CONTRIBUTIONS TO A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH 
 
 LANGUAGE OF CANADA. 
 
 I. Preliminary. Historical. 
 
 By A. MARSHALL ELLIOTT, Pro/mnr in the Johns Hopkim Univertity, 
 
 Baltitnore, Md. 
 
 Many surprises are in store for the scholar who for the first 
 ime goes to Lower Canada to study the people and their history, 
 heir language and their local customs, a. id he will generally have 
 () begin by clearing his mind of ideas and prejudices that he has 
 Irawn from he scarcely knows where, before he can understand 
 he past, much less the present, of this interesting folk. He has 
 heard" that the common man, the habitant, is extremely super- 
 titious, that he speaks a patois, that he is suspicious of strangers 
 nd non-communicative, and that he has numerous amenities 
 V hich belong to savage rather than to civilized beings. His nature, 
 t is said, is so chilled by the icy winds of these northern regions 
 hat he can- but imperfectly value the boon of human sympathy, 
 nd hence he is apathetic, distant in manner, morose, and alto- 
 gether uninteresting. Such are a few only of the extravagant 
 lotions that must be corrected at the very beginning of his task, 
 f the serious worker would comprehend what he finds about him. 
 kit while he is busy, by actual experience with the people them- 
 elves, in uprooting prejudices and gauging his preconceived 
 ieas of their character to a standard of tolerable truth, he is 
 gain surprised to find the historical records of village and city 
 
 complete that, for the study not only of political but even of 
 bscure personal history, abundant material is at hand, and this, 
 ften, down to the minutest details. Here it is not alone gover- 
 lental acts that may be consulted on the faithful pages of the 
 
 iginals or in copies belonging to the Departmental Bureau of 
 Uchives, but in the remotest and humblest country parish the 
 line conscientious memorandums of village history are scrupu- 
 )usly preserved and spread before the student of history in the 
 dniirable church registers. So faithful and full are these docu- 
 lents that it has been possible for one of the most celebrated 
 lembers of the Catholic church, the renowned Abb6 Tanguay, 
 
 1 Ottawa, to write a Genealogical Dictionary of the Y rench peo- 
 
pic of Canada. To us it is ofttiiiies a source of congratulation if, 
 with all the elements of personal interest that attaches to kinship, 
 we are able to descend the family tree for four or five generations 
 and count its branches in unbroken succession, but in Canada 
 the system of ret^istration Is so complete that in a sinj^le lifetimt 
 and by one man the herculean tiusk has been accomplished ot 
 writin^^ the t^enealoijy of a whole people. 
 
 The meanest peasant here finds the complete record of his 
 family history, extendini^ back to the ancestor who left his hamlet 
 in the old Prance to seek a home in the wilds of the new France. 
 As one stands before the cases that contain the three hundred 
 maiuLscript volumes of which this remarkable work is composed, 
 each volume labeled, and to all intents and purposes ready for 
 the printer, a feelinjj^ of deep admiration must, I think, arise in 
 one's mind for a people who can leave to posterity such monuments 
 of its individual life. 
 
 This land is thus, throujj^h its numerous and accurately written 
 documents, a veritable Eldorado for the historian, and, as we shall 
 see farther on, these fa\'orable circumstances have developed some- 
 of the finest writers on history that our American Continent has 
 known. 
 
 To the student of lauiTuag^e, also, the.se church documents arc 
 of inestimable worth, as they enable him to follow the tangled 
 threads of dialect infiuence by fixing the original home in the 
 mother country of each family that helps to compose any given 
 community. Fortunately for him, this labor has been shortened 
 for the earliest periods of colonial history in the statistics collected 
 by the celebrated historian, the Abbe Ferland, who has published, 
 as an appendix to his History of Canada, the names and native 
 towns of all the colonists that came to New P" ranee between 1615 
 and 1666 and whose record ispreserved in the registers of Quebec 
 and Three Rivers. This list, supplemented by the invaluable 
 work of the Abbe Tanguay (only one volume is published ), would 
 be sufficient to settle the original Pluropean elements that helped 
 to make up the common Canadian speech. But, before we enter 
 upon a critical examination of this language, it will be necessary 
 to call to mind, as a preliminary to the study, a few leading events 
 of the history, political, religious and social, of Canada ; for hen 
 the historic growth of the people has had an influence on their 
 language stronger than is to be fomid in most other places for 
 which the original population was drawn from one and the same 
 general lijiguistic territory. 
 
