It
discouraged chicane and common barratry. Even the sarcastic
La Hontan, who had little to say in general praise of
the colony and its institutions, accords the judicial
system a modest tribute. 'I will not say,' he writes,
'that the Goddess of Justice is more chaste here than in
France, but at any rate, if she is sold, she is sold more
cheaply. In Canada we do not pass through the clutches
of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of
clerks. These vermin do not as yet infest the land. Every
one here pleads his own cause. Our Themis is prompt, and
she does not bristle with fees, costs, and charges.' The
testimony of others, though not so rhetorically expressed,
is enough to prove that both royal and seigneurial courts
did their work in fairly acceptable fashion.
The Norman habitant, as has already been pointed out,
was by nature restive, impulsive, and quarrelsome. That
he did not make every seigneury a hotbed of petty strife
was due largely to the stern hand held over him by priest
and seigneur alike, but by his priest particularly. The
Church in the colony never lost, as in France, the full
confidence of the masses; the higher dignitaries never
lost touch with the priest, nor the latter with the
people. The clergy of New France did not form a privileged
order, living on the fruits of other men's labour. On
the contrary, they gave the colony far more than they
took from it. Although paid a mere pittance, they never
complained of the great physical drudgery that their work
too often required.
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