It did, however, go further. Bounties were offered on children. The king, in council, passed a decree “that 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
* Histoire du Montréal, A.B. 1671, 1672.
** “Quatre enseignes sont en pourparler avec leurs
maîtresses et sent déjà à demi engagés.” Dépêche du 27 Oct.,
1667. The lieutenant was René Gaultier de Varennes, who on
the 26th September, 1667, married Marie Boucher, daughter of
the governor of Three Rivers, aged twelve years. One of the
children of this marriage was Varennes de la Vérendrye,
discoverer of the Rocky Mountains.
being priests, monks, 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 or 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.” * This was applicable to all. Colbert had before offered a reward, intended specially for the better class, of twelve hundred livres to those who had fifteen children, and eight hundred to those who had ten.
These wise encouragements, as the worthy Faillon calls them, were crowned with the desired result. A despatch of Talon in 1670 informs the minister that most of the young women sent out last summer are pregnant already, and in 1671 he announces that from six hundred to seven hundred children have been born in the colony during the year; a prodigious number in view of the small population. The climate was supposed to be particularly favorable to the health of women, which
* Edits et Ordonnances, I. 67. It was thought at this time
that the Indians, mingled with the French, might become a
valuable part of the population. The reproductive qualities
of Indian women, therefore, became an object of Talon’s
attention, and he reports that they impair their fertility
by nursing their children longer than is necessary; “but,”
he adds, “this obstacle to the speedy building up of the
colony can be overcome by a police regulation.” Mémoire sur
l’Etat Présent du Canada, 1667,
is somewhat surprising in view of recent American experience. “The first reflection I have to make,” says Dollier de Casson, “is on the advantage that women have in this place (Montreal) over men, for though the cold is very wholesome to both sexes, it is incomparably more so to the female, who is almost immortal here.” Her fecundity matched her longevity, and was the admiration of Talon and his successors, accustomed as they were to the scanty families of France.
Why with this great natural increase joined to an immigration which, though greatly diminishing, did not entirely cease, was there not a corresponding increase in the population of the colony? Why, more than half a century after the king took Canada in charge, did the census show a total of less than twenty-five thousand souls? The reasons will appear hereafter.
It is a peculiarity of Canadian immigration, at this its most flourishing epoch, that it was mainly an immigration of single men and single women. The cases in which entire families came over were comparatively few. * The new settler was found
* The principal emigration of families seems to have been
in 1669 when, at the urgency of Talon, then in France, a
considerable number were sent out. In the earlier period the
emigration of families was, relatively, much greater. Thus,
in 1634, the physician Giffard brought over seven to people
his seigniory of Beauport. Before 1663, when the king took
the colony in hand, the emigrants were for the most part
apprenticed laborers.
The zeal with which the king entered into the work of
stocking his colony is shown by numberless passages in his
letters, and those of his minister. “The end and the rule of
all your conduct,” says Colbert to the intendant Bouteroue,
“should be the increase of the colony; and on this point you
should never be satisfied, but labor without ceasing to find
every imaginable expedient for preserving the inhabitants,
attracting new ones, and multiplying them by marriage.”
Instruction pour M. Bouteroue, 1668.
by the king; sent over by the king; and supplied by the king with a wife, a farm, and sometimes with a house. Well did Louis XIV. earn the title of Father of New France. But the royal zeal was spasmodic. The king was diverted to other cares, and soon after the outbreak of the Dutch war in 1672 the regular despatch of emigrants to Canada wellnigh ceased; though the practice of disbanding soldiers in the colony, giving them lands, and turning them into settlers, was continued in some degree, even to the last.