimes not enforced at
all. Unlike the Parliament of Paris, the Sovereign Council at Quebec
never refused to register a royal edict. What would have happened in
the event of its doing so is a query that legal antiquarians might find
difficult to answer. Even a sovereign decree bearing the Bourbon
sign-manual could not gain the force of law in Canada except by being

spread upon the council's records. In France the king could come
clattering with his escort to the council hall and there, by his so termed
'bed of justice,' compel the registration of his decrees. But the Chateau
of St Louis at Quebec was too far away for any such violent procedure.
The colonial council never sought to find out what would follow an
open defiance of the royal wishes. It had a safer plan. Decrees were
always promptly registered; but when they did not suit the councillors
they were just as promptly pigeon-holed, and the people of the colony
were thus left in complete ignorance of the new regulations. On one
occasion the intendant Raudot, in looking over the council records for
legal light on a case before him, found a royal decree which had been
registered by the council some twenty years before, but not an inkling
of which had ever reached the people to whom it had conveyed new
rights against their seigneurs. 'It was the interest of the attorney-general
as a seigneur, as it was also the interest of other councillors who are
seigneurs, that the provisions of this decree should never be made
public,' is the frank way in which the intendant explained the matter in
one of his dispatches to the king. The fact is that the royal arm,
supremely powerful at home, lost a good deal of its strength when
stretched across a thousand leagues of ocean. If anything happened
amiss after the ships left Quebec in the late summer, there was no
regular means of making report to the king for a full twelvemonth. The
royal reply could not be had at the earliest until the ensuing spring; if
the king's advisers desired to look into matters fully it sometimes
happened that another year passed before the royal decision reached
Quebec. By that time matters had often righted themselves, or the issue
had been forgotten. At any rate the direct influence of the crown was
much less effective than it would have been had the colony been within
easy reach. The governor and intendant were accordingly endowed by
the force of circumstances with large discretionary powers. When they
agreed it was possible to order things about as they chose. When they
disagreed on any project the matter went off to the king for decision,
which often meant that it was shelved indefinitely.
The administration of New France was not efficient. There were too
many officials for the size and needs of the colony. Their respective

spheres of authority were too loosely defined. Nor did the crown desire
to have every one working in harmony. A moderate amount of
friction-- provided it did not wholly clog the wheels of administration
--was not deemed an unmixed evil. It served to make each official a
tale-bearer against his colleague, so that the home authorities might
count on getting all sides to every story. The financial situation,
moreover, was always precarious. At no time could New France pay its
own way; every second dispatch from the governor and intendant asked
the king for money or for things that cost money. Louis XIV was
astonishingly generous in the face of so many of these demands upon
his exchequer, but the more he gave the more he was asked to give.
When the stress of European wars curtailed the king's bounty the
colonial authorities began to issue paper money; the issues were
gradually increased; the paper soon depreciated, and in its closing years
the colony fairly wallowed in the slough of almost worthless fiat
currency.
In addition to meeting the annual deficit of the colony the royal
authorities encouraged and assisted emigration to New France. Whole
shiploads of settlers were at times gathered and sent to Quebec. The
seigneurs, by the terms of their grants, should have been active in this
work; but very few of them took any share in it. Nearly the entire task
of applying a stimulus to emigration was thrust on the king and his
officials at home. Year after gear the governor and intendant grew
increasingly urgent in repeated requests for more settlers, until a rebuke
arrived in a suggestion