JESUITS' BARRACKS
Each householder was responsible for the street before his property, being compelled to keep it clean of snow and refuse. Innkeepers required a license, and had to conform to rigid laws. Cattle, pigs, and sheep were impounded if found straying in the streets, and the Intendant strictly regulated the possession of live-stock.
The first horse seen in New France had been brought out by the Governor Montmagny about 1636; but before the end of the century many more were shipped from Havre, and it was not long before the law began to regulate this new feature of social life. An ordinance forbade any habitant to possess more than two mares and one colt. In riding away from service on Sunday the horseman was forbidden to break into a canter until he had travelled ten arpents from the church. Private baptism of children was refused except in cases of absolute necessity. The order in which the personages of Quebec should receive the sacrament was precisely established. Roads, bridges, and churches were built by forced labour. The construction of houses, both as to material and design, was regulated by law. Builders were required to conform to a line and face their houses on the highway. Certain personages, however, claimed exemption from this rule, and to these was accorded the right—d'avoir pignon sur rue—to have the gable on the street, the purpose being to secure a certain degree of privacy by means of an entrance away from the public highway.
MODERN CALÈCHES
As to the law of inheritance, the testator was bound to divide his estate fairly among all his children, the title and the largest share going to the eldest son. This legislation, which affected seigneur and censitaire alike, subdivided the country into ribbon-like farms, with narrow frontages on the river and running back long distances inland. This attenuated appearance of the rural holdings strikes the stranger forcibly as he travels through the province of Quebec even at this day, and denotes a condition which prevailed in England also in the most primitive days of agriculture. The system had some justification, however, in the necessity which each peasant felt of having access to the St. Lawrence, the most convenient, and, for nearly a hundred years, the only highway to the city of Quebec. Moreover, it enabled the settlers to build their houses close together, thus protecting themselves against the ever-present danger of Indian raids. Even now the river St. Lawrence looks like a gigantic road bordered by homely white-washed cottages.
Examples of the quaint laws and customs of the ancien régime might be multiplied indefinitely; but perhaps enough has already been said to show the paternalism of the legal system and the medievalism of the social life which prevailed. Before the Conquest the French Canadian had nothing whatever to do with the making of his own laws; and so far from struggling to obtain this right, he preferred to be without it. The Curé knew all about the laws, and the habitant was willing to leave the matter to him!
On the whole, if we except the wicked exactions of the Intendant Bigot and his confederates, Quebec was happily governed. From generation to generation the light-hearted habitant cheerfully paid his dîme to the Church, his cens et rente to the Seigneur, his military service to the Governor. If the call came for a raid upon New England, he took down his musket and his powder-horn, and set out blithely upon his snow-shoes for the rendezvous of war; if to rally to the defence of Quebec, he was equally ready to bury his chattels and take his place upon the city ramparts, or to withstand a landing on the Beauport shore.
Such were the people who drew from the first British Governor a generous testimony: "I glory," says General Murray, "in having been accused of warmth and firmness in protecting the King's Canadian subjects, and of doing the utmost in my power to gain to my royal master the affections of that brave, hardy people, whose emigration, if it should ever happen, would be an irreparable loss to this empire."