In Canada the seigneur was not the oppressor of his people but rather their watchful guardian. He planned roads and other improvements, checked abuses, and enforced justice. At his side stood, usually, the priest. The moment a parish was established a curé was entitled to the tithe; near every manor house, the village church was sure to spring up. Even when, as at Malbaie, the priest and the seigneur were not of the same faith they were often fast friends. Nairne's relations were good with the neighbouring curé, when, at length, Malbaie had a resident priest. Each village would thus usually have at least two men of some culture working together for its spiritual and temporal interests. Both remained in touch with the outside world; the priest with his bishop at Quebec, the seigneur with the representative there of the sovereign. Upon each change of governor Nairne was required to appear at Quebec to render fealty and homage. With head uncovered and wearing neither sword nor spur he must kneel before the governor, and take oath on the Gospels to be faithful to the king, to be party to nothing against his interests, to perform all the duties required by the terms of his holding, and, especially, to appear in arms to defend the province if attacked. We find Nairne excused by General Haldimand in 1781 from discharging this ceremony, but only because he was away on active service.
When Nairne settled at Murray Bay he was unmarried and so, no doubt, were the soldiers he brought with him. Only after five or six years did he himself find a wife but we may be sure that his men did not wait so long. What more natural than that they should marry the French Canadian servants of whom Nairne speaks? A visitor at Murray Bay is struck with names like McNicol, Harvey, Blackburn, McLean, and one or two others that have a decidedly North British ring. Some, if not all, are names of one or other of the half dozen soldiers who settled at Murray Bay in Nairne's time. There was no disbanding there of a regiment, as tradition has it. In time the 78th Highlanders were disbanded, but certainly not at Murray Bay, and, though hundreds of them remained in Canada, only a few individual soldiers came to Nairne's settlement. Already when he arrived French Canadians were there and from the first the community was prevailingly French and Catholic. In 1784 when joined with Les Eboulements and Isle aux Coudres under a single priest Malbaie already had 65 communicants. As likely as not some even of the Highlanders were Catholics. In any case their children became such and spoke French, the tongue of their mothers; even Nairne's own children spoke only French until they went to Quebec to school.
When, from time to time, a missionary priest visited the place he baptized children of Catholic and Protestant alike, including even the children of the Protestant family in the manor house. The only religious services that the people ever shared in were those of the Roman Catholic Church. Nairne would have wished it otherwise. He held sturdy Protestant views, and wished to bring in Protestant settlers. On one or more of his visits to Scotland he made efforts to induce Scots to move to Canada. But he met with no great success. A Scottish friend, Gilchrist, who had visited Nairne at Murray Bay, writes, in 1775, to express hope that he will not encourage French settlers who will rob him, who have "disingenuous, lying, cheating, detestable dispositions," and are the "banes of society." He adds, "I am glad you give me reason to believe you are to carry over some industrious honest people from hence with you. I am convinced 'twere easy by introducing a few such [to bring about that] the dupes to the most foolish and absurd religion now in the world might be warmed out and your quiet as well as interest established from Point au Pique to the Lake."[7] The Roman Catholic faith had more vitality than Nairne's correspondent supposed. It was Protestantism that should in time be "warmed out" of Murray Bay.
To prevent this Nairne did what he could; for a long time he entertained hopes not only that the Protestants at Murray Bay might be held to their faith but also that the Roman Catholics would be led into the Protestant fold. His chief complaint against the Roman Catholic Church was in regard to education. There was woeful ignorance. Nairne was in command of the local militia and he found that officers of militia, and even a neighbouring seigneur, could not read. When Roman Catholic services were held at Murray Bay, as they were regularly before he died, the tongue was one that the people did not understand. At the services there was nothing "but a few lighted candles, in defyance of the sun, and the priest singing and reading Latin or Greek.... None of us understands a word." He complains of "the greatest deficiency in preaching sentiments of morality and virtue." Indeed, very few of the priests could preach or say anything in public beyond the Latin mass. Nairne tried to secure better means of educating his people. Probably earlier also, but certainly in 1791, he was writing to the Anglican Bishop of Quebec to help him to do something. He lives, he says, in "the most Northerly and, I believe, the poorest parish on the Continent of America." The people cannot read and have no literary amusement. Their idle days they spend in drunkenness and debauchery and he wishes something done for them. Ten years later Nairne is returning to the charge. There are five Protestant families in the neighbourhood. They cannot even be baptized except by the curé. They cannot get any Protestant instruction; so the Protestant children are reared Roman Catholics. Nairne wished to have a Protestant clergyman established at Murray Bay; he could make that place his headquarters and carry on missionary work in the neighbouring parishes. But the five Protestant families at Murray Bay soon became three, for Nairne says, in 1801, that his and Colonel Fraser's families and one other man, an Englishman, are the only remaining Protestants. He and Fraser, he adds, are growing old and, in any case, it was doubtful whether the Englishman would attend service.
