their daughters at sixteen. In the same spirit, it enacted
also that all Canadians having ten children living should
be entitled to a pension of three hundred livres annually;
four hundred livres was the reward for twelve. 'Marry
early' was the royal mandate. Colbert, writing to Talon
in 1668, says: 'I pray you to commend it to the
consideration of the whole people, that their prosperity,
their subsistence, and all that is dear to them, depend
on a general resolution, never to be departed from, to
marry youths at eighteen or nineteen years and girls at
fourteen or fifteen; since abundance can never come to
them except through the abundance of men.' And this was
not enough; Colbert went on: 'Those who may seem to have
absolutely renounced marriage should be made to bear
additional burdens, and be excluded from all honours; it
would be well even to add some mark of infamy.' The
unfortunate bachelor seems to have been treated somewhat
as a public malefactor. Talon issued an order forbidding
unmarried volontaires to hunt with the Indians or go into
the woods, if they did not marry fifteen days after the
arrival of the ships from France. And a case is recorded
of one Francois Lenoir, of Montreal, who was brought
before the judge because, being unmarried, he had gone
to trade with the Indians. He pleaded guilty, and pledged
himself to marry next year after the arrival of the ships,
or failing that, to give one hundred and fifty livres to
the church of Montreal and a like sum to the hospital.
He kept his money and married within the term.

The matrimonial zeal of Colbert and Talon did not slight