he child died in his third year and the last of the
Nairnes ruled at Murray Bay knowing that with himself the family should
become extinct.

We must turn now to study the type of community of which he was the
chief. A singular type it is, French in speech, Roman Catholic in faith,
half feudal in organization, in a land British in allegiance, if not in
origin. Long the determined rival of the Briton in America the French
Canadian, though worsted in the struggle, remains still unconquered in
his determination to live his own separate life and pursue his own
separate ideals. When the British took Canada they fondly imagined that
in a few years a little pressure would bring the French Canadians into
the Protestant fold.[26] Immediately after the conquest preparations
for this gradual absorption were made. The Roman Catholics were to be
undisturbed but, as soon as a majority in any parish was Protestant, a
clergyman of that faith would be appointed and the parish church would
be given over to the Protestant worship. The minority would, it was
hoped, acquiesce, and, in time, adopt the creed of the majority. The
most illuminating comment upon these expectations is the fact that,
during the half century after the conquest, Protestantism made probably
not more than half a dozen converts among the Canadians, while of
Protestants coming to the country during that time hundreds went over to
the Church of Rome. In other ways too the type in French Canada has
proved curiously persistent. A Lowland Scot of twenty-five married an
Irish woman of twenty-three and went to live in a French Canadian
parish. Hitherto they had spoken only English but after twenty-five
years they could not even understand it when heard. They explained that
at first they spoke English to each other but when the children went to
school they used only French. So the parents yielded "_C'etait les
enfants, M'sieu!_"

A modern critic of France[27] has announced, as a sounding paradox, that
the French, even of present-day anti-clerical France, are a profoundly
religious people. Certainly this appears in France's efforts in Canada.
When the Roman Catholic faith was first planted there the ground was
watered with the blood of martyrs, done to death by brutal savages. At
the very time when in France Pascal's satire and scorn were making the
spiritual sincerity of the Jesuits more than doubtful, in Canada these
same Jesuits were dying for their faith almost with a light