* The governor and intendant made frequent appeals to the court to settle questions arising between them. Several of these appeals are preserved. The king wrote replies on the margin of the paper, but they were usually too curt and general to satisfy either party. ** Déclaration du Roi du 16me Juin, 1703. Appointments were made by the king many years earlier. As they were always made on the recommendation of the governor and intendant, the practical effect of the change was merely to exclude the bishop from a share in them. The West India Company made the nominations during the ten years of its ascendancy. *** Cheruel, Administration Monarchique en France, II. 100. remained the same. It issued decrees for the civil, commercial, and financial government of the colony, and gave judgment in civil and criminal causes according to the royal ordinances and the _Coutume de Paris_. It exercised also the function of registration borrowed from the parliament of Paris. That body, it will be remembered, had no analogy whatever with the English parliament. Its ordinary functions were not legislative, but judicial; and it was composed of judges hereditary under certain conditions. Nevertheless, it had long acted as a check on the royal power through its right of registration. No royal edict had the force of law till entered upon its books, and this custom had so deep a root in the monarchical constitution of France, that even Louis XIV., in the flush of his power, did not attempt to abolish it. He did better; he ordered his decrees to be registered, and the humbled parliament submissively obeyed. In like manner all edicts, ordinances, or declarations relating to Canada were entered on the registers of the superior council at Quebec. The order of registration was commonly affixed to the edict or other mandate, and nobody dreamed of disobeying it. * The council or court had its attorney-general, who heard complaints and brought them before the tribunal if he thought necessary; its secretary, who kept its registers, and its _huissiers_ or attendant officers. It sat once a week; and, though * Many general edicts relating to the whole kingdom are also registered on the books of the council, but the practice in this respect was by no means uniform.