Part 3 (1/2)

confinement--and the fiery abbe sailed for France. ”I am sending,” he says, ”M. Perrot and M. de Fenelon to France, in order that you may judge their conduct. For myself, if I have failed in any point of duty, I am ready to submit to his Majesty's corrections. A governor in this country would be much to be pitied if he were not sustained, seeing there is no one here on whom he can depend; and should he commit any fault he might a.s.suredly be excused, seeing that all kinds of nets are spread for him, and that, after avoiding a hundred, he is liable to be caught in the end. So, My Lord, I hope that, should I have had the misfortune to take any false step, his Majesty will be kind enough to sympathize with me, and to believe that the error was due to an excess of zeal for his service, and not to any other motive.”

The tone of this communication, it must be confessed, is not quite what one would expect from a man of Frontenac's character and antecedents. It shows what influence at court counted for in that day. The letter was accompanied by a docket of enormous proportions containing the charges against Perrot and the abbe, and all the evidence taken in the course of the prolonged investigation at Quebec. He received replies both from the king and the minister. In regard to Perrot the king wrote: ”I have seen and examined all you have sent me concerning M. Perrot; and, after having seen all that he has put forward in his defence, I have condemned his action in imprisoning the officer you sent to Montreal. To punish him I have sent him for some time to the Bastille, in order that this discipline may not only render him more circ.u.mspect for the future, but may serve as an example to others. But, in order that you may thoroughly understand my views, I must tell you that, except in a case of absolute necessity, you should not execute any order within the sphere of a local government without having first notified the governor of the locality.

The punishment of ten months' imprisonment you inflicted on him seems to me sufficient; and that is why I am sending him to the Bastille for a short term only, in order to vindicate in a public manner my violated authority.” His Majesty added that he was sending Perrot back to his government, but that he would instruct him to call on the governor-general at Quebec and apologize for all his past offences; after which Frontenac was to dismiss all resentment, and treat him with the consideration due to his office.

As regards Fenelon, he was not allowed to return to Canada; and he was censured by the Superior of his order for having busied himself with things with which he had no concern. At the same time Frontenac was informed that he was wrong in inst.i.tuting a criminal process against that ecclesiastic, as well as in calling upon his brethren of the Seminary to give evidence against him. The king made it clear that he thought Frontenac had been unduly harsh and autocratic in his proceedings generally. It would have been well for that dignitary if he could have taken the admonition more deeply to heart.

[Footnote 13: It was no doubt in large measure due to the extraordinary physical vitality of the French race in Canada that so strong a tendency was manifested towards this reversion, which of course was facilitated by the general condition of life in a country that was little else than forest. ”_L'ecole buissonniere_” was at every one's door, and the men of the colony were not alone in feeling the call of the wild. Mere Marie de l'Incarnation, in her _Lettres Spirituelles_ says: ”Sans l'education que nous donnons aux filles francaises qui sont un peu grandes, durant l'es.p.a.ce de six mois environ, elles seraient des brutes pires que les sauvages; c'est pourquoi on nous les donne presque toutes, les unes apres les autres.” See Ferland's _Cours d'Histoire du Canada_, vol. ii.

p. 85, who quotes this pa.s.sage without any reference to page. Pa.s.sages of similar purport may, however, be found on pp. 231 and 258 of the first edition (1681) of the _Lettres Spirituelles_.]

[Footnote 14: Mr. P. T. Bedard, in his lecture on _Frontenac_, published in the _Annuaire_ of the Inst.i.tut Canadien of Quebec for 1880 speaks of Frontenac's ”duplicity” in this matter, a stronger term than the facts seem to justify.]

[Footnote 15: Vol. iii. pp. 446-52.]

CHAPTER V

DIVIDED POWER

If the king read carefully, as he says he did, the cruel ma.s.s of correspondence which Frontenac forwarded to him in connection with the Perrot-Fenelon imbroglio, he could hardly have failed to come to the conclusion that something was amiss in the state of Canada. Frontenac had begged, somewhat piteously, that he might be ”sustained,” and sustained he was in a manner, as we have just seen; but the king and the minister had their own opinion on the subject, which they only partly expressed in words, the rest they translated into action. Frontenac, from the date of his arrival in Canada, had been the only visible source of authority. Laval was in France, looking after the long delayed bull which was to raise him from the doubtful rank of a bishop _in partibus_ to the full legal status of bishop of Quebec. Talon, too, had left the country a few weeks after the governor's arrival, and no one had been sent to replace him. The old warrior had, therefore, had things entirely his own way, and his own way had not proved to be the way of peace. To place matters on a better footing, the court decided on two measures: to reorganize the Sovereign Council, and to revive the office of intendant.