The early colonists of Canada came from both North and South 
 France, where in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the 
 dirterences of dialect were more strongly marked than they are 
 to-day ; and then, almost bef(jrethe fusion of these hetcroj)^eneous 
 native elements had taken place, I"Jij>^lish wasbrouj^ht into contact 
 with them, and exerted, particularly in the maritime tlistricts, a 
 permanent effect on both the vocabulary and word-settinj^ of the 
 new compound. The greater alienation from the mother country 
 and the natural race-stru|L(,i>;le that followed the conquest by the 
 Knijlish in 1760 caused all th'^ members of the Gallic stock to 
 unite their forces ay;ainst the common enemy, and this union 
 produced again a strong tendency to uniformity of sjieech, fur- 
 thered by the constant and intimate intercotirse of the people 
 with the clergy, who were generally the bitterest opponents to 
 British rule. Thus the mixture, in the outset, of widely different 
 Neo- Latin elements and the grafting on to these of Teutonic 
 elements maintained by political supremacy, make any investi- 
 gation of the language of Canada — a language common to the 
 whole country and to the whole people, with ve'-y minor excep- 
 tions — to depend, in the first jjlace, upon a general knowledge of 
 those varying historical conditions through which the people ha\e 
 passed t< their well-formed, thoroughly blended and vigorous 
 speech of to-day. 
 
 The Cavalier King of France, F'ran^ois I, had just created the 
 College de France ( 1529) and called about him many of the most 
 celebrated scholars and artists of his age, such as Lascaris, Scaliger, 
 Henvenuto Cellini, Andrea del Sarto and others, when his enter- 
 prising spirit pushed him to take part in the conquests of the New 
 World, opened to Europe by Columbus. The first expedition 
 he sent out, consisting of two small ship^ and sixty odd men, was 
 put into the hands of Jacques Cartier, an intrepid navigator of 
 Saint Malo, situated on the confines of Normandy. Cartier sailed 
 out of the F"rench port St. Malo on April 20, 1534, and after a 
 three months' voyage cast anchor in the Hay of Gasp6. Here 
 for the first time the PVench set foot on American soil, i 
 
 Cartier, after having set up a cross with an inscription charac- 
 teristic ofhisCiallic enthusiasm — Vive le Roide France — returned 
 to his native land to report his success, and came out the following 
 year with an increased force to extend his acquaintance with the 
 
 I It was not till nearly thirty years after this (1562) that the first at- 
 tempt was made by theCalvinists under RsbaiU to form a colony on the 
 coast of Florida. This expedition also came from Normandy (Dieppe). 
 
New World. It was on this second voyage that he discovered 
 the St. Lawrence, and spent the winter on the St. Charles river 
 near its confluence with the St. Lawrence. He returned a.i;:ain 
 to France in the following spring, and his sad winter experiences 
 in these northern latitudes seem to have cooled for the moment 
 the ardor of his desire for discovery, since we hear nothing of him 
 for five years, when he s>ci out on his third expedition with pro- 
 visions for two years. Repeating the hardrhips of his previous 
 sojourn on the American coast, he became discouraged and 
 started for P'rance the next spring, meeting off Newfoundland 
 de Roberval, who had left Rochelle, on the borders of the Sa'nt- 
 onge district, on the i6th of April, with a number of nobles and 
 two hundred emigtants. These composed the first regular set- 
 tlement of F"rench in Canada. With this attempt by de Roberval 
 to form a colony at Charlesbourg, a new and important element 
 is introduced into these projects of French colonization. The 
 Southern French here enter upon the scene, to play henceforth 
 an important role in the commercial enterprises and in the estab- 
 lishment of the language of New France. His first attempt to 
 found a colony having failed, however, de Roberval undertook 
 a second expedition, five years later, but all were lost at sea, and 
 then came a lull for more than a quarter of a century in the in- 
 terest aroused about the French Canadian possessions. Though 
 several expeditions were sent out during this time, it was not until 
 1608, when Quebec was founded by Samuel de Champlain, that 
 a permanent foothold was taken by the F"rench on the Saint 
 Lawrence. The colonists had not yet been able to hold their 
 own against the aborigines. With the latter, especially with the 
 Algonquins and Hurons, Champlain entered into friendly rela- 
 tions, and thus secured for his colony immunity for the most part 
 from those serious annoyances which had beset his predecessors. 
 Three years previously to this (1605), the first firm footing of 
 the F^rench on the American Continent had been taken in their 
 settlement of Port Royal, now Annapolis, in Nova Scotia.' The 
 colonists also who laid the foundation of this town were headed 
 by two noblemen of the South, Sieur de Monts, and the founder 
 of Quebec, de Champlain, both natives of vSaintonge, the F^rench 
 province situated at the mouth of the Gironde river, and to-day 
 forming approximately the Department of Lower Charente. But 
 this was not their first voyage. In 1603, Champlain and a mer- 
 
 I Manhattan river was discovered by Hudson in 1609; in 1625 Dutch 
 colonists were sent to inhabit the island that now bears that name. 
 
chant, Pontjijrave, of Saint Malo, had made, under the diiection 
 of M. de Chates, (lovernor of Diej)pe at that time, a profitable 
 expedition up the St. Lawrence, noting especially the fine harbor 
 of Quebec. A few years earlier still, Sicurde Montshad visited 
 the lower St. Lawrence, and was thus prepared to take the place 
 of de Chates, who had not ^i^oiie on the voyaii^e of 1603 and who 
 died while it was beint^ made. Thus the chief enterpris(.* of be- 
 ginning the colonization of New France finally rested in the 
 hands of two skilful navigators of Southern France. 
 
