irectresses, to whom they were obliged to make known their
possessions and means of livelihood before taking from one of the
three classes the girl whom they found most to their liking. The
marriage was concluded forthwith, with the help of a priest and
notary, and the next day the Governor caused the couple to be
presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two
barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money."

On their part the girls were permitted to reject any suitor who
displeased them; and at these annual marriage fairs the contest for
favour was keen on both sides. But the paternalism of the Grand
Monarch went even farther than the mere enlistment of wives for the
colonists. Bounties were offered on early marriages; and the maid who
married before she was sixteen received the "King's gift" of twenty
livres, in addition to her ordinary dowry. Bachelors who refused to
marry were rendered as uncomfortable as possible, and were taxed for
their abstinence or timidity. Children were likewise made a good
asset, and blessed was the man whose house was full of them. Thus runs
an edict of the time: "...In future all inhabitants of the said
country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten,
born in lawful wedlock, not being priests, maids, or nuns, shall each
be paid out of the moneys sent by His Majesty to the said country a
pension of three hundred livres a year, and those who shall have
twelve children, a pension of four hundred livres, and that, to this
effect, they shall be required to declare the number of their children
every year in the months of June and July to the Intendant of justice,
police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having
verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half
in cash, and the other half at the end of each year."

It was not by accident but by design that an aristocratic class was
created in French Canada. The perpetual contrast between the English
and the French systems of colonisation was but the difference between
natural evolution and artificial construction. The Canadian
aristocracy was a consistent detail of the latter and in keeping with
Louis' ambitious scheme of personal government. The caste system
grafted upon the stem of the colonial plant was a picturesque
adornment to the life of Quebec, but a doubtful experiment from any
other point of view, as time proved.

For the most part the Canadian _nobles