Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/133

 -1763] French relations with negroes. 101 mission-stations had to be continually repeopled with fresh converts as the confined life steadily enfeebled the race. The English constantly dwelt on the necessity that the Indians must be civilised " as well as, if not in order to, their being christianised"; and the rules for civility among the English domiciled Indians were absurd enough. Women wearing their hair loose or cut like a man^s were to be fined 5s., for exposing their breasts 5s., men with long locks 5s.; and howling and greasing the body were prohibited. At first, both English and French were hopeful of educating the natives. The Jesuits brought Huron boys and girls to Quebec, and the English founded Colleges for their instruction. In New England Indians were admitted to the ministry, and in 1675 one took his B.A. degree. There is evidence that the French missionaries showed marked intellectual superiority over the English missionaries of a later period; but both English and French wearied at last of their efforts the English the more rapidly, as they were dependent on voluntary subscrip- tion. In Canada the missions were supported in part by the Crown ; but here too the work slackened in the eighteenth century. The uni- formity of religious doctrine and the wealth of ceremonial naturally had a greater effect on the Indian mind than the teaching of the many jarring sects of the English colonies. The religious fervour of the French colonists, and the good parochial organisation in the thinly peopled districts were marked by the Indians, who constantly charged the English colonists with irreligion. In 1701 the reply of the Abenakis to the English order to dismiss the Jesuit missionaries was, "You are too late in undertaking to instruct us in prayer after all the many years we have been known to you. The Frenchman was wiser than you ; as soon as we knew him he taught us how to pray to God properly, and now we pray better than you." The same distinctions make themselves felt in the treatment of the negroes of the French and British sugar-islands, though in slighter measure, inasmuch as similar commercial considerations affected both nations. It is admitted on all hands that the Code Noir, a "monument of inhumanity" as it must now appear, was humane compared with the laws of most of the British colonies, which however varied greatly from place to place and from time to time. The Catholic holidays allowed the slaves of the Catholic States a greater measure of repose than was allowed in any Protestant colony. It was a primary article in the Code Noir that all slaves should be baptised ; the English, it was often said, feared lest baptism should be deemed tantamount to manumission. The Code required further that instruction in the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion should be given ; and the religious Orders for the most part attempted to supply it. The Code inflicted heavy penalties on masters who used their slaves as concubines; marriage between free women and slave men was not forbidden, and the offspring inherited freedom. The law stipulated that proper food and clothing should be provided, with nursing in time of sickness. Torture and mutilation were prohibited, en. in.