CHAPTER X
AGRICULTURE, INDUSTRY, AND TRADE
It was the royal desire that New France should some day become a
powerful and prosperous agricultural colony, providing the motherland
with an acceptable addition to its food supply. To this end large
tracts of land were granted upon most liberal terms to incoming
settlers, and every effort was made to get these acres cultivated.
Encouragement and coercion were alike given a trial. Settlers who did
well were given official recognition, sometimes even to the extent of
rank in the _noblesse_. On the other hand those who left their lands
uncleared were repeatedly threatened with the revocation of their
land-titles, and in some cases their holdings were actually taken
away. From the days of the earliest settlement down to the eve of the
English conquest, the officials of both the Church and the State
never ceased to use their best endeavors in the interests of colonial
agriculture.
Yet with all this official interest and encouragement agricultural
development was slow. Much of the land on both the north and the south
shores of the St. Lawrence was heavily timbered, and the work of
clearing proved tedious. It was estimated that an industrious settler,
working by himself, could clear not more than one superficial _arpent_
in a whole season. So slowly did the work make progress, in fact, that
in 1712, after fifty years of royal paternalism, the cultivable area
of New France amounted to only 150,000 _arpents_, and at the close
of the French dominion in 1760 it was scarcely more than twice that
figure,--in other words, about five _arpents_ for each head of
population.
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