ON CAPE BRETON. 197 



The fortificatious were indeed only completed a year or so before 1*745, and then, 

 after it was given up by the English in 1748, it was in the possession of the French only 

 ten years. Under the circvimstances there must have been always a considerable uncer- 

 tainty as to the future of the town, and the merchants who frequented it could hardly 

 have gone to any heavy expenditure in a place of which they expected to make only 

 a temporary home. During the years it was in the occupation of the French, there were 

 probably, on the average, nearly two thousand people living in the town, but this number 

 was increased in the lime of war by the inhabitants of the surrounding couutiy — Gab- 

 arus, Mira and Lorerabec — who came there for protection. The garrison, in time of peace, 

 reached one thousand men, and in addition to the force there was a detachment of troops 

 stationed at the royal battery, one at the island battery, one at Port Toulouse and another 

 at Port Dauphin. The island battery just mentioned consisted of thirty-two forty-two 

 pounders, and protected the entrance of the harbour. The royal or great battery was 

 situated on the western shore of the harbour, immediately facing the entrance, and was 

 quite a formidable work, constructed with a moat and bastions on the land side, and 

 mounting forty-four guns, twenty-eight of which were forty-two pounders. Both these 

 works were intended to be important auxiliaries in the defence of the town, and had not 

 the royal battery been suddenly deserted at the very commencement of the siege in 1745, 

 the fortress would hardly have fallen so easily before the attack of Pepperrell and his men. 



III. GOVERXMENT AND StATE OF CaPE BrETON DURING THE FRENCH RÉGIME. 



The government of Cape Breton was modelled on that of Canada, to which it was 

 subordinate, and consisted of a governor, generally a military man, a king's lieutenant, 

 who was also commander of the forces, of a commissary, of an attorney-general, and of 

 four or five councillors. These officials formed a governing body known as the superior 

 council, which had also jurisdiction over the island of St. John, now Prince Edward 

 Island. The governor was the president of the council, but, while he was nominally 

 supreme in military affairs, he was controlled in financial matters by the commissary, 

 who had also charge of the military chest and of all the military stores. This same officer 

 had jurisdiction over the administration of justice, in accordance with the ordinances of 

 the king and the parliament of Paris. An inferior court known as the bailiwick tried 

 civil suits and breaches of the peace, in accordance with the coniume de Paris, but the high 

 court of justice in the colony was the council, to which appeals could be had in all cases, 

 though their decisions might be reversed on reference to the supreme council in France. 

 Grants of land were made in accordance with the king's instructions by the governor and 

 commissary. The members of tlie council, exclusive of the oihcials, were generally chosen 

 from the leading persons of the colony. A court of admiralty, composed of a lieutenant, 

 the attorney-general and a couple of minor officials, acted as a customs' establishment, 

 where the merchants entered their goods and where any infractions of the port regula- 

 tions could be punished by confiscation or fines. Justice, however, appears to have been 

 loosely administered, since the officials were very inadequately paid and had no means of 

 executing their decrees. One writer complains that " there was not even a common hang- 

 man, nor a jail, nor even a tormentor to rack criminals or to inflict penal tortures." The 

 writer in question, Thomas Pichon, who lived for some years in the town as secretary to 



