The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1886-09-29
THE FRENCH IN CANADA.
How They Are Rapidly Gcttirg Back
Their Old Domain.

Inetr Otu DOmatns
Large families are the rule everywhere.
NJ. Ouimet, the present able superintendent
of public instructions for the Province of
Quebec, is the twenty-sixth child of his
family, and It is most common thing to find
families of twenty five to thirty children by
the same mother. A race, whether of the
Latin or any other stock, which has been
known to celebrate fourteen golden we'd
dings at one time in single parish, is not
likely even TO be anglicized or stamped out
by royal edicts. But this prolifcness is the
imple continuance Of state of things thai
was encouraged by the early colonizers and
rulers of the province. Colbert provided
the eolonist with 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
1t was no uncommon thing in these early
days for the united ages of the bride and
groom to fall short of thirty years. a
premium of three hundred francs was
awarded to persons with ten living children,
and of four hundred to those who had twelve
children. As natural effect of this rapid
increase in population, we find gradual
uprooting of the weaker race in point of
numbers, that is, the English. Nor is ii to
he West alone, as with the people
IF the United States, that the French
race Is spreading. Masters of the lower st.
Lawrence, they are daily penetrating farther
and farther to the east and south. In four
countries of New Brunswick Victoria, Ris-
tigouehe, Gloucester aud Kent--they already
have more than ten thousand majority.
Repatriation societies have been established,
and are at work to bring back those who
have gone forth to seek new homes in the
United States. Thousands of good, thrifty
citizens have thus been restored to their
native stock, whose force they materially in
crease in the determined race struggle that
is now going on in Canada.
At Montreal the French element Is pro
crossing apace. Though the population
{about one.hundred and fifty thousand) ii
here pretty nearly balanced between the
race elements, such as the English, Scotch,
Irish &C., ON the other yet the number of
children is more than double in favor of the
Gaul, being rs 65. 80 of oil the other nation
alities. Il is evident, therefore, that in n
few generations, if this condition of things
continues, the French will be in an over
| whelming majority. If we pass little
| further down TO the west, we find that two
counties of Upper Canada, Russell and
Prescott, have already fallen into the hands
Of the French, and they number now more
than one hundred thousand souls in thi
province.
But nowhere else, perhaps, is the spreat
of the Gallic more marked than in the town
of Ottawa, capital of the Dominion. Here,
after hardly dozen years of existence, the
town began to turn French, 30 that now IL is
more French than English. The habitant,
having thus crossed the line between Upper
and Lower Canada, is marching westward
through the counties mentioned above, hnt
northward up the valley of the Ottawa River
lie has planted settlements in the fertile
prairie region of the Saskatchewan riyei
that affords 500 miles of steamboat nay
CATION. The comparatively few Englisl
settlements of the eastern townships ar,
being oyerun. Parish after parish is invaded
by the race which England thought she had
effaced on the plains of Abraham. They
have swarmed over the boundary between
Canada and the United States and the sixty
five thousand peasants left to shift for them
selves in the abandoned colony that Yoltaire
described as few arpents of snow have in
creased to SO great degree out Of their own
loins that now tho land is filed with
them.'" 1t has been very properly sugges-
ted, with reference to them, that " if at this
present time the French race manifests a
vitality in Canada as mysterious to its enc
mics as TO the Frenchmen of tho France of
to-day, 1t is because of the imperishablc
power of the self-sacrifice and heroism of SO
many men, laymen as well as clerics, who
planted the standard of France ON the shores
of the st. Lawrence.