From his palace in France the Grand Monarque dictated the size and shape of a Canadian farm. He prescribed the localities which new-comers ought to select. They must not stray too far from villages; they must clear lands in spots contiguous to settlements. He could find men who would go to Canada, but there was no emigration of families. Soldiers in the colony were offered their discharge and a year’s pay if they would marry and settle. Premiums were offered the colonists for marrying, and premiums for children. “The new settler,” says Parkman, “was found by the King, sent over by the King, and supplied by the King with a wife, a farm, and sometimes with a house.” Popular meetings were in such disfavor that not until 1717 were the merchants permitted to establish an exchange at Quebec. His Majesty, while pulling the wires which moved the puppets of European politics, still found time to express his regrets that the “King’s officers had been obliged to come down from Frontenac to Quebec to obtain absolution,” and to convey his instructions to the Bishop of Quebec to suppress several fête-days which interfered with agricultural labors. Cared for thus tenderly, it would seem that Canada should have thriven. Had the measures put forth been wisely directed toward the prosperity of the colony, it might have done so; but Louis XIV. was not working for the benefit of Canada; his efforts were exclusively in behalf of France. In 1706 his Minister wrote: “It is not for the interest of the parent State that manufactures should be carried on in America, as it would diminish the consumption of those in France; but in the mean time the poor are not prohibited from manufacturing stuffs in their own houses for the relief of themselves and their families.” Generous monarch! The use of the spinning-wheel and the loom was not forbidden in the log-cabins in Canada, even if this did clash somewhat with French trade. “From this permission,” says Heriot, “the inhabitants have ever since continued to fabricate coarse linen and druggets, which has enabled them to subsist at a very small expense.” Coin was almost unknown much of the time; and the paper money and bills of exchange, upon which the colony depended for a circulating medium, were often seriously depreciated.