The Sovereign Council
Louis XIV, the greatest of the Bourbon monarchs, had now taken
into his own hands the reins of power. Nominally he had been king of
France since 1642, when he was only five years old, but it was not
until 1658 that the control of affairs by the regency came to an
end. Moreover, Colbert was now chief minister of state, so that
colonial matters were assured of a searching and enlightened
inquiry. Richelieu's interest in the progress of New France had not
endured for many years after the founding of his great Company. It
is true that during the next fifteen years he remained chief
minister, but the great effort to crush the remaining strongholds of
feudalism and to centralize all political power in the monarchy left
him no time for the care of a distant colony. Colbert, on the other
hand, had well-defined and far-reaching plans for the development of
French industrial interests at home and of French commercial
interests abroad.
As for the colony, it made meager progress under Company control:
few settlers were sent out; and they were not provided with proper
means of defense against Indian depredations. Under the
circumstances it did not take Colbert long to see how remiss the
Company of One Hundred Associates had been, nor to reach a decision
that the colony should be at once withdrawn from its control. He
accordingly persuaded the monarch to demand the surrender of the
Company's charter and to reprimand the Associates for the shameless
way in which they had neglected the trust committed to their care.
"Instead of finding," declared the King in the edict of revocation,
"that this country is populated as it ought to be after so long an
occupation thereof by our subjects, we have learned with regret not
only that the number of its inhabitants is very limited, but that
even these are daily exposed to the danger of being wiped out by the
Iroquois."
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. (Its official
title was in 1678 changed to Superior Council.) 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.
In the matter of powers the Council was given by the edict of
1663 jurisdiction over all civil and criminal matters under the laws
and ordinances of the kingdom, its procedure in dealing with such
matters to be modeled on that of the Parliament of Paris. It was to
receive and to register the royal decrees, thus giving them validity
in New France, and it was also to be the supreme tribunal of the
colony with authority to establish local courts subordinate to
itself. There was no division of powers in the new frame of
government. Legislative, executive, and judicial powers were thrown
together in true Bourbon fashion. Apparently it was Colbert's plan
to make of the governor a distinguished figurehead, with large
military powers but without paramount influence in civil affairs.
The bishop was to have no civil jurisdiction, and the intendant was
to be the director of details. The Council, according to the edict
of 1663, was to be the real pivot of power in New France.
Through the long years of storm and stress which make up the greater
part of the history of the colony, the Sovereign Council rendered
diligent and faithful service. There were times when passions waxed
warm, when bitter words were exchanged, and when the urgent
interests of the colony were sacrificed to the settlement of
personal jealousies. Many dramatic scenes were enacted around the
long table at which the councilors sat at their weekly sessions, for
every Monday through the greater portion of the year the Council
convened at seven o'clock in the morning and usually sat until noon
or later. But these were only meteoric flashes. Historians have
given them undue prominence because such episodes make racy reading.
By far the greater portion of the council's meetings were devoted to
the serious and patient consideration of routine business. Matters
of infinite variety came to it for determination, including the
regulation of industry and trade, the currency, the fixing of
prices, the interpretation of the rules relating to land tenure,
fire prevention, poor relief, regulation of the liquor traffic, the
encouragement of agriculture--and these are only a few of the topics
taken at random from its calendar. In addition there were thousands
of disputes brought to it for settlement either directly or on
appeal from the lower courts. The minutes of its deliberations
during the ninety-seven years from September 18, 1663, to April 8,
1760, fill no fewer than fifty-six ponderous manuscript volumes.
Back to: French Exploration of America
