Louis XIV was greatly interested in Canada. From beginning
to end of his long administration he showed this interest
at every turn. His officials sent from Quebec their long
dispatches; the patient monarch read them all, and sent
by the next ship his budget of orders, advice, reprimand,
and praise. As a royal province, New France had for its
chief official a governor who represented the royal
dignity and power. The governor was the chief military
officer, and it was to him that the king looked for the
proper care of all matters relating to the defence and
peace of New France. Then there was the Sovereign Council,
a body made up of the bishop, the intendant, and certain
prominent citizens of the colony named by the king on
the advice of his colonial representatives. This council
was both a law-making and a judicial body. It registered
and published the royal decrees, made local regulations,
and acted as the supreme court of the colony. But the
official who loomed largest in the purely civil affairs
of New France was the intendant. He was the overseas
apostle of Bourbon paternalism, and as his commission
authorized him to 'order all things as he may think just
and proper,' the intendant never found much opportunity
for idleness.
Tocqueville, shrewdest among historians of pre-revolutionary
France, has somewhere pointed out that under the old
regime the administration took the place of Providence.
It sought to be as omniscient and as omnipotent; its ways
were quite as inscrutable.
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