Canada was never doubtful of the English peril or divided in the
desire to destroy it. Nearly always, a soldier or a naval officer
ruled in the Chateau St. Louis, at Quebec, with eyes alert to see
and arms ready to avert military danger. England sometimes sent
to her colonies in America governors who were disreputable and
inefficient, needy hangers-on, too well-known at home to make it
wise there to give them office, but thought good enough for the
colonies. It would not have been easy to find a governor less
fitted to maintain the dignity and culture of high office than
Sir William Phips, Governor of Massachusetts in the time of
Frontenac. Phips, however, though a rough brawler, was reasonably
efficient, but Lord Cornbury, who became Earl of Clarendon, owed
his appointment as Governor of New Jersey and New York in 1701,
only to his necessities and to the desire of his powerful
connections to provide for him. Queen Anne was his cousin. He was
a profligate, feeble in mind but arrogant in spirit, with no
burden of honesty and a great burden of debt, and he made no
change in his scandalous mode of life when he represented his
sovereign at New York. There were other governors only slightly
better. Canada had none as bad. Her viceroys as a rule kept up
the dignity of their office and respected the decencies of life.
In English colonies, governors eked out their incomes by charging
heavy fees for official acts and any one who refused to pay such
fees was not likely to secure attention to his business. In
Canada the population was too scanty and the opportunity too
limited to furnish happy hunting-grounds of this kind. The
governors, however, badly paid as they were, must live, and, in
the case of a man like Frontenac, repair fortunes shattered at
court. To do so they were likely to have some concealed interest