 The one, de Monts, succeeded in estabrshing the first perma- 
 nent colony at Port Royal, which afterwards drew principally 
 from the South of France for its supplies oi' emigrants ; the other, 
 de Champlain, the " pioneer of civilization in Canada," moved up 
 the river and planted his colony, three years later, near where 
 Cartier spent the memorable winter when he discovered the St. 
 Lawrence. Quebec, thus founded, soon became the capital of 
 Canada, and remained so until 1867. 
 
 Not till about ten years after the choice of this site for a colony 
 ( 1617) did the first family arrive with the intention of cultivating 
 the soil.' This family, named Hebert, was of Ile-de- France 
 origin, and consisted of five members, father, mother, two 
 daughters and one son, who have left numerous descendants 
 scattered throughout different parts of the present Dominion. 
 But there was no rapid influx of colonists from the old country as 
 might have been expected from this prosperous beginning. Only 
 little more than two decades (1629) after the French standard 
 had been planted on the banks of the St. Lawrence, Quebec 
 passed into the hands of the English, its founder was taken 
 prisoner to England, and nearly all the colonists returned to their 
 homes in France. Only five families of what is known to-day as 
 the habitant remained on the land, and one of these was this 
 same Hebert stock just mentioned. 
 
 In 1633, Champlain returned to Canada as Governor-(ieneral. 
 after Canada had been restored to P'rance according to the treaty 
 of Saint Germain-en-Laye, and made special efforts to colonise 
 the country, but at the time of his death, two years later, the 
 whole European population in the colony did not number over 
 two hundred souls. 
 
 The year before Champlain's death, de la Violette had laid the 
 foundations of a new colony ninety miles up the river, where 
 now is situated the town of Three Rivers, and it thus seemed as 
 
 ' Paul de Cazes, Notes sur le Canada, p. 23. 
 
thoujj^h an erp. of prosperity wore openinj;^ for the sorely tried 
 colonists. And a little more than thirty years ( 1642 ) after Cham- 
 plain took possession of the ground where now rises the " (ii- 
 hraltar of America," Paul de Chomedy, Sieur fie Maisonneuve, 
 laid the foundations of Ville Marie de Montreal, where " was 
 planted that ^rain of mustard seed which, in the words of the 
 enthusiastic \'imont (who had come out from the mother coimtry 
 with the expedition and had l)een named Superior of the Jesuits 
 of New France), would soon i^row and overshadow the land." 
 
 In this connection it must be constantly borne in mind th.it, 
 while the first j)ermanent inhabitants of Quebec were fro.ii North 
 France, those of Montreal on the contrary came, for the most 
 part, from the South. Sieur de Maisonneuve, the founder of the 
 latter colony, was from Champajj^ne, it is true ; but of the three 
 vessels that constituted his original expedition, two were fitted 
 out at La Rochelle and one at l^ieppe, and this Dieppe ship 
 contained only about a dozen men. 
 
 Another point worthy of note is that Champlain was sent out 
 by a company whose princi[)al object was to establish commer- 
 cial relations with the Indians, and that the openinii;^ of a new 
 field for the Christian religion was a secondary matter. W^ith 
 Maisonneuve, on the contrary, duty was the guidinjj^ star of 
 life, and in the original name of the city of Montreal we have an 
 indication that the early setdement was the result of religious 
 enthusiasm. " It shows an attempt to found in America a ver- 
 tible Kingdom of Gcd, as understood by devout Roman Cath- 
 olics." ' We must keep steadily in mind also this deep religious 
 sentiment that animated the founders of the French colony in 
 Canada if we wouid understand the extraordinary faith of this 
 people to-day, for nowhere else perhajis has belief a stronger 
 living power than with these our neighbors of the North. ^ It 
 has justly been stated by a recent writer that " a French Cana- 
 dian setdement is founded on religion and democracy. Here 
 exists no caste-distinction when prosperity and wealth attend the 
 thrifty habits of a peasant ; the people are one family, and in 
 this unity lies the secret of their strength as colonists." , Here 
 the A7isrelus continues to solve practically the labor question that 
 is so seriously harassin'g almost all other Christian communities ; 
 
