Parkman Vol. 4, Chapter 17

The whole system of administration centered in the king who was supposed to direct the whole machine, from its highest functions to its pettiest intervention in private affairs.

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

Previously in The Old Regime In Canada. Continuing chapter 16

In case of heinous charges, torture of the accused was permitted under the French law; and it was sometimes practiced in Canada. Condemned murderers and felons were occasionally tortured before being strangled; and the dead body, enclosed in a kind of iron cage, was left hanging for months at the top of Cape Diamond, a terror to children and a warning to evil-doers. Yet, on the whole, Canadian justice, tried by the standard of the time, was neither vindictive nor cruel.

In reading the voluminous correspondence of governors and intendants, the minister and the king, nothing is more apparent than the interest with which, in the early part of his reign, Louis XIV. regarded his colony. One of the faults of his rule is the excess of his benevolence; for not only did he give money to support parish priests, build churches, and aid the seminary, the Ursulines, the missions, and the hospitals; but he established a fund destined, among other objects, to relieve indigent persons, subsidized nearly every branch of trade and industry, and in other instances did for the colonists what they would far better have learned to do for themselves.

Meanwhile the officers of government were far from suffering from an excess of royal beneficence. La Hontan says that the local governor of Three Rivers would die of hunger if, besides his pay, he did not gain something by trade with the Indians; and that Perrot, local governor of Montreal, with one thousand crowns of salary, traded to such purpose that in a few years he made fifty thousand crowns. This trade, it may be observed, was in violation of the royal edicts. The pay of the governor-general varied from time to time. When La Poterie wrote it was twelve thousand francs a year, besides three thousand which he received in his capacity of local governor of Quebec. [1] This would hardly tempt a Frenchman of rank to expatriate himself; and yet some, at least, of the governors came out to the colony for the express purpose of mending their fortunes; indeed, the higher nobility could scarcely, in time of peace, have other motives for going there. The court and the army were their element, and to be elsewhere was banishment. We shall see hereafter by what means they sought compensation for their exile in Canadian forests. Loud complaints sometimes found their way to Versailles. A memorial addressed to the regent duke of Orleans, immediately after the king’s death, declares that the ministers of state, who have been the real managers of the colony, have made their creatures and relations governors and intendants, and set them free from all responsibility. High colonial officers, pursues the writer, come home rich, while the colony languishes almost to perishing. [2] As for lesser offices, they were multiplied to satisfy needy retainers, till lean and starving Canada was covered with official leeches, sucking, in famished desperation, at her bloodless veins.

[1: In 1674, the governor-general received 20,718 francs, out of which he was to pay 8,718 to his guard of twenty men and officers. Ordonnance du Roy, 1675. Yet in 1677, in the Etat de la Dépense que le Roy veut et ordonne estre faite, etc., the total pay of the governor-general is set down at 3,000 francs, and so also in 1681, 1682, and 1687. The local governor of Montreal was to have 1,800 francs, and the governor of Three Rivers 1,200. It is clear, however, that this Etat de dépense is not complete, as there is no provision for the intendant. The first councilor received 500 francs, and the rest 300 francs each, equal in Canadian money to 400. An ordinance of 1676 gives the intendant 12,000 francs. It is tolerably clear that the provision of 3,000 francs for the governor-general was meant only to apply to his capacity of local governor of Quebec.]

[2: Mémoire addressé au Régent 1716]

The whole system of administration centered in the king, who, to borrow the formula of his edicts, “in the fullness of our power and our certain knowledge,” was supposed to direct the whole machine, from its highest functions to its pettiest intervention in private affairs. That this theory, like all extreme theories of government, was an illusion, is no fault of Louis XIV. Hard-working monarch as he was, he spared no pains to guide his distant colony in the paths of prosperity. The prolix letters of governors and intendants were carefully studied; and many of the replies, signed by the royal hand, enter into details of surprising minuteness. That the king himself wrote these letters is incredible; but in the early part of his reign he certainly directed and controlled them. At a later time, when more absorbing interests engrossed him, he could no longer study in person the long-winded dispatches of his Canadian officers. They were usually addressed to the minister of state, who caused abstracts to be made from them, for the king’s use, and perhaps for his own. [3] The minister or the minister’s secretary could suppress or color as he or those who influenced him saw fit.

[3: Many of these abstracts are still preserved in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.]

In the latter half of his too long reign, when cares, calamities, and humiliations were thickening around the king, another influence was added to make the theoretical supremacy of his royal will more than ever a mockery. That prince of annalists, Saint-Simon, has painted Louis XIV. ruling his realm from the bedchamber of Madame de Maintenons seated with his minister at a small table beside the fire, the king in an armchair, the minister on a stool with his bag of papers on a second stool near him. In another armchair, at another table, on the other side of the fire, sat the sedate favorite, busy to all appearance with a book or a piece of tapestry, but listening to every thing that passed. “She rarely spoke,” says Saint-Simon, “except when the king asked her opinion, which he often did; and then she answered with great deliberation and gravity. She never or very rarely showed a partiality for any measure, still less for any person; but she had an understanding with the minister, who never dared do otherwise than she wished. Whenever any favor or appointment was in question, the business was settled between them beforehand. She would send to the minister that she wanted to speak to him, and he did not dare bring the matter on the carpet till he had received her orders.” Saint-Simon next recounts the subtle methods by which Maintenon and the minister, her tool, beguiled the king to do their will, while never doubting that he was doing his own. “He thought,” concludes the annalist, “that it was he alone who disposed of all appointments; while in reality he disposed of very few indeed, except on the rare occasions when he had taken a fancy to somebody, or when somebody whom he wanted to favor had spoken to him in behalf of somebody else.”

[Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon, XIII. 38, 39 (Cheruel, 1857). Saint-Simon, notwithstanding the independence of his character, held a high position at court; and his acute and careful observation, joined to his familiar acquaintance with ministers and other functionaries, both in and out of office, gives a rare value to his matchless portraitures.]

Add to all this the rarity of communication with the distant colony. The ships from France arrived at Quebec in July, August, or September, and returned in November. The machine of Canadian government, wound up once a year, was expected to run unaided at least a twelvemonth. Indeed, it was often left to itself for two years, such was sometimes the tardiness of the overburdened government in answering the dispatches of its colonial agents. It is no matter of surprise that a writer well versed in its affairs calls Canada the “country of abuses.”

[Etat présent du Canada, 1768.]

Chapter 17

We have seen the head of the colony, its guiding intellect and will: it remains to observe its organs of nutrition. Whatever they might have been under a different treatment, they were perverted and enfeebled by the regimen to which they were subjected.

The spirit of restriction and monopoly had ruled from the beginning. The old governor Lauson, seignior for a while of a great part of the colony, held that Montreal had no right to trade directly with France, but must draw all her supplies from Quebec; [4] and this preposterous claim was revived in the time of Mézy. The successive companies to whose hands the colony was consigned had a baneful effect on individual enterprise. In 1674,

[4: Faillon, Colonie Française, II. 244.]

the charter of the West India Company was revoked, and trade was declared open to all subjects of the king; yet commerce was still condemned to wear the ball and chain. New restrictions were imposed, meant for good, but resulting in evil. Merchants not resident in the colony were forbidden all trade, direct or indirect, with the Indians. [5] They were also forbidden to sell any goods at retail except in August, September, and October; [6] to trade anywhere in Canada above Quebec; and to sell clothing or domestic articles ready made. This last restriction was designed to develop colonial industry. No person, resident or not, could trade with the English colonies, or go thither without a special passport, and rigid examination by the military authorities. [7] Foreign trade of any kind was stiffly prohibited. In 1719, after a new company had engrossed the beaver trade, its agents were empowered to enter all houses in Canada, whether ecclesiastical or secular, and search them for foreign goods, which when found were publicly burned. 980 In the next year, the royal council ordered that vessels engaged in foreign trade should be captured by force of arms, like pirates, and confiscated along with their cargoes; [9] while anybody having an article of foreign manufacture in his possession was subjected to a heavy fine. [10]

[5: Réglement de Police, 1676, Art. xl.]

[6: Edits et Ord., II. 100.]

[7: Ibid., I. 489.]

[8: Ibid.. I. 402.]

[9: Ibid., I. 425.]

[10: Ibid., I. 505.]

Attempts were made to fix the exact amount of profit which merchants from France should be allowed to make in the colony. One of the first acts of the superior council was to order them to bring their invoices immediately before that body, which thereupon affixed prices to each article. The merchant who sold and the purchaser who bought above this tariff were alike condemned to heavy penalties; and so, too, was the merchant who chose to keep his goods rather than sell them at the price ordained. [11] Resident merchants, on the other hand, were favored to the utmost. They could sell at what price they saw fit; and, according to La Hontan, they made great profit by the sale of laces, ribbons, watches, jewels, and similar superfluities to the poor but extravagant colonists.

[11: Edits et Ord., II. 17, 19.]

A considerable number of the non-resident merchants were Huguenots, for most of the importations were from the old Huguenot city of Rochelle. No favor was shown them; they were held under rigid restraint, and forbidden to exercise their religion, or to remain in the colony during winter without special license. [12] This sometimes bore very hard upon them. The governor Denonville, an ardent Catholic, states the case of one Bernon, who had done great service to the colony, and whom La Hontan mentions as the principal French merchant in the Canadian trade. “It is a pity,” says Denonville, “that he cannot be converted. As he is a Huguenot, the bishop wants me to order him home this autumn, which I have done, though he carries on a large business, and a great deal of money remains due to him here.” [13]

[12: Réglement de Police, 1676. Art. xxxvii.]

[13: Denonville au Ministre, 1685.]

For a long time the ships from France went home empty, except a favored few which carried furs, or occasionally a load of dried peas or of timber. Payment was made in money when there was any in Canada, or in bills of exchange. The colony, drawing everything from France, and returning little besides beaver skins, remained under a load of debt. French merchants were discouraged, and shipments from France languished. As for the trade with the West Indies, which Talon had tried by precept and example to build up, the intendant reports in 1680 that it had nearly ceased; though six years later it grew again to the modest proportions of three vessels loaded with wheat.

[Ibid., 1686. The year before, about 18,000 minots of grain were sent hither. In 1736, the shipments reached 80,000 minots.]

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 17 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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