JOHN NAIRNE, SEIGNEUR OF MURRAY BAY
Colonel Nairne's portrait.--His letters.--The first Scottish
settlers at Malbaie.--Nairne's finance.--His tasks.--The curé's
work.--The Scottish settlers and their French wives.--The Church
and Education.--Nairne's efforts to make Malbaie Protestant.--His
war on idleness.--The character of the habitant.--Fishing at
Malbaie.--Trade at Malbaie.--Farming at Malbaie.--Nairne's
marriage.--Career and death in India of Robert Nairne.--The Quebec
Act and its consequences for the habitant.
In the dining room of the Manor House at Murray Bay Nairne's portrait
still hangs. It was painted, probably in Scotland, when he was an old
man, by an artist, to me unknown. The face is refined, showing
kindliness and gentleness in the lines of the mouth, and revealing the
"friendly honest man" that he aspired to be. His nose is big and in
spite of the prevailing gentleness of demeanour the thin lips, pressed
together, indicate some vigour of character. He has the watery eye of
old age and this takes away somewhat from the impression of energy. It
is not a clever face but honest, rather sad, and unmistakeably Scottish
in type. Nairne wears the red coat of the British officer and a wig in
the fashion of the time. The portrait might be one of a frequenter of
court functions in London rather than that of a hardy pioneer at Murray
Bay, who had carried on a stern battle with the wilderness.
Nairne was a good letter writer. To his kin in Scotland he sent from the
beginning voluminous annual epistles. They are not such as we now write,
hurriedly scratched off in a few minutes. With abundant time at his
disposal Nairne could write what must have occupied many days. When
written, the letters were sometimes copied in a book almost as large as
an office ledger. It is well that this was done, for in this book is
preserved almost the sole record of the life at Murray Bay of a century
and a half ago. The pages are still fresh and the handwriting, while not
that of one much accustomed to use the pen, is clear and vigorous. The
zeal for copying letters was intermittent. There are gaps, covering many
years. Then, for a time, not only the letters sent, but those received,
are copied into the book. In the long winter evenings there was not much
to do. Malcolm Fraser, it is true, lived just across the river at the
neighbouring manor house. But Malcolm was more usually away than not.
Besides, as one grows older, there is no place like one's own fireside
of a winter evening. So our good seigneur read and dozed and wrote and
we are grateful that he has told us so much about past days.
Nairne's first visit to Malbaie was, as we have seen, in the autumn of
1761, when he took possession of his seigniory. Not until the following
year was the formal grant made by Murray. Long afterwards, in 1798,
writing to a friend, Hepburn, in Scotland, Nairne recalled his arrival
at his future home. "I came here first in 1761 with five soldiers [alas,
we do not know their names!] and procured some Canadian servants. One
small house contained us all for several years and [we] were separated
from every other people for about eighteen miles without any road." He
contrasts this with what he sees about him at the time of writing--a
parish with more than five hundred inhabitants, with one hundred men
capable of bearing arms, grist mills, fisheries, good houses and barns,
fertile fields, a priest, a chapel, and so on. The five soldiers of whom
Nairne speaks were no doubt men of the 78th Highlanders and ancestors of
a goodly portion of the population of Malbaie at the present time.
Perhaps some of them had fought at Culloden; certainly all fought at
Louisbourg and Quebec.
In the first days at Murray Bay Nairne was in debt. In 1761, probably to
purchase his captaincy, he had incurred a considerable obligation to his
friend General Murray; where Murray got £400 to lend him is a mystery,
for he was himself always pressed for funds. With everything to do at
Murray Bay, mills to be built, roads to be opened, a manor house to be
constructed, it was not easy to get together any money; for years the
debt hung like a mill-stone round Nairne's neck. But he had always a
certain, if small, revenue in his half pay and, in time, he acquired,
chiefly by inheritance, what was, for that period in Canada, a
considerable fortune. In 1766, when Nairne was in Scotland, General
Murray, who had himself just arrived from Canada, wrote urgently to ask
for payment. Murray owed to a Mr. Ross £8,000 and could not borrow one
shilling in England on his estates in Canada; so he said "delay will be
a very terrible disappointment to me." But this disappointment he had to
bear. In 1770 the debt was still unpaid and may have remained so for
some years longer. Happily the friendship between the former comrades
was not impaired by their financial relations. Murray promised to put
Nairne in the way of being "very comfortable and easy" in Canada, if he
would follow his advice, but nothing came of his offer. For some years
after 1761 Nairne thought of returning to Scotland, whither ties of kin
drew him strongly. But his father's death in 1766 or 1767 helped to
weaken these ties. In any case Scotland offered no career and he must do
something to pay the debt to Murray and to provide for himself.
