No wonder that the
eighteenth-century apostle of frenzied finance, John Law, should have
laconically described France as a land "ruled by a king and his thirty
intendants, upon whose will alone its welfare and its wants depend."
Along with his commission Talon brought to the colony a letter of
instructions from the minister which, gave more detailed directions as
to what things he was to have in view and what he was to avoid.
In France the office of intendant had long been in existence. Its
creation in the first instance has commonly been attributed to
Richelieu, but it really antedated the coming of the great cardinal.
The intendancy was not a spontaneous creation, but a very old and,
in its origin, a humble post which grew in importance with the
centralization of power in the King's hands, and which kept step in
its development with the gradual extinction of local self-government
in the royal domains. The provincial intendant in pre-revolutionary
France was master of administration, finance, and justice within his
own jurisdiction; he was bound by no rigid statutes; he owed obedience
to no local authorities; he was appointed by the King and was
responsible to his sovereign alone.
From first to last there were a dozen intendants of New France. Talon,
whose ambition and energy did much to set the colony in the saddle,
was the first. Francois Bigot, the arch-plunderer of his monarch's
funds, who did so much to bring the land to its downfall, was the
last.
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