aims. They clashed fiercely on many occasions, it is true, but after
their duels they shook hands and went to work with a will at the
task of making the colony stand upon its own feet. Historians have
magnified these bickerings out of all proportion. Squabbles over
matters of precedence at ceremonies, over the rate of the tithes, and
over the curbing of the _coureurs-de-bois_ did not take the major
share of the Church's attention. For the greater part of two whole
centuries it loyally aided the civil power in all things wherein the
two could work together for good.

And these ways of assistance were many. For example the Church,
through its various institutions and orders, rendered a great service
to colonial agriculture. As the greatest landowner in New France,
it set before the seigneurs and the habitants an example of what
intelligent methods of farming and hard labor could accomplish in
making the land yield its increase. The King was lavish in his grants
of territory to the Church: the Jesuits received nearly a million
_arpents_ as their share of the royal bounty; the bishop and the
Quebec Seminary, the Sulpicians, and the Ursulines, about as much
more. Of the entire granted acreage of New France the Church
controlled about one-quarter, so that its position as a great
landowner was even stronger in the colony than at home. Nor did it
fold its talents in a napkin. Colonists were brought from France,
farms were prepared for them in the church seigneuries, and the new
settlers were guided and encouraged through, the troublous years of
pioneering. With both money and brains at its command, the Church was
able to keep its own lands in the front line of agricultural progress.

When in 1722 the whole colony was marked off into definite
ecclesiastical divisions, seventy-two parishes were established, and