thereof.' Nevertheless, in practice and with due regard to the good administration of justice, the council's decree went perhaps too far. The question remained in abeyance and was not settled until four years afterwards, at the end of Talon's second term in Canada. He had written to Colbert on the subject stating that he would be glad to be discharged of the judicial responsibility, and to see the question of initiating lawsuits referred to the Sovereign Council. As a matter of fact [he said], receiving the petitions for entering lawsuits does not mean retaining them before myself. I have not judged twenty cases, civil or criminal, since I came here, having always tried as much as I could to conciliate the opposing parties. The reason why I speak now of this matter is that very often, for twenty or thirty livres of principal, a plaintiff goes before the judge of first instance--which diverts the parties from the proper cultivation of their farms--and later on, by way of an appeal, before the Sovereign Council which likes to hear and judge cases. Colbert did not deem the decision of the council advisable. It is contrary [he wrote] to the order of justice, in virtue of which, leaving in their own sphere the superior judges, the judges of first instance are empowered to hear all cases within their jurisdiction, and their judgments can be appealed from to the Sovereign Council. Moreover it would be a burden for the king's subjects living far from Quebec to go there unnecessarily in order to ascertain before what tribunal they should be heard.