in name only.  But, with the growth of royal power, the dukes and counts steadily lost their territorial independence and fell at last to the condition of courtiers.  Simultaneously the duchies or counties were changed into provinces, each with a noble for its governor—­but a noble who was a courtier, holding his commission from the king and dependent upon the favour of the king.  Side by side with the governor stood the intendant, even more a king’s man than the governor himself.  So jealously did the Bourbons guard their despotism that the crown would not place wide authority in the hands of any one representative.  The governor, as a noble and a soldier, knew little or nothing of civil business.  To watch over the finances and the prosperity of the province, an intendant was appointed.  This official was always chosen from the middle class and owed his position, his advancement, his whole future, to the king.  The governor might possess wealth, or family connections.  The intendant had little save what came to him from his sovereign’s favour.  Gratitude and interest alike tended to make him a faithful servant.

But, though the crown had destroyed the political power of the nobles, it left intact their social pre-eminence.  The king was as supreme as a Christian ruler could be.  Yet by its very nature the monarchy could not exist without the nobles, from whose ranks the sovereign drew his attendants, friends, and lieutenants.  Versailles without its courtiers would have been a desert.  Even the Church was a stronghold of the aristocracy, for few became bishops or abbots who were not of gentle birth.

The great aim of government, whether at home or in the colonies, was to maintain the supremacy of the crown.  Hence all public action flowed from a royal command.  The Bourbon theory required that kings should speak and that subjects should obey.  One direct consequence of a system so uncompromisingly despotic was the loss of all local initiative.  Nothing in the faintest degree resembling the New England town-meeting ever existed in New France.  Louis XIV objected to public gatherings of his people, even for the most innocent purposes.  The sole limitation to the power of the king was the line of cleavage between Church and State.  Religion required that the king should refrain from invading the sphere of the clergy, though controversy often waxed fierce as to where the secular ended and the spiritual began.

When it became necessary to provide institutions for Canada, the organization of the province in France at once suggested itself as a fit pattern.  Canada, like Normandy, had the governor and the intendant for her chief officials, the seigneury for the groundwork of her society, and mediaeval coutumes for her laws.