might appear to conflict with the principles of absolute government laid down by the sovereign.  The superior council of Canada possessed judicial, administrative and legislative powers, but its action was limited by the decrees and ordinances of the king, and its decisions were subject to the veto of the royal council of the parent state.  The intendant, generally a man of legal attainments, had the special right to issue ordinances which had the full effect of law—­in the words of his commission “to order everything as he shall see just and proper.”  These ordinances regulated inns and markets, the building and repairs of churches and presbyteries, the construction of bridges, the maintenance of roads, and all those matters which could affect the comfort, the convenience, and the security of the community at large.  While the governmental machinery was thus modelled in a large measure on that of the provincial administration of France, the territory of the province was subject to a modified form of the old feudal system which was so long a dominant condition of the nations of Europe, and has, down to the present time left its impress on their legal and civil institutions, not even excepting Great Britain itself.  Long before Jacques Cartier sailed up the River St. Lawrence this system had gradually been weakened in France under the persistent efforts of the Capets, who had eventually, out of the ruin of the feudatories, built up a monarchy which at last centralized all power in the king.  The policy of the Capets had borne its full, legitimate fruit by the time Louis XIV ascended the throne.  The power of the great nobles, once at the head of practically independent feudatories, had been effectually broken down, and now, for the most part withdrawn from the provinces, they ministered only to the ambition of the king, and contributed to the dissipation and extravagance of a voluptuous court.

But while those features of the ancient feudal system, which were calculated to give power to the nobles, had been eliminated by the centralizing influence of the king, the system still continued in the provinces to govern the relations between the noblesse and the peasantry who possessed their lands on old feudal conditions regulated by the customary or civil law.  These conditions were, on the whole, still burdensome.  The noble who spent all his time in attendance on the court at Versailles or other royal palaces could keep his purse equal to his pleasures only by constant demands on his feudal tenants, who dared no more refuse to obey his behests than he himself ventured to flout the royal will.