A great number of ordinances of intendants are preserved. They were usually read to the people at the doors of churches after mass, or sometimes by the curé from his pulpit. They relate to a great variety of subjects,--regulation of inns and markets, poaching, preservation of game, sale of brandy, rent of pews, stray hogs, mad dogs, tithes, matrimonial quarrels, fast driving, wards and guardians, weights and measures, nuisances, value of coinage, trespass on lands, building churches, observance of Sunday, preservation of timber, seignior and vassal, settlement of boundaries, and many * The above examples are all taken from the letters of Colbert to the intendant Duchesneau. It is an extreme case, but other intendants are occasionally treated with scarcely more ceremony. ** Le Roi à Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680. other matters. If a curé with some of his parishioners reported that his church or his house needed repair or rebuilding, the intendant issued an ordinance requiring all the inhabitants of the parish, “both those who have consented and those who have not consented,” to contribute materials and labor, on pain of fine or other penalty. * The militia captain of the _cote_ was to direct the work and see that each parishioner did his due part, which was determined by the extent of his farm; so, too, if the _grand voyer_, an officer charged with the superintendence of highways, reported that a new road was wanted or that an old one needed mending, an ordinance of the intendant set the whole neighborhood at work upon it, directed, as in the other case, by the captain of militia. If children were left fatherless, the intendant ordered the curé of the parish to assemble their relations or friends for the choice of a guardian. If a _censitaire_ did not clear his land and live on it, the intendant took it from him and gave it back to the seignior. ** Chimney-sweeping having been neglected at Quebec, the intendant commands all householders promptly to do their duty in this respect, and at the same time fixes the pay of the sweep at six sous a chimney. Another order forbids quarrelling in church. Another assigns pews in due order of precedence to the seignior, the captain of militia, and the wardens. The intendant Raudot, who seems * See, among many examples, the ordinance of 24th December, 1716. Edits et Ordonnances, II. 443. ** Compare the numerous ordinances printed in the second and third volumes of Edits et Ordonnances.