 1 Dawson, Handbook for the Dominion of Canada, pp. 123, 149. 
 Montreal, 1884. 
 
 2 Cf. Johns Hopkins University Circulars, Vol. IV, p. 20. 
 3The Adantic Monthly, XLVIII, p. 778. 
 
here the dictumof the priest or bishop is sufiicieiit in many places 
 to make the peo|)le tore^jo the pleasures of the dance and other 
 innocent amusements ; here is the land of miracles, where the 
 earnest, faithful pilijrim, whether halt or blind, is restored to the 
 full vi^or of his bodily functions imdcr the (juickeninj^ enerj^y of 
 some saint; where the rich and the pt)or, the well and the sick 
 riock by tens of thousands to holy shrines to receive the rewards 
 of their piety in i^reater personal comfort or in other temporal 
 blessinj^s. , The necessity thus arises for the clerjj^y to mix con- 
 stantly with the masses, and this intercourse has a direct antl 
 notable intluence upon the speech, both of the priest and of 
 the people. . 
 
 If we now ask how many were the colonists and of what par- 
 ticular Departments of France were they native up to the estab- 
 lish:nent of this third colonial centre on the Saint Lawrence, we 
 tind that, at the time of the restoration of Quebec to France, in 
 accordance with the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, the colony 
 did not count more than sixty members, and there were only 
 four families regularly domiciled in the country. In the month 
 of March 1633, Champlain, on his return to power after the 
 treaty just mentioned, set sail from Dieppe with about two hun- 
 dred persons all told. How many of these remained in the 
 country we arc not informed, but the re.i^isters of Quebec show 
 only about seventy-five names up to the year (1641) before 
 Maisonneuve established his colony. Of these, fifty-five, or 
 more than two-thirds, were from the two provinces of Normaridy 
 and Perche ; while other provinces of the North, such as Picardy, 
 Ile-de- France, Bretagne, etc., only furnished two or three col- 
 onists each. Saintonge, Poitou and Aunis (whence Roberval's 
 expedition set out), that had furnished the chief supply for the 
 Port Royal settlement in the Fast ( Acadia), are here scarcely 
 represented.^ In the final establishment of these three centres 
 of colonial development on the Saint Lawrence, Quebec, Three 
 Rivers and Montreal, we have, therefore, the spread of linguistic 
 elements that were drawn chiefly from the North-French dialects. 
 From this epoch forward we note the influx, through the influence 
 
 « 
 
 I I joined one of these pilgrimages which nimibercd about six 
 thousand people, and saw a wonder performed in the restoration of a 
 boy to health who had withered legs due to the effects of a fever, and 
 who had not walked for eleven years. 
 
 2Ferland, Cours d'Histoire du Canada, Premiere Partie, 1534-16C3, 
 .\ppendix C, p. 511. 
 
8 
 
 especially of the Montreal settlement, of Southern- French ele- 
 ments iis represented by the Saintonjje, Aunis and Poitou immi- 
 j^ra ts that si)read throajj^hout the province. 
 
 For the next cjuarter of a century there is a jjreat increase of 
 the population from the North, and the Southern additions to it 
 have also been considerable, but n(/t sufficient, however, to have 
 any marked effect upon the jjeneral speech of the people. In 
 the North, Normandy, again, has furnished the chief installment 
 of colonists; in truth, more than d(»uble that of any other De- 
 partment of France, while, for the South, Aunis has contributed 
 the larjfest share of emigrants. The total supply as drawn from 
 the whole of North France is more than Jive times as great as 
 that furnished by South France during this short period. It is 
 evident, therefore, that, for the linguistic territory representing 
 the middle St. Lawrence, we must look especially for Northern 
 French characteristics, for all the early period of settlement of 
 the country. These traits of Northern V rench speech, blended 
 and re-worked by clergy and people, have produced the com- 
 pound which we shall have to examine farther on. We shall 
 find, very naturally, traces of South French influence here and 
 there, but these cannot be reckoned as a seriously disturbing 
 element, not even where the regular Canadian French language 
 comes into contact with speech-oases consisting of Southern 
 French dialects, used in a few scattered villages of Acadians, 
 such as St. (ir^goire, B^cancourt, etc., that are situated on the 
 south of the St. Lawrence, opposite Three Rivers and thus fall 
 in the middle zone of the territory examined. 
 
 With the first conquest ( 1629) of Canada by the English 
 (Quebec then meant Canada), not only was a check given to 
 immigration, but, as we have seen, the great majority of those 
 who had settled in New France returned to their native country. 
 After the restoration of Canada to France, as noted above, the 
 current again set in from the mother country, and continued to 
 flow uninterruptedly till another break came by foreign occupation 
 in 1760. It is true that the first interruption was only temporary, 
 but in the nascent state of the colony at that time it was destined 
 to set back the growth of French influence on the St. Lawrence 
 for many years. We thus see that in Canada, for a little more 
 than a century and a quarter, the F" rench were left to themselves, 
 and by natural increase and constant immigration their number 
 had increased from the half-dozen families after the restoration 
 in 1632, to about sixty thousand souls at the conquest in 1760. 
 
