rmed circle, as happened occasionally,
there was usually some way of hustling him out again by means either
fair or foul. The monopolists made large profits, and many of them,
after they had accumulated a fortune, went home to France. "I have
known twenty of these pedlars," quoth La Hontan, "that had not above
a thousand crowns stock when I arrived at Quebec in the year 1683 and
when I left that place had got to the tune of twelve thousand crowns."

Glancing over the whole course of agriculture, industry, and commerce
in New France from the time when Champlain built his little post at
the foot of Cape Diamond until the day when the fleur-de-lis fluttered
down from the heights above, the historian finds that there is one
word which sums up the chief cause of the colony's economic weakness.
That word is "paternalism." The Administration tried to take the place
of Providence. It was as omnipresent and its ways were as inscrutable.
Like as a father chasteneth his children, so the King and his
officials felt it their duty to chasten every show of private
initiative which did not direct itself along the grooves that they had
marked out for the colony to follow. By trying to order everything
they eventually succeeded in ordering nothing aright.

CHAPTER XI

HOW THE PEOPLE LIVED

In New France there were no privileged orders. This, indeed, was the
most marked difference between the social organization of the home
land and that of the colony. There were social distinctions in Canada,
to be sure, but the boundaries between different elements of the
population were not rigid; there were no privileges based upon the
laws of the land, and no impenetrable barrier separated one class from
another. Men could rise by their own efforts or come down through
their own defaults; their places in the community were not determined
for them by the accident of birth as was the case in the older land.
Some of the most successful figures in the public and business affairs
of New France, some of the social leaders, some of those who attained
the highest rank in the _noblesse_, came of relatively humble
parentage.

In France of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the chief
officials of state, the seigneurs, the higher ecclesiastics, even
the officers of the army and the marine, were always drawn from the
nobility. In the colony this was very far from being the case. Some
colonial officials and a few of the seigneurs were among the