The council, it will be remembered, consisted of four members and an attorney-general, nominated by the governor and the bishop jointly, and holding office during their good pleasure. Henceforth it was to consist of seven members, each holding office by direct commission from the king. The main object of the change was to enable it to act with more independence in the performance of its proper functions, which were essentially of a judicial character. A secondary effect, probably neither foreseen nor intended, was to augment the influence of the bishop, at the expense of that of the governor, through the operation of the natural law which inclines men to side rather with permanent than with transient forces. Frontenac was jealous from the first of the increased prestige of the council, and soon became disagreeably aware of the advantage it afforded to his ecclesiastical rival.

The council, as reconst.i.tuted, consisted of the four old members, Louis Rouer de Villeray, who received the designation of first councillor, Le Gardeur de Tilly, Mathieu Damours, and Nicolas Dupont, with three new ones, Rene Charlier de Lotbiniere, Jean Baptiste de Peyras, and Charles Denis de Vitre. The attorney-general, Denis Joseph Ruette d'Auteuil, a man described by Frontenac a couple of years later as ”very ignorant, and having such imperfect sight that he can neither read nor write,” was by name reappointed to his office, with one Gilles Rageot as clerk. All these, holding their appointments directly from the king, were secure from removal by any lesser authority. The utmost the governor could do would be to suspend one or more of them for grave misconduct, subject to confirmation of his action by the sovereign. Another change in the judiciary of the colony was made a couple of years later. The king had, in the year 1674, abolished a court called the Prevote (Provost's Court) of Quebec, which had been established by the West India Company for the purpose of exercising a kind of police jurisdiction, and making preliminary inquiries in certain cases. The royal idea at the time had been that it would be simpler to intrust the whole administration of justice to one court, the Sovereign Council. The enlargement and strengthening of the council, however, and the appearance upon the scene of an intendant whose views did not always harmonize, to speak very moderately, with those of the governor, somewhat altered the situation.

There was a balance of powers; but justice itself would sometimes hang in the balance longer than was desirable. In order, therefore, to get as many cases as possible disposed of without troubling that important tribunal, his Majesty, in the month of May 1677, determined to re-establish the Prevote, with power to judge, as a court of first instance, all cases civil and criminal, subject to appeal to the Sovereign Council. The court was to consist of a lieutenant-general as judge, a public prosecutor and a clerk. To these was added, by an edict of the same month, a special officer having the t.i.tle of _prevot_, with judicial functions in criminal cases only. It probably was not foreseen that the governor might play off the Prevote against the Sovereign Council. That, however, is what happened, and as the lower court had at its service six ”archers” or constables, it was able, when acting in concert with the governor, to accomplish an occasional _tour de force_.

The new intendant, M. Jacques d.u.c.h.esneau, arrived at Quebec in the month of September 1675 by the same vessel which bore back Laval, in all the glory and power of full episcopal authority, to a flock from which he had been absent three long years. His letter of instructions mentions the fact that he had filled a somewhat similar office at Tours in France, and had acquitted himself therein to the great satisfaction of his Majesty. Research has been made without success to find out what the office was; we have only, therefore, to take his Majesty's word for it.

Whatever M. d.u.c.h.esneau's previous history may have been, he seems to have come to Canada with the determination to keep a very watchful, and not too benevolent, eye on the proceedings of his official superior, the governor. There was the strongest possible contrast between the characters of the two men. Frontenac was haughty, headstrong, and aggressive; d.u.c.h.esneau, cautious, crafty, and persistent. When two such men come into conflict, it is not the cool calculator who suffers most, however he may whine (as d.u.c.h.esneau did) at the high-handed proceedings of the other. Under the best of circ.u.mstances a governor and an intendant were not likely to work very harmoniously together. Courcelles and Talon did not, though both were well-meaning men. M. Lorin hints that Colbert sent out d.u.c.h.esneau to act as a spy upon Frontenac.[16] The supposition seems to be a needless one. d.u.c.h.esneau was sent out as Talon had been before him, to see that the intentions of the court in the government of the country were duly carried into effect, and in particular that the considerable sums of money which the king appropriated to the uses of the colony were rightly expended. It is possible that, had Frontenac acted with more judgment and moderation during the first two years of his administration, the appointment of an intendant would not have been considered necessary; but, in any case, the court in giving him a colleague, and thus relieving him of part of his responsibilities, was simply applying to Canada a system of administration long established in France, where, as a rule, every province had its intendant as well as its governor.

