victories which his royal master had that year achieved in his war with Holland. Everything, indeed, passed off beautifully; but when a report of the proceedings reached the minister, Colbert, his response was of a somewhat chilling nature. The immediate effect of the assembly might, perhaps, he said, be good, but "it is well for you to observe that, as you are always to follow the forms in force here, and as our kings have considered it for a long time advantageous not to assemble the States-General of their kingdom, with the object perhaps of insensibly abolishing that ancient form, you also ought only very rarely, or--to speak more correctly--never, give that form to the corporate body of the inhabitants of that country." Colbert did not even approve--though perhaps on this point he was expressing more particularly the views of the king--of the election of "syndics" to represent the interests of the population of Quebec. "Let every one," he said, "speak for himself; it is not desirable to have any one authorized to speak for all." This was absolutism with a vengeance. It answered for the day; but could the minister have looked forward to 1789 he would have seen that the "ancient form," which it was proposed to extinguish by desuetude, was destined, like a blazing star that suddenly flashes a strange light in the heavens, to leap into a new life, amazing, consuming, resistless. The views of the governor, it must be admitted, were, in this whole matter, decidedly in advance of those of the minister, able administrator as the latter undoubtedly was. Frontenac had come to Canada to uphold the royal authority in the fullest sense, but he appears to have had a perception that, in a new country where so much responsibility was necessarily thrown upon individuals, there ought to be a certain measure of spontaneous political life. Masterful as he was himself by nature, it is not recorded that he ever dwelt on the necessity of repressing individual liberty; it is the intendant, Meulles, a dozen years later, who writes: "It is of very great importance that the people should not be allowed to speak their minds."[7]