Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/40

 30 PV. B. Munro industry, in fact all regulations demanded by the general paternal policy of the administration. In the exercise of these powers, all, the intendants issued many ordinances without the assistance of the council, some providing general restrictions, others those designed to meet local conditions and applying only to certain persons or localities. Taken all together, these " Ordonnances des Intendans du Canada" make a formidable collection numbering well up into the hundreds. The matters with which they deal are of the widest variety, embracing almost every phase of colonial life from the most important to the most trivial. An ordinance establishing a system of weights and measures in the colony shares space with another forbidding coasting in winter along the hilly streets of Quebec, ^''arious decrees deal with such matters as the holding of negro slaves, the regulation of inns and markets, the preservation of game, the building of houses and fences, furious driving, Sabbath observance, precedence at religious services, wills and testaments, stray cattle, guardianship of minors, and almost every imaginable topic. Nothing seems to have been accounted too trivial to merit an ordinance.^ On the other hand, the council stood sponsor for many " Reglemens " drafted by the intendant. In 1676 it promul- gated a lengthy and comprehensive code of police regulations,- and from time to time supplemented this by ordinances on special subjects. From time to time the intendant was charged by his instruc- tions with special police duties and powers. One duty which was committed to him at an early date was that of fostering a rapid in- crease in the colonial population. He was instructed to receive the settlers sent out from France, to secure them locations, to get the single ones married, and to see that none went back to Europe. He supervised the distribution of bounties which the king gave to those colonists whio married early and reared large families ; and, on the other hand, he enforced the royal penalties imposed for obdurate celibacy.^ " The end and rule of all your conduct ", wrote Colbert to Bouteroue, " should be the increase of the colony ; on this point you should never be satisfied, but labor without ceasing to find every imaginable expedient for preserving the inhabitants, attracting new ones, and multiplying them by marriage ".^ The 'These ordinances will be found in idiis et Ordonnances, II. and III. ^"Reglemens generaux du Conseil Superieur de Quebec, pour la Police". May II, 1676, ibid., II. 65-73. ° " Arret du Conseil d'Etat du Roi pour encourager les mariages des gargons et des filles de Canada ", ibid., I. 67-68. Massachusetts Historical Society.
 * " Instruction pour M. Claude de Bouteroue", 1668, in Parkman Papers,