d.u.c.h.esneau's instructions were certainly very clear as to the att.i.tude he was to maintain towards the governor. He was enjoined ”to be careful to live with Comte de Frontenac in relations of great deference, not only on account of the honour he had of representing the king's person, but also on account of his personal merit, and not to do anything in the whole range of his duties without his consent and partic.i.p.ation.” To secure concordant conduct on the governor's part, he was instructed in a despatch of even date to allow the intendant to act ”with entire liberty in everything relating to justice, police, and finance, without meddling at all in these matters, except when they are discussed in the Sovereign Council.” It is significant that in this same letter a hint is dropped about trading: not only was Frontenac not to trade himself, or allow trading on his behalf, but he was not to permit any one belonging to his household to trade. It thus appears that, before d.u.c.h.esneau had even arrived in the country, the court had had its suspicions aroused as to the course the king's personal representative might be tempted to pursue in this matter. We may be certain that anything Perrot and Fenelon knew on the subject would be poured into the minister's ear, nor were they the only ones whose representations regarding the governor would not be of a friendly character. Villeray, the senior member of the Sovereign Council and the Abbe d'Urfe, a relative of Fenelon's, were in France at the same time. The former had been denounced by Frontenac in one of his earliest despatches as a busybody and a close ally of the Jesuit order; while the latter had been very haughtily treated by him in connection with the Fenelon matter, and had left Canada in high indignation by the same vessel which bore Fenelon and Perrot. It happened that, just about this time, Urfe's cousin, a Mademoiselle d'Allegre, was being contracted in marriage to Colbert's son and destined successor in office, the Marquis de Seignelay, so that altogether the influences which were operating against Frontenac at this juncture were of a somewhat formidable character. That his position should have been so little affected speaks well for his claim to personal consideration. It speaks well also for the spirit of equity which actuated the king in his relations with his officers.

A meeting of the reorganized Sovereign Council was held at Quebec on the 16th September 1675. It is this meeting which fixes for us as nearly as it can be done the date of the arrival of the bishop and intendant, for the minutes show that the former was present, and that part of the business transacted was the registration of the commission of the latter. M. de Laval lost no time in making his influence felt. The Abbe Fenelon, when arraigned before the Sovereign Council the year before, had demanded to be tried by an ecclesiastical tribunal, and reply had been made that there was no such tribunal in Canada. The bishop's first act was to supply this lack by establis.h.i.+ng a court consisting of his two grand-vicars, Bernieres and Dudouyt, and a clerk or registrar. The new court soon found work to do. A man was cited before it, upon information of the _cure_ of Montreal, for having failed to perform his Easter duties. He appealed to the Sovereign Council, which at first showed a disposition to a.s.sume jurisdiction in the case, but in the end left it in the hands of the ecclesiastics. The bishop wished it to be understood that Canada was not France. Some encroachments of the civil on the spiritual power had, he said, taken place in that country, but ”these were things to be guarded against in a country in which a Church is in course of establishment.” Manifestly Laval understood the word ”Church” in a very absolute sense, and meant to enforce his understanding of it if possible.

During his absence from the country the clergy had got into the way, either of their own accord, or at Frontenac's suggestion, of paying the governor certain honours in church which the bishop considered--correctly it appears--unsanctioned by precedent or usage. He ordered that they should be discontinued. A wrangle with the governor ensued, and the matter had to be referred to the king, who must sometimes have wondered whether the colonial game was worth the candles consumed in reading the colonial despatches; for his Majesty, no less than his minister, had often to prolong the work far into the night. The patient monarch replied that the governor had been claiming more than was his due, and more than was accorded to men of his rank in the provinces of the kingdom; he must, therefore, make up his little difference with the bishop of Quebec, by gracefully moderating his pretensions. Three years later there were still some differences of the same nature pending, for we find the king sending directions to the bishop to pay the same honours to the governor of Canada as were paid to the governor of Picardy in the cathedral of Amiens. Frontenac, on his part, was not to claim more.

The doc.u.ment which throws most light on Frontenac's att.i.tude towards the dominant ecclesiastical powers--the bishop and the Jesuits--and on his estimate of their work and general policy, is a letter which he wrote to Colbert in 1677, and which must have been of a confidential nature.[17]

”Nearly all the disorders existing in New France,” he therein declares, ”have their origin in the ambition of the ecclesiastics, who wish to add to their spiritual authority an absolute power over temporal matters.”

