In case of heinous charges, torture of the accused was permitted under the French law; and it was sometimes practised in Canada. Condemned murderers and felons were occasionally tortured before being strangled; and the dead body, enclosed in a kind of iron cage, was left hanging for months at the top of Cape Diamond, a terror to children and a warning to evil-doers. Yet, on the whole, * Doutre et Lareau, Histoire du Droit Canadien, 163. ** Réglement de Police, 1676. *** Edits et Ordonnances, II. 53. Canadian justice, tried by the standard of the time, was neither vindictive nor cruel. In reading the voluminous correspondence of governors and intendants, the minister and the king, nothing is more apparent than the interest with which, in the early part of his reign, Louis XIV. regarded his colony. One of the faults of his rule is the excess of his benevolence; for not only did he give money to support parish priests, build churches, and aid the seminary, the Ursulines, the missions, and the hospitals; but he established a fund destined, among other objects, to relieve indigent persons, subsidized nearly every branch of trade and industry, and in other instances _did for the colonists what they would far better have learned to do for themselves_. Meanwhile the officers of government were far from suffering from an excess of royal beneficence. La Hontan says that the local governor of Three Rivers would die of hunger if, besides his pay, he did not gain something by trade with the Indians; and that Perrot, local governor of Montreal, with one thousand crowns of salary, traded to such purpose that in a few years he made fifty thousand crowns. This trade, it may be observed, was in violation of the royal edicts. The pay of the governor-general varied from time to time. When La Poterie wrote it was twelve thousand francs a year, besides three thousand which he received in his capacity of local governor of Quebec. * This would hardly * In 1674, the governor-general received 20,718 francs, out of which he was to pay 8,718 to his guard of twenty men and officers. Ordonnance du Roy, 1675. Yet in 1677, in the Etat de la Dépense que le Roy veut et ordonne estre faite, etc., the total pay of the governor-general is set down at 3,000 francs, and so also in 1681, 1682, and 1687. The local governor of Montreal was to have 1,800 francs, and the governor of Three Rivers 1,200. It is clear, however, that this Etat de dépense is not complete, as there is no provision for the intendant. The first councillor received 500 francs, and the rest 300 francs each, equal in Canadian money to 400. An ordinance of 1676 gives the intendant 12,000 francs. It is tolerably clear that the provision of 3,000 francs for the governor-general was meant only to apply to his capacity of local governor of Quebec.