 
We hiive noticed vvh:»t a lon;^ series of ineffectual attempts fol- 
 lowed the discovery of the St. Lawrence in 1535, before a final 
 permanent settle.iient was made on its borders three quarters ot 
 ;i century later (160S); in truth, fir at least one hundred and 
 fii'ty years after the discovery of the country the ijrowth of the 
 p.)pulation was almost nuthinjj^. It was particularly the two or 
 three generations ])reced nj^ the concpiest. that is, durinj^ the last 
 <| larter of the sixteenth century and in the first half of the 
 seventeenth century, that the i;erms were securely planted in 
 Cmada for the developnent of a stable and important Krencli 
 p()])ulation. By natural increase and by immigration the rapid 
 )L,'rowth of the colony was assured, and yet when the Lnci^l sh 
 came to cut off suddenly this continued development from out- 
 side sources the colony numbered a few tens of thousands only, 
 h.imii^ration from the native land then ceased, and since that 
 d ite the country has had to depend on its own resources for in- 
 crease of population. This increase must appear phenomenal 
 when we remember that durinj; the last century and a (juarter 
 the numbers have ^rown to be more than thirty-three times what 
 they were when inimij^ration ceased, that is, the French people 
 of Canada and their immediate ofTsprinjj now number about two 
 millions, includin^j the half a million who have settled in the 
 I'nited States. 
 
 It was then, during the century that immediately preceded the 
 introduction of English rule into Canada, that the I'Vench element 
 rapidly developed, not only from the .sources within itself, but also 
 from immigration from the mother country, whence a strong 
 current was pouring in to swell the colonial material. '1 he sur- 
 render to the English of the city of Quebec on Sept. 18, 1760, 
 gave the final blow to French domination on the American Con- 
 tinent. This is a date to be kept in mind, as it brings in the 
 third linguistic element hinted at above, which henceforth is to 
 e.xercise an important influence on certain parts of the language 
 territory already covered by the I'rench. The speech of the 
 lattter had remained pure, for the most part, up to this time. 
 Though the Indian population in Canada amounted to many 
 thousand souls, they were separated into so numerous tribes and 
 tribal divisions that their dialects have had almost no sensible 
 effect on the French grammar, and have contributed here and 
 there only a few words to the original French vocabulary. Now 
 that the English was introduced and supported by official au- 
 thority, in addition to that natural mixture of native French di- 
 
lO 
 
 alectsthat would come about by commercial intercourse, we have 
 a second foreij^n element, whose disturbintj influence is especially 
 felt in the maritime districts where the British principally 
 settled. 
 
 In 1653, fifty years after the arrival on the coast of Acadia 
 (Novia Scotia) of the first French colonists in America, the total 
 population of Canada did not surpass 2500 inhabitants of Eu- 
 ropean origin.' When the first census was taken a dozen years 
 later, it was found that, throughout the territory occupied by the 
 French, there were only 538 families, representing 32 1 5 inhabitants. 
 A hundred and fifty years had elapsed since the first settlement 
 in Acadia ( 1604), and the total French element amounted (1754) 
 to only about 55,000 souls, and on the formal cession of Canada 
 to England in accordance with the Treaty of Paris a decade after 
 this ( 1763), the white population was counted at scarcely 65,000 
 souls. With this occupation of the country by the British there 
 was naturally a great influ.x of F^nglish into the newly acquired 
 possessions, so that, when the first census was taken by the Eng- 
 lish government five years (1765) after the fall of Quebec, the 
 population had increased with surprising rapidity, marking an 
 increment of about twenty thousand on the numbers they had 
 found in the land, and ten years later (1775) again, the population 
 had reached ninety thousand, or an average growth of two per- 
 sons per annum since the occupation. In these fifteen years, 
 then, we find the population had increased by about one-third, 
 and the new element that had been poured into it was Eng- 
 lish.2 The PVench were restricted to natural development within 
 themselves, since the conquest was the signal, as we have noted, 
 for all immigration from France to cease. In order to exercise a 
 better control over the discordant elements, arising from difference 
 of race, the English government divided the colony in 1791 into 
 two divisions, Upper and Lower Canada. The whole colony at 
 this time counted a hundred and thirty-five thousand inhabitants, 
 , of whom about fifteen thousand were English, and of this English 
 population Upper Canada had ten thousand only. It was about 
 . this time, too, /. e. between 1784-90, that the population of Mon- 
 ; treal began to surpass that of Quebec. The former counted 
 18,000, the latter 14,000 inhabitants. Towards the beginning of 
 the present century ( 1806) the relation of Lower to Upper Canada 
 in point of population was about three and one-half to one, and 
 
 , I)e Cazes, Notes sur le Canada, p. 81. 
 
