THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 85 
looked after. As it is inconvenient that farms should 
be too small, no one living in the open country was 
to build a house on any piece of land less than a cer- 
tain prescribed size, under penalty of seeing his house 
torn down at the next visit of the intendant. That 
the morals of these favoured farmers might remain 
uncorrupted by the splendid vices of great cities, they 
were forbidden to go to Quebec without permission 
from the intendant, and any one in the city who should 
let rooms to them was to be fined a hundred livres, for 
the benefit of the hospitals. In 1710 the inhabitants 
of Montreal were prohibited from owning more than 
two horses or mares, and one foal apiece, on the 
ground that if they raised too many horses they would 
not raise enough cattle and sheep! 
With a thousand such arbitrary and foolish, though 
well-meant, regulations the people of Canada were 
hampered and restricted, so that, in spite of the natural 
advantages of the country for agriculture, for fisheries, 
and for the fur trade, there was nothing surprising in 
the facts that business of every kind languished and 
that the population increased but slowly. The slow- 
ness of increase of the population early attracted the 
attention of the French government, which laboured 
earnestly to counteract the evil. No inhabitant of 
Canada was allowed to visit the English colonies or 
to come home to France without express permission. 
Emigrants for Canada were diligently enlisted in 
France, and sent over in ship-loads every year, being 
paid bounties for going. Women were sent over in 
companies of two or three hundred at a time, all care- 
fully sorted and selected as to social position, so that 
nobles, officers, bourgeois, and peasants might each 
