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Immigration to New France was being revived and encouraged. The essential features of the immigration policy of the time and how it was regarded by the more enlightened persons in the colony are worth noting. Two dispatches from the Sovereign Council in 1664, one to the king and the other to Colbert, throw some light on this subject. The council expresses its pleasure at the special interest shown by the king in the peopling of the country. It considers the merchant vessels to be the best means of bringing out the colonists.^[1] The members of the council deprecated the policy of furnishing the immigrants with provisions and placing them directly upon the wild lands, with which they were quite unaccustomed to deal. In such cases, many were certain to starve. All new immigrants should be distributed among the older settlers, where their labour, wisely directed, would be employed to advantage from the first, and where they would receive the best possible training to enable them to take up land for themselves. The council points out that of some three hundred emigrants who had left France in 1663, many had died, and that a large number of them were clerks, scholars, and other city folk, quite unfitted for life in the wilds of Canada. They were indeed in great distress until taken in charge by the council and distributed among the older settlers. It were much better, in the opinion of the council, to send out only people from the country, since there are as yet in Canada very few openings for the town-bred man. It appears from these documents that thirty-five livres each had been advanced by the government towards the passage money of certain immigrants arriving that year, and that this sum was to be repaid from their wages. In three years the immigrant was considered generally to be an expert workman and worth twice as much as on his arrival.

The council had already passed an ordinance to the effect that all labourers coming to the colony from France should serve for three years the habitants to whom they had been directed, after which time they should be free to remain in the colony or to return to France. Criminals and all immigrants who were diseased or unable to work were to be sent back to France immediately. Thus early in its history do we find Canada adopting the policy of deporting undesirable immigrants.

The immigrants arriving at Quebec were distributed in the districts of Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers, each being apprenticed to a master for a period of three years. It appears, however, that even in those days the atmosphere of a new country had the effect of developing a spirit of independence; thus we find complaints coming in to the council that those who are assigned for three years’ service were becoming very restless and insolent towards their patrons or masters, even intimidating them to grant their discharge. The council, however, true to its paternal instinct, prohibited the emancipation of the immigrant and enacted penalties for any one harbouring or assisting fugitive apprentices. These laws did not, of course, prevent desertion from employers, but merely made it necessary that the deserters should take to the woods and become members of the rising bands of coureurs de bois, who were soon to become one of the most serious problems of the colony.

During succeeding years, colonization progressed slowly in New France. It was not easy to induce Frenchmen of the right quality to go to Canada. The minister was anxious to people New France, and we find him giving instructions that immigrants should be encouraged by every means possible to remain in the colony. He did not wish to use force in detaining them, for that would probably give the colony a bad name and defeat his object.

The home government responded generously to the requests of the colonial authorities for wives for the settlers. Many groups of girls were sent out. As a rule, they quickly found husbands. The authorities do not seem to have been very fastidious on the score of beauty. It appears that some of the young men were a little slow in responding to the paternal benevolence of the authorities. Thereupon the ever ready machinery of an ordinance was invoked, giving the bashful swains the ungallant alternative of getting married within a week or two or being liable to various penalties. These mandatory incentives to domestic felicity produced the desired effect. When it was obligatory to take a wife if one were to be had, the young men doubtless felt that if it must be done, ‘then ’twere well it were done quickly.’ The early suitor, moreover, had the greater variety for selection.

[1]	A previous record of the council shows that of one hundred colonists sent from France, presumably in government ships, thirty-three had died on the voyage or after landing, while many of the remainder were detained in the hospitals after their arrival.