reason of the poverty of the inhabitants, and that newly-cleared lands
should pay nothing for the first five years. Mgr. de Laval, ever ready
to accept just and sensible measures, agreed to this decision. The
revenues thus obtained were, none the less, insufficient, since the king
subsequently gave eight or nine thousand francs to complete the
endowment of the priests, whose annual salary was fixed at five hundred
and seventy-four francs. In 1707 the sum granted by the French court was
reduced to four thousand francs. If we remember that the French farmers
contributed the thirteenth part of their harvest, that is to say, double
the quantity of the Canadian tithe, for the support of their pastors,
shall we deem excessive this modest tax raised from the colonists for
men who devoted to them their time, their health, even their hours of
rest, in order to procure for their parishioners the aid of religion? Is
it not regrettable that too many among the colonists, who were yet such
good Christians in the observance of religious practices, should have
opposed an obstinate resistance to so righteous a demand? Can it be
that, by a special dispensation of Heaven, the priests and vicars of
Canada are not liable to the same material needs as ordinary mortals,
and are they not obliged to pay in good current coin for their food,
their medicines and their clothes?

The first seminary, built of stone,[3] rose in 1661 on the site of the
present vicarage of the cathedral of Quebec; it cost eight thousand five
hundred francs, two thousand of which were given by Mgr. de Laval. The
first priest of Quebec and first superior of the seminary, M. Henri de
Bernières, was able to occupy it in the autumn of the following year,
and the Bishop of Petræa abode there from the time of his return from
France on September 15th, 1663, until the burning of this house on
November 15th, 1701. The first directors of the seminary were, besides
M. de Bernières, MM. de Lauson-Charny, son of the former