Vessels sent to Miramichi with provisions for the unfortunate Acadians, returned loaded with that people, who, faithful to their king and nation, had left their happy homes, refusing the proffered protection of their conquerors. When they reached Quebec they met with a cruel reception. The intendant gave to a creature named Cadet the office of ministering to their wants. This heartless man shamefully abused the trust, and only considered it as a means of selfish profit, providing them with unwholesome and insufficient food: thus many fell victims to his cruel avarice. Some, indeed, who settled on lands belonging to the governor or his favorites, were amply supplied, for the private advantage of the proprietors.
Loud and constant were the complaints of the colonists against these shameful abuses of power; but they fell either upon ears determined not to hear, or were misrepresented and refracted by the medium through which they passed. The outer aspect of New France was bold and formidable, but within all was corruption, languor, and decay. The seignorial tenure[62] and the custom law of Paris fatally embarrassed agricultural improvement, and the monopoly of the Merchant Company paralyzed trade. The absolute system of government, and the intrusive exercise of imperial power in even the most trivial matters of colonial interest, cramped individual energy by the constraining force of centralization. The military[63] system of feudal organization turned the plow-shares and reaping-hooks of the most active among the population into weapons of war, and the settlements, that were little else than scattered barracks for troops, made but small progress in the truly glorious war against the desolation of the wilderness. While the hardy _voyageurs_ of the Ottawa and the farmers of the rich Valley of the St. Lawrence reaped the laurels of the bloody fight at Fort du Quesne, the canoes, once richly laden with the furs of the Western country, floated idly in the stream, and the exuberant soil by the banks of the Great River was overrun with a harvest of useless or noxious weeds. Thus it was that, while the military superstructure of this great French colony was strong and imposing, the social and political foundations were false and feeble.