In truth, the company had little to show for its thirty years of exploitation.  The entire population of New France in 1663 numbered less than twenty-five hundred people, a considerable proportion of whom were traders, officials, and priests.  The area of cleared land was astonishingly small, and agriculture had made no progress worthy of the name.  There were no industries of any kind, and almost nothing but furs went home in the ships to France.  The colony depended upon its mother country even for its annual food supply, and when the ships from France failed to come the colonists were reduced to severe privations.  A dispirited and nearly defenseless land, without solid foundations of agriculture or industry, with an accumulation of Indian enmity and an empty treasury—­this was the legacy which the Company now turned over to the Crown in return for the viceroyal privileges given to it in good faith more than three decades before.

When the King revoked the Company’s charter, he decided upon Colbert’s advice to make New France a royal domain and to provide it with a scheme of administration modeled broadly upon that of a province at home.  To this end a royal edict, perhaps the most important of all the many decrees affecting French colonial interests in the seventeenth century, was issued in April, 1663.  While the provisions of this edict bear the stamp of Colbert’s handiwork, it is not unlikely that the suggestions of Bishop Laval, as given to the minister during his visit of the preceding year, were accorded some recognition.  At any rate, after reciting the circumstances under which the King had been prompted to take New France into his own hands, the edict of 1663 proceeded to authorize the creation of a Sovereign Council as the chief governing body of the colony.  This, with a larger membership and with greatly increased powers, was to replace the old council which the Company had established to administer affairs some years previously.

During the next hundred years this Sovereign Council became and remained the paramount civil authority in French America.  At the outset it consisted of seven members, the governor and the bishop ex officio, with five residents of the colony selected jointly by these two.  Beginning with the arrival of Talon as first intendant of the colony in 1665, the occupant of this post was also given a seat in the Council.  Before long, however, it became apparent that the provision relating to the appointment of non-official members was unworkable.  The governor and the bishop could not agree in their selections; each wanted his own partisans appointed.  The result was a deadlock in which seats at the council-board remained vacant.  In the end Louis Quatorze solved this problem, as he solved many others, by taking the power directly into his own hands.  After 1674 all appointments to the Council were made by the King himself.  In that same year the number of non-official members was raised to seven, and in 1703 it was further increased to twelve.[1] At the height of its power, then, the Sovereign Council of New France consisted of the governor, the intendant, the bishop, and twelve lay councilors, together with an attorney-general and a clerk.  These two last-named officials sat with the Council but were not regular members of it.