United States or Kenya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Worthless as he was, he found a place in the Court circle of the Governor, and aspired to supplant Bigot in the intendancy. To this end, as well as to save himself from justice, he had the fatuity to turn informer and lay bare the sins of his confederates, though forced at the same time to betray his own.
Without the intendancy the seigneurial system would soon have become an agent of oppression, for some Canadian seigneurs were quite as avaricious as their friends at home. The heyday of Canadian feudalism was the period from 1663 to about 1750. During this interval nearly three hundred fiefs were granted.
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.
Notwithstanding the expense incurred under the intendancy of Don Jose Avalo, the great question whether the province of Venezuela contains mines rich enough to be worked, is yet problematical.
Through official connections a place was subsequently found for him in that public department under the Manchus which may be called the military intendancy, and it was through this branch of the civil service that he rose to power.
Talon, who took a strong interest in the subject, during his intendancy recommended Captain Poulet, a skilful mariner of Dieppe, to verify the passage from sea to sea, through the Straits of Magellan. He induced M. de Frontenac to send M. Joliet into the region where the great stream, yet unseen, must take its rise; and follow its course, if found, till its waters reached the sea.
But he had no misgivings, because he had no scruples. He was not the man to go under in any storm. He would light upon his feet, as he expressed it, if the world turned upside down. Bigot suddenly stopped in his walk. His mind had been dwelling upon the great affairs of his Intendancy and the mad policy of the Court of Versailles. A new thought struck him.
Then the convents were used that of the Dominicans as Audiencia hall, that of the Franciscans as artillery barracks. The intendancy took charge of the administration of the estate of the two communities, the mortmain was canceled, and the transfer duly legalized.
Mention should also be made of the brewing industry which Talon set upon its feet during his brief intendancy but which, like all the rest of his schemes, did not long survive his departure.
It might appear on the first view that particular cases like these ought not to operate against a general privilege granted by a solemn treaty, and it is an incontestable principle that the happiness of nations consists in a great measure in maintaining a good harmony and correspondence with their neighbors by respecting their rights, by supporting their own, without being deficient in what is required by humanity and civil intercourse; but it is also indubitable that for a treaty, although solemn, to be entirely valid it ought not to contain any defect; and if it be pernicious and of an injurious tendency, although it has been effectuated with good faith but without a knowledge of its bad consequence, it will be necessary to undo it, because treaties ought to be viewed like other acts of public will, in which more attention ought to be paid to the intention than to the words in which they are expressed; and thus it will not appear so repugnant that the term of three years fixed by the twenty-second article being completed without the King's having granted a prolongation, the intendancy should not, after putting a stop to the commerce of neutrals, take upon itself the responsibility of continuing that favor without the express mandate of the King, a circumstance equally indispensable for designating another place on the banks of the Mississippi.
Word Of The Day