 2 1)e Cazes, Notes sur le Canada, p. 62 ; ibidem, p. 85. 
 
II 
 
 it was not till the middle of the century that we have the balance 
 turned in favor of Upper Canada. In 1861 Upper Canada had 
 ijone ahead of its sister by nearly three hundred thousand, and 
 this superiority in numbers }^ave, of course, to the Knj^^lish-speak- 
 ing element a great advantage over the French, in that the legis- 
 lative representation was based upon the population. The Act 
 of Confederation in 1867, three-quarters of a century after the 
 division of the colony, put an end to the struggle between the two 
 sections, in that it gave to each independence with reference to 
 everything that pertains to questions of local administration. 
 
 The province of Quebec counts now 254,841 families, composed 
 of 678,175 men and 689,852 women. From this it will be seen 
 that the population of men and women is about the same, and 
 that the average to each family is more than five members.' Large 
 families, in truth, are the rule everywhere. Mr. Ouimet, the 
 present able Superintendent of Public Instruction for the Province 
 of Quebec, is the twenty -sixth child in his family, and it is a most 
 common thin*^ to find families of twenty-five to thirty children by 
 the same mother. A race, whether of the Latin or of any other 
 stock, which has been known to celebrate .fourteen golden 
 weddings at one time in a single parish is not likely ever to be 
 anglicised or stamped out by royal edicts. Ikit this proKficness 
 is the simple continuance of a state of things that was encouraged 
 by the early colonisers and rulers of the province, Colbert pro- 
 vided the colonist with a wife and did everything in his power to 
 encourage large families by royal premiums. A royal gratuity 
 of twenty francs was given to young men who married at twenty 
 years or under, and to girls who found husbands before they 
 were sixteen. It was no uncommon thing in these early days for 
 tlie united ages of the bride and groom to fall short of thirty years. 
 A premium of three hundred francs was awarded to parents with 
 ten living children, and of four hundred to those who had twelve 
 children.. 
 
 As a natural effect of this rapid increase in population, we find 
 a gradual uprooting of the weaker race in point of numbers, that 
 is, the English. Nor is it to the west alone, as with the people 
 of the United .States, that the French race is spreading. Masters 
 of the lower St. Lawrence, they are daily penetrating farther and 
 firther to the east and south. In four counties of New Bruns- 
 
 I Paul de Cazes, Notes sur le Canada, p. 91. 
 2 The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XLVIII, p. 773. 
 
 I 
 
12 
 
 wick : Victoria, Ristigouche, (jloucester and Kent, they already 
 have more than ten thousand majority. 
 
 Repatriation societies have been estabHshed, and are actively 
 at work to brinu; back those who have gone forth to seek new 
 homes in the United States. Thousands of good, thrifty citizens 
 ha\'e thus been restored to their native stock, whose force they 
 materially increase in the determined race struggle that is now- 
 going on in Canada. One of the principal centres of this species 
 of colonization is Shcrbrook, established as a diocese in 1874 for 
 Mgr. Racine ( Anloine), formerly of Quebec, the initiator of this 
 important movement. Two decades ago Sherbrook w'as a small 
 Engl'sh village (jf no importance whatever ; it now numbers, 
 through the efforts of the Repatriation Society, nearly eight 
 thousand inhaljitants, of whom more than three-fourths are French. 
 It is no wonder, then, in view of these facts, that some enthusi- 
 astic French writers should liave proclaimed the superiority of 
 Franco-Canadian colonization over that of the English. VVhere- 
 ever the Canadian l*"renchman setdes he clings to the soil, never 
 abandoning h.s foothold, and eventually assimilates his brother 
 colon. St of Anglo .Saxon blood, unless the latter withdraws en- 
 tirely and gives up his home to the all-absorbing Ciaul. 
 
 The French po[)ulation now ©ccupies seven-eights of Lower 
 C^anada. The Fnglish element, after a hard fight, has virtually 
 renounced the struggle to hold the province, and, discouraged, 
 has ret red or is rapidly retiring from th's part of the field. The 
 wonderfully absorbing power ot the PVench element has here 
 produced the curious phenomenon of a people, in certain parts 
 of the country, who bear all the racial characteristics of the Fng- 
 lish or Scotch, such as the blue eyes, light hair, florid fices, and 
 who have the name of Warren, Fraser, McDonald, McPherson, 
 etc., but also are still unable to speak a word of the mother 
 ton<:;ue. The Fnglish names of roads, of towns, of counties, 
 gi\'e abundant proof of who were the occupants of the soil a few- 
 years ago. To-day it is the otil^sping of the Ciallic stock that 
 poisess the land. Their unswerving purpose, encouraged by 
 (he clergy, 's to take back their old domains by the peaceful pro- 
 cess of repop jlating them with descendants of their own blood, and, 
 at the jjresent rate of increase, we may safely predict that it will 
 not be many generations before they shall have accomplished 
 this unicjuc feat. 
 
