Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/135

 -1763] Canadian society. 103 in the country are written, which extends even to the paper currency." It is said that printing was not introduced lest it should be the means of propagating libels against the government and religion; but the true reason, in Kalm's opinion, was the poverty of the country. No printer could sell enough books to live. He suggests also the further reason that the French at home desired to have the profits of the export of books. In St Domingo a royal printing-house was established in 1750 ; and the rapid increase of population in the other islands soon led to the creation of presses elsewhere. The absence of the printing-press would seem to be the one feature which points to marked backwardness in the social state of the French colonies. Nearly all the contemporary descriptions of Canadian society dwell on the favourable aspects. Charlevoix's penetrating analysis and comparison of the condition of the British and French colonies brings out many points of interest. The British colonists, he says, are opulent, with the appearance of not profiting by their wealth, while the Canadians conceal their poverty under an air of comfort. The Canadian enjoys all he has and often makes a show of having more than he has. The British colonist strives for his heir. The Canadian is content if he leaves his sons no worse off than he was at the beginning of life. The British Americans will not have* war, for they have too much to lose ; the French Canadian detests peace. There is evidence that the humbler Canadians, suffering no burden of taille^ having cheap bread, meat, and fish, were fairly well off for necessaries ; and it is repeatedly noticed that the humblest class of habitant would resent being classed with the French peasantry. Intendant Hocquart writes, in 1787, that they have not the coarse and rustic appearance of French peasants ; the industrial arts not being restricted by trade organisations, and mechanics being scarce, each man is his own manufacturer and mechanic, and thus the idle hours of the long winter are employed. The gentry suffered more than the poor from the high price of the luxuries to which they were accustomed ; and, as there was, according to Charlevoix, a larger noblesse in Canada than in all the other colonies put together, the colony lost reputation accordingly. Charlevoix ascribes the distressed state of the gentry to their folly in considering agriculture a degrading employment. Although class distinctions, questions of precedence and of etiquette enjoyed fully as much prominence in the colonial Canadian as in the French mind, on all hands the Creole's love of liberty and independence of spirit were noticed and ascribed to the comparative equality of fortunes. But the government failed to appreciate the meaning of these things, or to see why " emigrants should ever expect an enlargement of their native rights in a wilderness country." A report to the French government contrasts the colonies as follows. "The policy of the people of New England being to labour at the thorough cultivation of their farms and CH. III.