* Faillon, Vie de Mademoiselle Le Ber, 325.
driven off or abandoned. The question is how to maintain them.” *
The intendant Duchesneau writes to the same effect: “Many of our gentilshommes, officers, and other owners of seigniories, lead what in France is called the life of a country gentleman, and spend most of their time in hunting and fishing. As their requirements in food and clothing are greater than those of the simple habitants, and as they do not devote themselves to improving their land, they mix themselves up in trade, run in debt on all hands, incite their young habitants to range the woods, and send their own children there to trade for furs in the Indian villages and in the depths of the forest, in spite of the prohibition of his Majesty. Yet, with all this, they are in miserable poverty.” ** Their condition, indeed, was often deplorable. “It is pitiful,” says the intendant Champigny, “to see their children, of which they have great numbers, passing all summer with nothing on them but a shirt, and their wives and daughters working in the fields.” *** In another letter he asks aid from the king for Repentigny with his thirteen children, and for Tilly with his fifteen. “We must give them some corn at once,” he says, “or they will starve.” **** These were two of the original four noble families of Canada. The family of Aillebout, another of the four, is described as equally destitute. “Pride and sloth,” says the same intendant,
* Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
** Lettre de Duchesneau au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1679.
*** Lettre de Champigny au Ministre, 26 Août, 1687.
**** Ibid., 6 Nov., 1687.
“are the great faults of the people of Canada, and especially of the nobles and those who pretend to be such. I pray you grant no more letters of nobility, unless you want to multiply beggars.” * The governor Denonville is still more emphatic: “Above all things, monseigneur, permit me to say that the nobles of this new country are every thing that is most beggarly, and that to increase their number is to increase the number of do-nothings. A new country requires hard workers, who will handle the axe and mattock. The sons of our councillors are no more industrious than the nobles; and their only resource is to take to the woods, trade a little with the Indians, and, for the most part, fall into the disorders of which I have had the honor to inform you. I shall use all possible means to induce them to engage in regular commerce; but as our nobles and councillors are all very poor and weighed down with debt, they could not get credit for a single crown piece.” ** “Two days ago,” he writes in another letter, “Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of bread. He says that he will put his ten children into the charge of any who will give them a living, and that he himself will go into the army again. His wife and he are in despair; and yet they do what they can. I have seen two of his girls reaping grain and holding the plough. Other families are
* Mémoire instructif sur le Canada, joint a la lettre de M.
de Champigny du 10 May, 1691.
** Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov., 1685.
in the same condition. They come to me with tears in their eyes. All our married officers are beggars; and I entreat you to send them aid. There is need that the king should provide support for their children, or else they will be tempted to go over to the English.” * Again he writes that the sons of the councillor D’Amours have been arrested as coureurs de bois, or outlaws in the bush; and that if the minister does not do something to help them, there is danger that all the sons of the noblesse, real or pretended, will turn bandits, since they have no other means of living.
The king, dispenser of charity for all Canada, came promptly to the rescue. He granted an alms of a hundred crowns to each family, coupled with a warning to the recipients of his bounty that “their misery proceeds from their ambition to live as persons of quality and without labor.” ** At the same time, the minister announced that no more letters of nobility would be granted in Canada; adding, “to relieve the country of some of the children of those who are really noble, I send you (the governor) six commissions of Gardes de la Marine, and recommend you to take care not to give them to any who are not actually gentilshommes." The Garde de la Marine answered to the midshipman of the English or American service. As the six commissions could bring little relief to the crowd of needy youths, it was further ordained
* Lettre de Denonville au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1686.
(Condensed in the translation.)
** Abstract of Denonville’s Letters, and of the Minister’s
Answers, in N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 317, 318.
that sons of nobles or persons living as such should be enrolled into companies at eight sous a day for those who should best conduct themselves, and six sous a day for the others. Nobles in Canada were also permitted to trade, even at retail, without derogating from their rank. *