nadian
proverb: "Pour faire un Recollet, il faut une hachette, pour un Pretre
un ciseau, mais pour un Jesuit, il faut un pinceau."

[Illustration: THE BASILICA]

Thus, and in spite of resistance from D'Argenson, D'Avaugour, and
Frontenac, Quebec had been held fast under a firm ecclesiastical
control. Alternating penance with persuasion, the priests imposed
their will upon the people. Absence from church and confession brought
its sufficient penalty; and the calendar was filled with special days
for prayer and purification. Priests, monks, and nuns crowded the
city, in numbers disproportionate to the lay population. The place was
heavy with the incense of a constant worship--the very atmosphere
redolent of piety. From the unrestrained hands of the early governors,
the administration of justice passed to the _Conseil Superieur_, a
body comprising the governor, the bishop, the intendant, and a varying
number of councillors. Their code took special account of offences
against religion, sins for which the bishop was careful to exact
proper expiation. The pillory, the stocks, and a certain wooden horse
with a sharp spine were the ready instruments of correction.
Proclamations were made either from the pulpit or read at the
church-door after Mass. Royal edicts and ordinances of the _Conseil
Superieur_ prescribed the duties of citizens, and stated without
vagueness the penalties which would overtake breakers of the law. Yet
in spite of this apparent harshness, the laws were administered in so
patriarchal a spirit as to justify the observation: "It requires great
interest for a man to be hung in Canada."

The peasants, moreover, were far from rebelling against the
impositions of their seigneurs, which they took as part of the order
of nature; and General Murray, writing after the Conquest, thus bears
testimony to the feeling of good-fellowship prevailing between the two
classes: "The tenants, who pay only an annual quit-rent of about a
dollar a year for about a hundred acres, are at their ease and
comfortable. They have been accustomed to respect and obey their
noblesse; their tenures being military in the feudal manner, they have
shared with them the dangers of the field, and natural affection has
been increased in proportion to the calamities which have been common
to both, from the conquest of the country. As they have been taught to
respect their superiors, and are not yet intoxicated with the abuse
of liberty, they are