|The peopling of Canada was due in the main to the king. Before the accession of Louis XIV. the entire population, priests, nuns, traders, and settlers, did not exceed twenty-five hundred; * but scarcely had he reached his majority when the shipment of men to the colony was systematically begun. Even in Argenson’s time, loads of emigrants sent out by the Crown were landed every year at Quebec. The Sulpitians of Montreal also brought over colonists to people their seigniorial estate; the same was true on a small scale of one or two other proprietors, and once at least the company sent a considerable number: yet the government was the chief agent of emigration. Colbert did the work, and the king paid for it. In 1661, Laval wrote to the cardinals of the Propaganda, that during the past two years the * Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, II 4 king had spent two hundred thousand livres on the colony; that, since 1659, he had sent out three hundred men a year; and that he had promised to send an equal number every summer during ten years. * These men were sent by squads in merchant-ships, each one of which was required to carry a certain number. In many instances, emigrants were bound on their arrival to enter into the service of colonists already established. In this case the employer paid them wages, and after a term of three years they became settlers themselves. ** The destined emigrants were collected by agents in the provinces, conducted to Dieppe or Rochelle, and thence embarked. At first men were sent from Rochelle itself, and its neighborhood; but Laval remonstrated, declaring that he wanted none from that ancient stronghold of heresy. *** The people of Rochelle, indeed, found no favor in Canada. Another writer describes them as “persons of little conscience, and almost no religion,” adding that the Normans, Percherons, Picards, and peasants of the neighborhood of Paris, are docile, industrious, and far more pious. “It is important,” he concludes, “in beginning a new colony, to sow good seed.” **** It was, accordingly, from the north-western provinces that most of the emigrants * Lettre de Laval envoyée à Rome. 21 Oct., 1661 (extract in Faillon from Archives of the Propaganda). ** Marie de l’Incarnation, 18 Août, 1664. These engagés were some times also brought over by private persons. *** Colbert a Laval, 18 Mars, 1664. **** Mémoire de 1664 (anonymous) were drawn. * They seem in the main to have been a decent peasantry, though writers who, from their position, should have been well informed, have denounced them in unmeasured terms. ** Some of them could read and write, and some brought with them a little money.