Their aim from the first, he goes on to say, was to ama.s.s wealth as a means of influence; and in this they have been extraordinarily successful. They have had subsidies from the king and charitable donations from individuals in France; they have obtained concessions of large tracts of the best and most valuable lands in the country; finally, in spite of the king's prohibitions, they have been driving an active and most profitable trade. In support of the latter statement he cites the names of a number of persons who have given him positive and detailed evidence on the point. He estimates the bishop's revenue from all sources at not less than forty thousand livres; and refers to the fact that he is erecting vast and superb buildings at Quebec at a cost of four hundred thousand livres, although he and his ecclesiastics are already lodged much better than the governor-general. He complains of the espionage they exercise through the country and in his own household; and says there would be no end to the story if he were to attempt to tell all that they have done to augment their influence through the confessional and by threats of excommunication. Instances are given of what the writer claims to have been their undue severity towards persons who had incurred their censure. If the bishop chose, he could do what he has always. .h.i.therto refused to do: provide the country with a reasonable number of parish priests having fixed positions. He has ample means for the purpose if he would employ them in a less ambitious manner; his main objection to doing so is that the erection of parishes served by priests not removable at pleasure would diminish his power and throw patronage into the hands of the king. So far the governor. It is probable that his impeachment of his ecclesiastical rivals did not fall on altogether unsympathetic ears; but Colbert, as a statesman, recognized power wherever it existed; and his only advice to the civil administrators was to hold their own as well as they could. In a despatch, written some years before, he had told Courcelles that be looked forward to the time when, with an increase of population, things would get into better shape, and the secular power a.s.sume its just preponderance.

d.u.c.h.esneau himself, shortly after his arrival in the country, had a pa.s.sing difficulty with the bishop, arising out of an idea he entertained, that, as intendant, he ought to rank next to the governor; and this wretched matter had also to be referred to the court, which promptly decided in the bishop's favour. From that time forward there was perfect harmony between the two, so much so that, on more than one occasion, the intendant drew down upon himself the censure of the court for what was regarded as his undue subservience to the bishop's views.

One of the first matters regarding which he and the bishop joined forces was the policy of the governor in connection with the issue of hunting and trading licences. The law under which Frontenac had previously taken severe measures against the _coureurs de bois_ was still in force; but the governor had felt himself justified in issuing a limited number of permits to responsible persons, authorizing them to carry goods to the Indians and trade in the Indian settlements. These persons became, in a certain sense, _coureurs de bois_; but as they went out by authority, and could be held to the terms of their licences, and as, moreover, they could be used for the purpose of obtaining information as to the movements and disposition of the native tribes, the governor thought, or professed to think, that he was acting for the best in relaxing to this extent the strict letter of the law. The bishop, on the other hand, objected to the system; in the first place, because the persons licensed carried liquor as part of their stock-in-trade, and, in the second, because it threw impediments in the way of the effective ecclesiastical control of the population. It was agreed that he and the intendant should both write to the minister, the one dwelling on the evils of the liquor traffic with the Indians, and the other on the infringement of the law. d.u.c.h.esneau, we have seen, had been warned in his instructions to keep in close touch with the governor in all that he did; but he had not been three months in the country before, in a matter of the first importance, and one affecting the governor's own actions, he sent home recommendations of which his superior officer knew nothing.

The answer came back the following year. It was dated 15th April 1676, but seems only to have reached Quebec in September. The governor, by royal edict, was forbidden to issue permits under any pretext whatsoever. The punishment of contumacious _coureurs de bois_ was placed in the hands of the intendant exclusively, as it was he alone--such was the reason given--who had official knowledge of the conditions under which the fur trade was being farmed out. Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers were at the same time indicated as the only places where the trade with the Indians might lawfully be carried on.

