to Quebec, whence the decision would be forwarded to
Louisbourg, where it would arrive months after many other
troubles had grown out of the original dispute.

The system was false from the start, because the overlapping
was intentional. The idea was to prevent any one man from
becoming too strong and too independent. The result was
to keep governors and intendants at perpetual loggerheads
and to divide every station into opposing parties. Did
the governor want money and material for the fortifications?
Then the intendant was sure the military chest, which
was in his own charge, could not afford it. The governor
might sometimes gain his ends by giving a definite
emergency order under his hand and seal. But, if the
emergency could not be proved, this laid him open to
great risks from the intendant's subsequent recriminations
before the Superior Council in Quebec or the Supreme
Council in France. The only way such a system could be
worked at all was either by corrupt collusion or by
superhuman co-operation between the two conflicting
parties, or by appointing a man of genius who could make
every other official discharge his proper duties and no
more. Corrupt collusion was not very common, because
the governors were mostly naval or military men, and the
naval and military men were generally honest. Co-operation
was impossible between two merely average men; and no
genius was ever sent to such a place as Louisbourg. The
ablest man in either of the principal posts was the
notorious intendant Bigot, who began here on a small
scale the consummate schemes that proved so disastrously