Canada had none as bad. Her viceroys as a rule kept
up the dignity of their office and respected the decencies of life. In
English colonies, governors eked out their incomes by charging heavy
fees for official acts and any one who refused to pay such fees was not
likely to secure attention to his business. In Canada the population
was too scanty and the opportunity too limited to furnish happy
hunting-grounds of this kind. The governors, however, badly paid as
they were, must live, and, in the case of a man like Frontenac, repair
fortunes shattered at court. To do so they were likely to have some
concealed interest in the fur trade. This was forbidden by the court but
was almost a universal practice. Some of the governors carried trading
to great lengths and aroused the bitter hostility of rival trading
interests. The fur trade was easily controlled as a government monopoly
and it was unfair that a needy governor should share its profits. But,
after all, such a quarrel was only between rival monopolists. Better
a trading governor than one who plundered the people or who by drunken
profligacy discredited his office.

While all Canada was devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, the diversity
of religious beliefs in the English colonies was a marked feature of
social life. In Virginia, by law of the colony, the Church of England
was the established Church. In Massachusetts, founded by stern Puritans,
the public services of the Church of England were long prohibited. In
Pennsylvania there was dominant the sect derisively called "Quakers,"
who would have no ecclesiastical organization and believed that religion
was purely a matter for the individual soul. Boston jeered at the
superstitions of Quebec, such as the belief of the missionaries that a
drop of water, with the murmured words of baptism, transformed a dying
Indian child from an outcast savage into an angel of light. Quebec
might, however, deride Boston with equal justice. Sir William Phips
believed that malignant and invisible devils had made a special invasion
of Massachusetts, dragging people from their houses, pushing them into
fire and water, and carrying them through the air for miles over trees
and hills. These devils, it was thought, took visible form, of which
the favorite was that of a black cat. Witches were thought to be able to
pass through keyholes and to exercise charms which would destroy their
victims. While Phips and Frontenac were struggling for the m