Nairne's chief task as seigneur was to put settlers on his huge tract.
The seigneur, indeed, discharged functions similar to those of a modern
colonization company, but with differences that in some respects favour
the older system. Now-a-days the occupier buys the land and the
colonization company gets the best possible price for what it has to
sell; it can hold for a rise in value and, if it likes, can refuse to
sell at all. Nairne had no such powers. Under the law, if a reputable
person applied for land, he must let him have it. Settlers required no
capital to buy their land, and, as long as they paid their merely
nominal rent, they could not be disturbed in their holdings. The rent
amounted to about one cent an acre, and some twenty cents or a live
capon for each of the two or three arpents of frontage which a farm
would have. The rent charge was uniform and depended not upon the
quality of the land or upon the individual seigneur but upon what was
usual in the district; moreover, under the French law, no matter how
valuable the land became, the rent could not be increased and, though so
trifling, it was rarely required until the settler's farm had begun to
be productive. Sometimes in a single year Nairne would put as many as
twenty brawny young fellows on his land to hew out homes for themselves.
Each of them got a tract of about one hundred acres and, as the annual
rental received for a dozen farms would be hardly more than twenty
dollars, the seigneur reaped no great profit from his tenants. It was
only when a tenant sold a holding, that the seigneur secured any
considerable sum. To him then went one-twelfth of the price. The other
chief source of profit, as settlement increased, was from the
seigneur's mill. To it all the occupiers of his land must bring their
grain and pay a fixed charge for its grinding. In scattered settlements
the mill brought little profit and was a source of expense rather than
of income. But, as population increased, this "_droit de banalité_"
became valuable. The mill at Malbaie was, in time, very prosperous.
In Canada the seigneur was not the oppressor of his people but rather
their watchful guardian. He planned roads and other improvements,
checked abuses, and enforced justice. At his side stood, usually, the
priest. The moment a parish was established a curé was entitled to the
tithe; near every manor house, the village church was sure to spring up.
Even when, as at Malbaie, the priest and the seigneur were not of the
same faith they were often fast friends. Nairne's relations were good
with the neighbouring curé, when, at length, Malbaie had a resident
priest. Each village would thus usually have at least two men of some
culture working together for its spiritual and temporal interests. Both
remained in touch with the outside world; the priest with his bishop at
Quebec, the seigneur with the representative there of the sovereign.
Upon each change of governor Nairne was required to appear at Quebec to
render fealty and homage. With head uncovered and wearing neither sword
nor spur he must kneel before the governor, and take oath on the
Gospels to be faithful to the king, to be party to nothing against his
interests, to perform all the duties required by the terms of his
holding, and, especially, to appear in arms to defend the province if
attacked. We find Nairne excused by General Haldimand in 1781 from
discharging this ceremony, but only because he was away on active
service.
When Nairne settled at Murray Bay he was unmarried and so, no doubt,
were the soldiers he brought with him. Only after five or six years did
he himself find a wife but we may be sure that his men did not wait so
long. What more natural than that they should marry the French Canadian
servants of whom Nairne speaks? A visitor at Murray Bay is struck with
names like McNicol, Harvey, Blackburn, McLean, and one or two others
that have a decidedly North British ring. Some, if not all, are names of
one or other of the half dozen soldiers who settled at Murray Bay in
Nairne's time. There was no disbanding there of a regiment, as tradition
has it. In time the 78th Highlanders were disbanded, but certainly not
at Murray Bay, and, though hundreds of them remained in Canada, only a
few individual soldiers came to Nairne's settlement. Already when he
arrived French Canadians were there and from the first the community was
prevailingly French and Catholic. In 1784 when joined with Les
Eboulements and Isle aux Coudres under a single priest Malbaie already
had 65 communicants. As likely as not some even of the Highlanders were
Catholics. In any case their children became such and spoke French, the
tongue of their mothers; even Nairne's own children spoke only French
until they went to Quebec to school.
