Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/109

-1664] The emigrants. 77 consisting of the Superior of the Jesuits, and of three syndics representing the inhabitants of Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers. Appeal might be made from the judicial decisions of this council to the parlement at Rouen. The habitants, who came for the most part from Normandy, were free from litigious spirit, and such disputes as arose were settled by the governor in the way of arbitration. The emigrants from France consisted mainly of humble artificers who bound themselves to work for three years without payment, in return for their passage and keep. At the end of the three years they might hope to receive a grant of land en roture from one of the lords of lands whom the Company had enfeoffed; or, if they preferred a life of adventure, they entered the fur-trade. The number of enterprising heads of families seeking to raise the family fortunes by taking up a grant of land en seigneurie was as yet very small. Beyond an increase of dignity, such grants offered little advantage. A seigneurial grant of some ten leagues by twelve was merely hunting-ground, unless the lord could obtain labourers willing to take grants en censive or en roture, who paid a nominal rent per acre, together with some agricultural service on the lord's demesne. The burden of defence was great when the danger of Indian raids grew serious ; and agriculture was not as a rule carried on except in close proximity to the three forts. The men to whom emigration offered the greatest attraction during this period were not those who sought to found a family or fortune, but those who sought the crown of martyrdom, or, if life at all, a life of religious devotion and perpetual celibacy. Monastic sentiment found in the French colonies a remarkable revival. The Jesuit father's reflexion, "should we at last die of misery how great our happiness will be," animated men to endure hideous mutilations and agonising sufferings at the hands of the Indian enemy, and made them indifferent to starvation, thirst, fatigue and the torments of Canadian forest travel. Women too crowded to the new country in order to deny themselves the pleasures of the old, to tend the Indians dying of small-pox, and to teach Indian girls to seek with them the crown of virginity. The growth of religious institutions was for the present out of all proportion to the development of the State, which above all things required population. But the lines of Jesuit enterprise were fairly varied. Unlike the Recollets, the Jesuits were under no vow of poverty and encouraged agriculture and trade with that definiteness of purpose which they possessed by virtue of their intellectual superiority. At home their work was kept constantly in mind by their writings, by their appeals for help, and by the Crown itself. In all but population and strength to resist the Iroquois the little colony stood well. Men of bad character were not allowed to stay, and care for the education and well-being of the Indians was a first thought with those who had power. Humanitarian influences were CH. lil.