The Fighting Governer : A Chronicle of Frontenac by Charles William Colby
page 4 of 128 (03%)
page 4 of 128 (03%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
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 |
|