When, from time to time, a missionary priest visited the place he
baptized children of Catholic and Protestant alike, including even the
children of the Protestant family in the manor house. The only religious
services that the people ever shared in were those of the Roman Catholic
Church. Nairne would have wished it otherwise. He held sturdy Protestant
views, and wished to bring in Protestant settlers. On one or more of his
visits to Scotland he made efforts to induce Scots to move to Canada.
But he met with no great success. A Scottish friend, Gilchrist, who had
visited Nairne at Murray Bay, writes, in 1775, to express hope that he
will not encourage French settlers who will rob him, who have
"disingenuous, lying, cheating, detestable dispositions," and are the
"banes of society." He adds, "I am glad you give me reason to believe
you are to carry over some industrious honest people from hence with
you. I am convinced 'twere easy by introducing a few such [to bring
about that] the dupes to the most foolish and absurd religion now in the
world might be warmed out and your quiet as well as interest established
from Point au Pique to the Lake."[7] The Roman Catholic faith had more
vitality than Nairne's correspondent supposed. It was Protestantism that
should in time be "warmed out" of Murray Bay.
To prevent this Nairne did what he could; for a long time he entertained
hopes not only that the Protestants at Murray Bay might be held to their
faith but also that the Roman Catholics would be led into the Protestant
fold. His chief complaint against the Roman Catholic Church was in
regard to education. There was woeful ignorance. Nairne was in command
of the local militia and he found that officers of militia, and even a
neighbouring seigneur, could not read. When Roman Catholic services were
held at Murray Bay, as they were regularly before he died, the tongue
was one that the people did not understand. At the services there was
nothing "but a few lighted candles, in defyance of the sun, and the
priest singing and reading Latin or Greek.... None of us understands a
word." He complains of "the greatest deficiency in preaching sentiments
of morality and virtue." Indeed, very few of the priests could preach or
say anything in public beyond the Latin mass. Nairne tried to secure
better means of educating his people. Probably earlier also, but
certainly in 1791, he was writing to the Anglican Bishop of Quebec to
help him to do something. He lives, he says, in "the most Northerly and,
I believe, the poorest parish on the Continent of America." The people
cannot read and have no literary amusement. Their idle days they spend
in drunkenness and debauchery and he wishes something done for them. Ten
years later Nairne is returning to the charge. There are five Protestant
families in the neighbourhood. They cannot even be baptized except by
the curé. They cannot get any Protestant instruction; so the Protestant
children are reared Roman Catholics. Nairne wished to have a Protestant
clergyman established at Murray Bay; he could make that place his
headquarters and carry on missionary work in the neighbouring parishes.
But the five Protestant families at Murray Bay soon became three, for
Nairne says, in 1801, that his and Colonel Fraser's families and one
other man, an Englishman, are the only remaining Protestants. He and
Fraser, he adds, are growing old and, in any case, it was doubtful
whether the Englishman would attend service.
Yet Nairne still begged for a Protestant missionary. He desired most of
all a free school. The teacher should be, he says, French but able also
to preach in English; there was now no school at Murray Bay; a free
school and a church system which would release the people from paying
tithes could work wonders and, probably, most of the people would soon
become Protestants. Knowing the tenacity with which the French
Canadians have clung to their faith, it seems hardly likely that
Nairne's dreams would have been realized. At any rate nothing was done.
At that time there were hardly more than a dozen Anglican clergymen in
all Canada and the Bishop of Quebec had no one to spare to look after
the few scattered sheep at Murray Bay. On the other hand the rival
Church did not forget her own. Long before the British conquest
occasional services had been held at Malbaie and these were continued,
with some regularity, until a resident priest came in 1797. The visiting
priests worked hard. They were, Nairne says, "industrious in private to
confess the people, especially the women, which branch of their duty is
deemed most sacred and necessary." Against this tremendous power of the
confessional, Protestantism had nothing that could be called an opposing
influence. When a Protestant died he might not, of course, be buried in
the Roman Catholic burial ground. For these outcast dead Nairne set
aside a plot near his own house, where, still, under a little clump of
trees, their bones lie, neglected and forgotten. Not more than half a
dozen Protestants were ever buried there and this shows that even the
Protestant pioneers were few in number; hardly one of their children
remained outside the Roman Church.
Nairne thought the Canadians not too prone to industry and he deplored
the multitude of religious holidays that gave an excuse for idleness.
