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