It is not intellect, nor activity, nor wealth, that obtains most
power over men; but force of character, self-control, a quiet,
compressed will and patient resolve; these qualities make one man
the natural ruler over others by a title they never dispute.
The party of the Honnetes Gens, the "honest folks" as they were
derisively called by their opponents, regarded the Bourgeois
Philibert as their natural leader. His force of character made men
willingly stand in his shadow. His clear intellect, never at fault,
had extended his power and influence by means of his vast mercantile
operations over half the continent. His position as the foremost
merchant of New France brought him in the front of the people's
battle with the Grand Company, and in opposition to the financial
policy of the Intendant and the mercantile assumption of the
Friponne.
But the personal hostility between the Intendant and the Bourgeois
had its root and origin in France, before either of them crossed the
ocean to the hither shore of the Atlantic. The Bourgeois had been
made very sensible of a fact vitally affecting him, that the decrees
of the Intendant, ostensibly for the regulation of trade in New
France, had been sharply pointed against himself.
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