Under the edict of 1679 the governor had the power of issuing an unlimited number of permits for hunting exclusively. The privilege had clearly been abused; and orders were now issued that in future twenty-five permits only should be granted each year, the holder of a permit to be entitled to take or send one canoe only with three men. In this way the amount of trade which could be done under a permit was limited. In all only twenty-five canoe loads of merchandise could be sent out annually. Moreover the intention in granting these permits was less to promote trade at a distance--an object the court never had at heart--than to reward certain supposedly meritorious individuals. It was a species of patronage which was placed in the governor's hands, and which he was expected to distribute in a judicious manner. If the holder of a permit did not wish to use it himself, he could sell it to some one else; and it not infrequently happened that a single trader would buy a number of permits, and send quite a little fleet of canoes up the river. The era of "trusts" was not as yet, but even here we can see the trust in germ. [Footnote 16: _Le Comte de Frontenac_, p. 159.] [Footnote 17: It is to be found in Margry, _Memoires et Documents des Origines Francaises des Pays d'Outre Mer_, vol. i. pp. 301-25.] [Footnote 18: See Report (Proces Verbal) of the proceedings of the assembly in Margry, _Memoires et Documents_, vol. i. pp. 405-20.] CHAPTER VI THE LIFE OF A COLONY The great trouble in Canada was that it was an over-governed country. The whole population when Frontenac arrived was but little over six thousand souls, scattered over a territory stretching from Matane and Tadousac in the east, to the western limit of the Island of Montreal. What these people needed in the first place was freedom to seek their living in their own way, and secondly, an extremely simple form of government. Instead of this they were hampered in their trade, and made continually to feel their dependence on the central power; while, in the matter of political organization, they were placed under the precise system which prevailed in the provinces of the French kingdom. In the Sovereign Council they had the equivalent of a parliament in the French--by no means in the English--sense; that is to say, a body for registering, and so bestowing a final character of validity upon, the decrees of the sovereign, and for administering justice. The executive power was divided between governor and intendant with very doubtful results. Below the Sovereign Council, as a judicial body, was the court of the Prevote. The one thing the people were not allowed to have was anything in the way of representative institutions. Colbert, perhaps by immediate royal direction, gave the keynote of monarchical absolutism when he said, in words already quoted: "Let every man speak for himself; let no one presume to speak for all." Thus was the king in his strength