sympathy of two such statesmen as Louis XIV and Colbert. This is perhaps the only period in earlier Canadian history during which the home government steadily followed a wise and energetic policy of developing and strengthening the colony. We have seen that Colbert hesitated at first to encourage emigration, but he had yielded somewhat before Talon's urgent representations, and from 1665 to 1671 there was an uninterrupted influx of Canadian settlers. It is recorded in a document written by Talon himself that in 1665 the West India Company brought to Canada for the king's account 429 men and 100 young women, and 184 men and 92 women in 1667. During these seven years there were in all 1828 state-aided immigrants to Canada. The young women were carefully selected, and it was the king's wish that they should marry promptly, in order that the greatest possible number of new families should be founded. As a matter of fact, the event was in accordance with the king's wish. In 1665 Mother Marie de l'Incarnation wrote that the hundred girls arrived that year were nearly all provided with husbands. In 1667 she wrote again: 'This pear ninety-two girls came from France and they are already married to soldiers and labourers.' In 1670 one hundred and fifty girls arrived, and Talon wrote on November 10: 'All the girls who came this year are married, except fifteen whom I have placed in well-known families to await the time when the soldiers who sought them for their wives are established and able to maintain them.' It was indeed a matrimonial period, and it is not surprising that marriage was the order of the day. Every incentive to that end was brought to bear. The intendant gave fifty livres in household supplies and some provisions to each young woman who contracted marriage. According to the king's decree, each youth who married at or before the age of twenty was entitled to a gift of twenty livres, called 'the king's gift.' The same decree imposed a penalty upon all fathers who had not married their sons at twenty and their daughters at sixteen. In the same spirit, it enacted also that all Canadians having ten children living should be entitled to a pension of three hundred livres annually; four hundred livres was the reward for twelve. 'Marry early' was the royal mandate. Colbert, writing to Talon in 1668, says: 'I pray you to commend it to the consideration of the whole people, that their prosperity, their subsistence, and all that is dear to them, depend on a general resolution, never to be departed from, to marry youths at eighteen or nineteen years and girls at fourteen or fifteen; since abundance can never come to them except through the abundance of men.' And this was not enough; Colbert went on: 'Those who may seem to have absolutely renounced marriage should be made to bear additional burdens, and be excluded from all honours; it would be well even to add some mark of infamy.' The unfortunate bachelor seems to have been treated somewhat as a public malefactor. Talon issued an order forbidding unmarried volontaires to hunt with the Indians or go into the woods, if they did not marry fifteen days after the arrival of the ships from France. And a case is recorded of one Francois Lenoir, of Montreal, who was brought before the judge because, being unmarried, he had gone to trade with the Indians. He pleaded guilty, and pledged himself to marry next year after the arrival of the ships, or failing that, to give one hundred and fifty livres to the church of Montreal and a like sum to the hospital. He kept his money and married within the term.

The matrimonial zeal of Colbert and Talon did not slight the noblemen and officers. Captain de la Mothe, marrying and taking up his abode in the country, received sixteen hundred livres. During the years 1665-68 six thousand livres were expended to aid the marriage of young gentlewomen without means, and six thousand to enable four captains, three lieutenants, five ensigns, and a few minor officers to settle and marry in the colony.

A word must be said as to the character of the young women. Some writers have cast unfair aspersions upon the girls sent out from France to marry in Canada. After a serious study of the question, we are in a position to state that these girls were most carefully selected. Some of them were orphans reared in charitable institutions under the king's protection; they were called les filles du roi. The rest belonged to honest families, and their parents, overburdened with children, were willing to send them to a new country where they would be well provided for. In 1670 Colbert wrote to the archbishop of Rouen: 'As in the parishes about Rouen fifty or sixty girls might be found who would be very glad to go to Canada to be married, I beg you to employ your credit and authority with the cures of thirty or forty of these parishes, to try to find in each of them one or two girls disposed to go voluntarily for the sake of settlement in life.' Such was the quality of the female emigration to Canada. The girls were drawn from reputable institutions, or from good peasant families, under the auspices of the cures. During their journey to Canada they were under the care and direction of persons highly respected for their virtues and piety, such as Madame Bourdon, widow of the late attorney-general of New France, or Mademoiselle Etienne, who was appointed governess of the girls leaving for Canada by the directors of the general hospital of Paris. When young women arrived in Canada, they were either immediately married or placed for a time in good families.

The paternal policy of the minister and the intendant was favoured by the disbanding of the Carignan companies. In 1668 the regiment was recalled to France; four companies only were left in Canada to garrison the forts. The officers and soldiers of the companies withdrawn were entreated to remain as settlers, and about four hundred decided to make their home in Canada. They were generously subsidized. Each soldier electing to settle in the colony received one hundred livres, or fifty livres with provisions for one year, at his choice. Each sergeant received one hundred and fifty livres, or one hundred livres with one year's provisions. The officers also were given liberal endowments. Among them were: Captains de Contrecoeur, de Saint-Ours, de Sorel, Dugue de Boisbriant, Lieutenants Gaultier de Varennes and Margane de la Valtrie; Ensigns Paul Dupuis, Becard de Grandville, Pierre Monet de Moras, Francois Jarret de Vercheres.

The strenuous efforts of Colbert and Talon could not but give a great impulse to population. The increase was noticeable. In November 1671 Talon wrote:

His Majesty will see by the extracts of the registers of baptisms that the number of children this year is six or seven hundred; and in the coming years we may hope for a substantial increase. There is some reason to believe that, without any further female immigration, the country will see more than one hundred marriages next year. I consider it unnecessary to send girls next year; the better to give the habitants a chance to marry their own girls to soldiers desirous of settling. Neither will it be necessary to send young ladies, as we received last year fifteen, instead of the four who were needed for wives of officers and notables.

In a former chapter the population of Canada in 1665 was given as 3215 souls, and the number of families 533. In 1668 the number of families was 1139 and the population 6282. In three years the population had nearly doubled and the number of families had more than doubled.

Other statistics may fittingly be given here. During the period under consideration, the West India Company sent to Canada for the king's account many horses and sheep. These were badly needed in the colony. Since its first settlement there had been seen in New France only a single horse, one which had been presented by the Company of One Hundred