 At -Montreal the French element is progressing apace. Though 
 the population (about t)ne hundred and fifty thousand) is here 
 
13 
 
 pretty nearly balanced between the French, on the one hand, and 
 different race elements, such as Enj>^l!sh, Scotch, Irish, etc., on 
 the other, yet the number of children is more than double in 
 favor of the Gaul, being as 65:32 of all other nat'onaKt'es. It is 
 evident, therefore, that in a tew generations, if this condition of 
 things continues, the I'Vench will be in an (nerwhelming ma- 
 jority." If we pass a little farther to the west we find that two 
 counties of Upper Canada, Russell and Prescott, have already 
 fallen into the hands of the I'Vench, and they number now more 
 than a hundred thou.sand souls in this province. But nowhere 
 else, perhaps, is the spread of the (jallic race n.ore marked than 
 in the town of Otyf)wa, Capital of the Do!iiinion. Here, after (Xy 
 hardly a dozen years of exii tence, the town began to turn French. 
 so that now it is more I'rench than Fnglish. The habitant, 
 having thus crossed the line between I'pper and Lower Canada, 
 is marching westward through the counties mentioned above, and 
 northward up the valley of the Ottowa river. He has planted 
 settlements in the fertile prairie region of the Saskatchewan, a 
 river that affords 1500 miles of steamboat navigation. The com- 
 paratively new English settlements of the eastern townships are 
 being overrun. "Somerset becomes Saint"- Morisette ; Stamfold, 
 Sainte-P'olle ; Doultoh, Bouton ; as parish after parish is invaded 
 by the race which England thought she had effaced on the Plains 
 of Abraham. They have swarined over the boundary between 
 Canada and the United States, and the sixty-five thousand peas- 
 ants left to shift for the i..selves in the abandoned colony that 
 V^oltaire described as ' a few arpents of snow ' have increased to 
 so great a degree out of their own loins that now ' the land is 
 filled with them.' "^ It has been very properly suggested, with 
 reference to them, that " if at this present time the French race 
 manifests a vitality in Canada as mysterious to its enemies as to 
 the P'rench of the France to-day, it is because of the imperish- 
 able power of the self sacrifice and heroism of so many of those 
 men, laymen as well as clerics, who planted the standard of I-Vance 
 on the shores of the St. Lawrence." • 
 
 An in.portant feature of external influence upon the language 
 must be noted in the seigniorial tenure which prevailed for about 
 two centuries and a half throughout Lower Canada. Th's feudal 
 inst tLition of France, which was introduced into the new country 
 in order to favor colonization, with the various modifications that 
 
 : C f. Lci CoiTcspondant, 1877, p. 292. 
 2.\llantic Monllily, \ ol. XLX'lIl, p. 771. 
 
H 
 
 were wrought in it to suit local usages, proved to be an admirable 
 system for the creation of a peasant proprietary. The seigneurs 
 were generally the second sons of noble families, who chose the 
 Letter class of peasants to accompany them to their homes in 
 America, and here each ruler laid out on the river his little kingdom, 
 generally one-half by three leagues in dimensions, and as he was 
 compelled to lease and sell, his own private estate thus never 
 became excessively large. His land was divided among his col- 
 onists in concessions of three by thirty arpents. This arrange- 
 ment produced a series of centres of civilization in which the 
 lord and his educated friends were brought into intimate contact 
 with the common people ; in truth, we have abundant evidence 
 to show that the relation of the seigneur to his people was much 
 more intimate in these early settlements of Canada than in the 
 mother country. But it was not the siegneurs alone who belonged, 
 for the most part, to the highest nobility. Mgr. de Laval-Mont- 
 morency, H^shop of Petraea, was sent to Canada to fill the office 
 of Apostolic Vicar. He was the first Bishop of Quebec, after 
 whom the celebrated University Laval of Quebec was named in 
 1854, and was of pure Montmorency blood ; ladies of rank and 
 fortune were the founders and patrons of the first religious estab- 
 Hshments in the country, among which were the Hotel-Dieu at 
 Quebec, established by the Duchess d'Aiguillon, and the Convent 
 of the Ursulines, founded by Madame de la Peltrie, a beautiful 
 young widow of Alen9on. The governors and other state officers 
 were of the highest nobility. It is not strange therefore, consid- 
 ering these circumstances, that the effects of association with 
 persons of the best culture should have remained in the manners 
 of the halit.xnt up to this day. He had, both from the side ot 
 the clergy and from that of his rulers, a marked advantage over 
 his brother at home, and his speech bears especial traces of this 
 influence in its near approach, in word-supply and construction, 
 to the literary language of that age. 
 