Frontenac was not at Quebec when this doc.u.ment arrived; he was at Fort Frontenac (Cataraqui), which was now in the hands of his friend La Salle under a concession from the king. Doubtless he was enjoying, not only his temporary freedom from the worries and vexations of office, but also the congenial society of a man, who, though much his junior, had, in common with himself, a large knowledge of the world, a keen and aspiring spirit, and a strong love of adventure. At Quebec the councillors were somewhat at a loss what to do in the matter of the despatch. Some were indisposed to register, in the absence of the governor, an edict which so directly condemned the policy he was pursuing. d.u.c.h.esneau, however, did not approve of delay, and on the 5th of October the doc.u.ment was registered, and thus became the law of the land. When Frontenac returned to Quebec and found what had been done--that one of the first acts of the intendant had been to hand him over to the censure of the court, and that its censure had practically been p.r.o.nounced--he was indignant beyond measure. He saw at a glance that, if the situation were not in some way retrieved, his authority and prestige in the colony he had been sent out to govern would be gravely compromised. The fall vessels were to leave in a week or two, so he sat down and wrote a despatch to Colbert which gave that able minister something to think about. The bishop, dreading lest the governor's reasons--he probably knew that Frontenac wielded a vigorous pen--might lead to a countermanding of the instructions, thought it well to send an envoy of his own to France in the person of the Abbe Dudouyt. Frontenac meantime so far complied with the edict as to publish an order requiring all _coureurs de bois_, licensed and unlicensed, to return at once to the settlements; though, according to d.u.c.h.esneau, he nullified this to a great extent by issuing a number of hunting permits which were only trading permits in disguise.

So far as the sale of liquor to the Indians was in question, it is impossible not to approve, theoretically at least, the stand taken by the bishop. He would have suppressed it absolutely, if he had had the power. The thing, however, was practically impossible. We see the effect probably of Frontenac's representations on the subject in a despatch which the intendant received dated in the spring of 1677. He is told that he had yielded too easily to the extreme views of the bishop in regard to this matter. The bishop had spoken of the fearful effects caused by drink amongst the Indians, who maimed and murdered one another, and committed all kinds of abominations, when under its influence. Colbert is not content with such a general statement; he wants particulars; and instructs d.u.c.h.esneau to find out how many such crimes can be proved to have been committed since he (the intendant) had arrived in Canada. Here was a very suitable piece of work cut out for M. Jacques d.u.c.h.esneau, who was nothing if not a man of facts and figures; but there is nothing to show that he ever prepared the desired statement. The minister goes on to say: ”The general policy of the state is necessarily opposed to the views of a bishop who, in order to prevent the abuse made by a few individuals of a thing good in itself, is prepared to abolish entirely the trade in an article of consumption which serves greatly to promote commerce, and to bring the savages into contact with orthodox Christians like the French. We should run the risk, if we yielded to his opinion, not only of losing this commerce, but of forcing the savages to do business with the English and Dutch, who are heretics; and it would thus become impossible for us to keep them favourably disposed towards the one pure and true religion.”

Colbert, it will be seen, had that judicious blending of the missionary with the commercial spirit which has been so efficacious in our own day in promoting great colonial enterprises. One or two other allusions to the bishop may be quoted: ”It is easy to see that, though the bishop is a very good man, and most faithful in the performance of his duty, he nevertheless is aiming at a degree of power which goes far beyond what is exercised by bishops in any other part of Christendom, and particularly in France.” Then, with reference to his attendance at meetings of the Sovereign Council: ”You ought to try and put him out of love with going there; but in doing so you must act with the greatest prudence and secrecy, and take care that no person whatsoever knows what I am writing to you on this point.”

The minister, it is evident, had hard work to keep his representatives in Canada to their respective spheres of duty. He opens his despatch to d.u.c.h.esneau by begging him to mind his own business, and not in future recommend any military appointments, as he had done in a late communication. He wrote to Frontenac a few days later, cautioning him to keep aloof from questions of justice, police, and finance, observing that men in military command ”are too apt to let flatterers persuade them that they ought to take cognizance of everything and look after everything.” Touching on the drink question, he said that ”if the disorders complained of are limited in number, and if the Indians are only a little more subject to getting intoxicated than the Germans for example, or, among the French, the Bretons,” there was no need for drastic prohibitive measures; the irregularities happening from time to time could be dealt with by the courts. He was not to take ground openly against the bishop; but he was to see that the latter did not go beyond his proper prerogative ”in a matter that was purely one of police.” The Abbe Dudouyt had evidently not succeeded in winning over the minister to the bishop's extreme views. He must, however, have had more success with the king, for on the 12th May 1678 a royal edict was issued, dealing in a very uncompromising fas.h.i.+on with the _coureur de bois_ question as well as with that of the liquor traffic. As regards the former, the previous prohibition, which, it was complained, had been rendered nugatory by the system of special permits, was renewed in all its force.

The liquor traffic was equally condemned: no liquor was to be sold to the Indians under any circ.u.mstances. Colbert thereupon presented a memoir to his Majesty setting forth his reasons for considering a prohibition of the liquor traffic inexpedient, these being much the same as he had embodied in his despatch to d.u.c.h.esneau of the preceding year.