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,'