 After the conquest by the English (1760), several thousand 
 colonists, mostly siegneurs and their families, returned to France, 
 but the feudal tenure was continued down to 1854, when it was 
 abolished at a cost of several millions of dollars to the United 
 Provinces. A few years before the abolition of the seigniorial 
 title, statistics show th.it more than two hundred seigneurs ex- 
 isted in the country. Thus was extinguished an institution that 
 had been formally established in 1627, when by royal charter the 
 rule of the colony was vested in the Hundred Associates. This 
 
15 
 
 long contlnurxnce of a system thai directly and unce'.is'.n;;ly af- 
 fected the life of the habitant must naturally leave strong and 
 indelible traces on his character, and almost equally marked 
 effects upon his language. By the departure of the nobles, as 
 just noted, the line of demarcation between the upper and lower 
 elements of society became much less stable, and y!l classes were 
 more thoroughly mixed than they had ever been before. r>esides 
 this we must remember that the colonists were facing a com non 
 enemy, and a union of their interests was a necessity. Thus 
 originated that unity of feeling which has been fostered among 
 the F"rench people of Canada in all their fierce struggles for more 
 extensive privileges and better protected rights, and thus it is too 
 that the several attempts to deprive them of their dearest heritage, 
 their religion and their language, have been utter failures. For 
 the last century and a quarter the French nationality of Canada 
 has grouped itself about the clergy, who have always been its 
 most energetic defenders. " The history of the priesthood is the 
 history of the country." At the time the English concjuercd 
 Canada, elementary instruction was chiefly in the hands of the 
 Jesuits, with whom it remained up to 1800, when their property 
 was confiscated by the Government, the parish schools were 
 closed, and it was not until 1 841 that the church got back into 
 her power the primary education of the people. The crusade, in 
 this case, against Catholic instruction was carried to so great an 
 extreme that the influence of the clergy was declared to be sub- 
 \ersive of all established government. The clergy, however, 
 ever faithful to their mission as the guardians and educators of 
 youth, not only held to their rights, but pushed the principle of 
 separate schools until they triumphed in 1863, and novv- the 
 Catholics have their instruction separate from the Protestants 
 throughout Lower Canada. 
 
 The plan of work here carried out in collecting material for a 
 treatment of the French language of Canada was to select cer- 
 Itain localities that would serve as bases to move from. These 
 were convenient in this case, as the ends of the linguistic line 
 chosen and its middle point were also the original settlements 
 established on it, that is, Montreal, Three Rivers and Quebec, 
 which I took as so many natural centres of growth, and worked 
 out towards the circumference or limits of the region examined, 
 extending back in some cases to more than fifty miles from the 
 LSt. Lawrence river. Beginning with the west I moved east, cov- 
 lering the main peculiarities of language in the valley of the St. 
 
i6 
 
 Lawrence front Montreal to Quebec. To the west of iMontreal, 
 as far as Ottqwa, I was able to collect a few data bearinjj; upon 
 the i;Tadaal mixture of the French and English ; to the east of 
 Ouebec my observations were extended to a few points on thu 
 north side of the river down as far as the small villa;,''e St. T.tc. 
 about forty miles distant The distance oetween the two extrenes 
 of th's working line measures exactly one hundred and ei'^hty 
 miles, and will doubtless appear to those unacquainted with th*.- 
 linj^uistic territory as far too extensive to be characterized w th 
 even a moderate degree of accuracy. To this doubt I must reply 
 that, acting the part of pioneer, my chief object was to gather! 
 the leading features of the language, and thus establish the n.ain j 
 local characteristics which are necessary to be known before in- 
 dividual centres can be worked out with profit. In doing th's, to| 
 my great surprise, I found a uniformity of speech for this whole 
 district which must impress, as little less than wonderful, every 
 one who has been accustomed to note the great and often puzzlngj 
 differences of idiom that exist in European countries. The causes! 
 that produced this sameness of word-form and expression arc 
 often complex, as will be seen when we come to the treatment ol| 
 different parts of the language. The social and political influences, 
 religious and race antipathies, glanced at above, have done much] 
 to we!d together the otherwise discordant elements of this popu 
 lation and produce a homogeneousness that is truly characteristicj 
 if we consider the variety of elements that constituted the original 
 native society. Their effects are easily traceable in the coni-j 
 munity of language of the habiljiU and the city bred, of thej 
 uneducated and the learned.