enticed and driven into wedlock. Bounties were offered on early marriages. Twenty livres were given to each youth who married before the age of twenty, and to each girl who married before the age of sixteen. * This, which was called the “king’s gift,” was exclusive of the dowry given by him to every girl brought over by his orders. The dowry varied greatly in form and value; but, according to Mother Mary, it was sometimes a house with provisions for eight months. More often it was fifty livres in household supplies, besides a barrel or two of salted meat. The royal solicitude extended also to the children of colonists already established. “I pray you,” writes Colbert to Talon, “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.” ** This counsel was followed by appropriate action. Any father of a family who, without showing good cause, neglected to marry his children when they had reached the ages of twenty and sixteen was fined; *** and each father thus delinquent was required to present himself every six months to the local authorities to declare what * Arrêt du Conseil d’Etat du Roy (see Edits et Ordonnances, I. 67). ** Colbert a Talon, 20 Fev., 1668. *** Arrêts du Conseil d’Etat, 1669 (cited by Faillon); Arrêt du Conseil d Etat, 1670 (see Edits et Ordonnances, I. 67); Ordonnance du Roy, 5 Avril, 1669. See Clément, Instructions, etc., de Colbert, III. 2me Partie, 657. reason, if any, he had for such delay. * Orders were issued, a little before the arrival of the yearly ships from France, that all single men should marry within a fortnight after the landing of the prospective brides. No mercy was shown to the obdurate bachelor. Talon issued an order forbidding unmarried men to hunt, fish, trade with the Indians, or go into the woods under any pretence whatsoever. ** In short, they were made as miserable as possible. Colbert goes further. He writes to the intendant, “those who may seem to have absolutely renounced marriage should be made to bear additional burdens, and be excluded from all honors: it would be well even to add some marks of infamy.” *** The success of these measures was complete. “No sooner,” says Mother Mary, “have the vessels arrived than the young men go to get wives; and, by reason of the great number they are married by thirties at a time.” Throughout the length and breadth of Canada, Hymen, * Registre du Conseil Souverain.