Yet Nairne still begged for a Protestant missionary. He desired most of all a free school. The teacher should be, he says, French but able also to preach in English; there was now no school at Murray Bay; a free school and a church system which would release the people from paying tithes could work wonders and, probably, most of the people would soon become Protestants. Knowing the tenacity with which the French Canadians have clung to their faith, it seems hardly likely that Nairne's dreams would have been realized. At any rate nothing was done. At that time there were hardly more than a dozen Anglican clergymen in all Canada and the Bishop of Quebec had no one to spare to look after the few scattered sheep at Murray Bay. On the other hand the rival Church did not forget her own. Long before the British conquest occasional services had been held at Malbaie and these were continued, with some regularity, until a resident priest came in 1797. The visiting priests worked hard. They were, Nairne says, "industrious in private to confess the people, especially the women, which branch of their duty is deemed most sacred and necessary." Against this tremendous power of the confessional, Protestantism had nothing that could be called an opposing influence. When a Protestant died he might not, of course, be buried in the Roman Catholic burial ground. For these outcast dead Nairne set aside a plot near his own house, where, still, under a little clump of trees, their bones lie, neglected and forgotten. Not more than half a dozen Protestants were ever buried there and this shows that even the Protestant pioneers were few in number; hardly one of their children remained outside the Roman Church.
Nairne thought the Canadians not too prone to industry and he deplored the multitude of religious holidays that gave an excuse for idleness. In a year there were not less than forty, in addition to Sundays, and on some of the holidays, such as that of the patron saint of the parish, there were scenes of great disorder. Nairne wrote on the subject to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec asking him to take steps to ensure that the people might come to think it not sinful but virtuous to work for six days in the week. The Bishop promised consideration of the matter. Already it had been under debate and in the end the Bishop gave orders that labour might continue on most of the Church's festivals; that of the patron saint of the parish was in time abolished. Nairne thus helped to bring about a considerable industrial reform. But beyond this he achieved little.
The French Canadians, who occupied his vacant acres, have shown both a marvellous tenacity for their own customs and also a fecundity that has enabled people, numbering 60,000 at the time of the British conquest, to multiply now to some 2,500,000, scattered over the United States and Canada. To govern them has never been an easy problem. Nairne says that the French officer, Bougainville, who had known the Canadians in many campaigns, called them at Murray's table a brave and submissive people; he thought they needed the strong hand of authority and added that he was sure the British method of government would soon spoil them. Under the French régime they had had no gleam of political liberty. For twenty years before the conquest France had exacted from them the fullest possible measure of military service. The British ended this and brought liberty. Its growth is sometimes so rapid as to be noxious, and, no doubt, some of those who came to Nairne's domain gave him much trouble. "No people," Nairne said of them, "stand more in awe of punishment when convinced that there is power to inflict it, as none are so easily spoiled as to be mutinous by indulgences." Some of them showed striking intelligence: in 1784 we find Nairne recommending for appointment as Notary one Malteste (no doubt the well-known name Maltais is a later form) as a "remarkable honest, well-behaved countryman with more education than is commonly to be found with one in his station." The dwellers at Malbaie were for the most part a quiet people entirely untouched by the movements of the outside world. "Nothing here," wrote Nairne in 1798, "is considered of importance but producing food to satisfy craving Stomachs, which the people of this cold and healthy country remarkably possess, and to feed numbers of children.... They have no other ambition or consideration whatever but simply to procure food and raiment for themselves and their numerous families."
They had a very clear idea of their rights. Nairne's grant conferred upon him those of fishing and hunting. But the inhabitants declared that when land was once granted, the seigneur lost all control over the adjoining waters. Nairne wished, for instance, to prohibit the spearing of salmon at night by the Canadians, with the aid of torches or lanterns. But they had never been hampered by such restrictions and, when Nairne tried to check them, they said that they would not be hindered. It was in vain that he said "I had rather have no power at all and no seigneurie at all [than] not to be able to keep up the rights of it." When, in 1797, he ordered one Joseph Villeneuve to cease the "flambeau" fishing at night, the fellow "roared and bellowed" and set him at defiance; no less than twenty companions joined him in the fishing. They would acknowledge no law nor restraint and seem to have had force majeure on their side. It was not until long after that the legislature at Quebec passed strict laws regulating the modes of fishing.
Whatever the limitations on the seigneur's authority he had the undoubted right of control over fishing in rivers and lakes until the adjacent lands were conceded to occupiers. It was important, therefore, not to grant lands which carried with them the best fishing and Nairne's ardent friend Gilchrist kept exhorting him from Scotland on this point. "There is no place ... I would so willingly and happily pass life in," he wrote, in 1775, "as in your Neighbourhood and often have I been seized with the memory of your easy and uncontrolled way of rising, lying, dancing, drinking, &c., at your habitation.... One hope ... I wish to be well founded and that is that your Stewart, Factor or Attorney, has not conceded any lands with the River in front from the Rapides du Vieux Moulin. If otherwise, you have lost more than the profits [which] all above Brassar's will yield in our lifetime. The fishing in that part of the River is alone worth crossing the Atlantic."