It was not by accident but by design that an aristocratic class was created in French Canada. The perpetual contrast between the English and the French systems of colonisation was but the difference between natural evolution and artificial construction. The Canadian aristocracy was a consistent detail of the latter and in keeping with Louis' ambitious scheme of personal government. The caste system grafted upon the stem of the colonial plant was a picturesque adornment to the life of Quebec, but a doubtful experiment from any other point of view, as time proved. For the most part the Canadian _noblesse_ were either officers of the disbanded Carignan-Salières regiment, or _gentilhommes_ who had come to the New World in search of adventure or gain. In both cases they were unsuited to the hard and restrictive conditions of a rugged country. The soldiers steadfastly refused to beat their swords into ploughshares or their spears into pruning-hooks, and most of them accepted a state not far removed from actual want, rather than stain their martial hands with manual labour. The leisured class thus became the starving class, and the King's annual subsidies alone kept these families from destitution. Many of them were also in receipt of the bounties granted to large families--an ineffective resource, inasmuch as hungry children but consumed the supply and renewed the demand. Disdaining work of any sort, the Canadian _gentilhomme_ yet gave himself airs that were in amusing contrast to his shabby coat and empty stomach. The world, he held, owed him a living without the labour of his hands, and to him "the world" was Louis the perpetual almsgiver. The official correspondence of the period describes in some detail the pangs of these ill-conditioned gentry. "Two days ago," writes the Governor of Quebec in 1686, "Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of bread. He says that he will put his ten children in charge of any one who will give them a living, and that he himself will go into the army again. His wife and he are in despair; and yet they do what they can. I have seen two of his girls reaping grain and holding the plough. Other families are in the same condition. They come to me with tears in their eyes. All our married officers are beggars; and I entreat you to send them aid. There is need that the King should provide support for their children, or else they will be tempted to go over to the English."