In a year there were not less than forty, in addition to Sundays, and on
some of the holidays, such as that of the patron saint of the parish,
there were scenes of great disorder. Nairne wrote on the subject to the
Roman Catholic Bishop of Quebec asking him to take steps to ensure that
the people might come to think it not sinful but virtuous to work for
six days in the week. The Bishop promised consideration of the matter.
Already it had been under debate and in the end the Bishop gave orders
that labour might continue on most of the Church's festivals; that of
the patron saint of the parish was in time abolished. Nairne thus helped
to bring about a considerable industrial reform. But beyond this he
achieved little.
The French Canadians, who occupied his vacant acres, have shown both a
marvellous tenacity for their own customs and also a fecundity that has
enabled people, numbering 60,000 at the time of the British conquest, to
multiply now to some 2,500,000, scattered over the United States and
Canada. To govern them has never been an easy problem. Nairne says that
the French officer, Bougainville, who had known the Canadians in many
campaigns, called them at Murray's table a brave and submissive people;
he thought they needed the strong hand of authority and added that he
was sure the British method of government would soon spoil them. Under
the French régime they had had no gleam of political liberty. For twenty
years before the conquest France had exacted from them the fullest
possible measure of military service. The British ended this and brought
liberty. Its growth is sometimes so rapid as to be noxious, and, no
doubt, some of those who came to Nairne's domain gave him much trouble.
"No people," Nairne said of them, "stand more in awe of punishment when
convinced that there is power to inflict it, as none are so easily
spoiled as to be mutinous by indulgences." Some of them showed striking
intelligence: in 1784 we find Nairne recommending for appointment as
Notary one Malteste (no doubt the well-known name Maltais is a later
form) as a "remarkable honest, well-behaved countryman with more
education than is commonly to be found with one in his station." The
dwellers at Malbaie were for the most part a quiet people entirely
untouched by the movements of the outside world. "Nothing here," wrote
Nairne in 1798, "is considered of importance but producing food to
satisfy craving Stomachs, which the people of this cold and healthy
country remarkably possess, and to feed numbers of children.... They
have no other ambition or consideration whatever but simply to procure
food and raiment for themselves and their numerous families."
They had a very clear idea of their rights. Nairne's grant conferred
upon him those of fishing and hunting. But the inhabitants declared that
when land was once granted, the seigneur lost all control over the
adjoining waters. Nairne wished, for instance, to prohibit the spearing
of salmon at night by the Canadians, with the aid of torches or
lanterns. But they had never been hampered by such restrictions and,
when Nairne tried to check them, they said that they would not be
hindered. It was in vain that he said "I had rather have no power at all
and no seigneurie at all [than] not to be able to keep up the rights of
it." When, in 1797, he ordered one Joseph Villeneuve to cease the
"flambeau" fishing at night, the fellow "roared and bellowed" and set
him at defiance; no less than twenty companions joined him in the
fishing. They would acknowledge no law nor restraint and seem to have
had _force majeure_ on their side. It was not until long after that the
legislature at Quebec passed strict laws regulating the modes of
fishing.
Whatever the limitations on the seigneur's authority he had the
undoubted right of control over fishing in rivers and lakes until the
adjacent lands were conceded to occupiers. It was important, therefore,
not to grant lands which carried with them the best fishing and Nairne's
ardent friend Gilchrist kept exhorting him from Scotland on this point.
"There is no place ... I would so willingly and happily pass life in,"
he wrote, in 1775, "as in your Neighbourhood and often have I been
seized with the memory of your easy and uncontrolled way of rising,
lying, dancing, drinking, &c., at your habitation.... One hope ... I
wish to be well founded and that is that your Stewart, Factor or
Attorney, has not conceded any lands with the River in front from the
Rapides du Vieux Moulin. If otherwise, you have lost more than the
profits [which] all above Brassar's will yield in our lifetime. The
fishing in that part of the River is alone worth crossing the Atlantic."
Over trade Nairne and Fraser tried to exercise some real control. Their
grants gave them no right to trade with the Indians and in reality no
authority over trade. But they were guardians of the law and took steps
to check traders from violating it. One Brassard, who lived up the
Murray River, seems to have been a frequent offender. It was easy to
debauch the Indians with drink and then to get their furs for very
little and the seigneurs needed always to be alert. In 1778 we find
Malcolm Fraser making with one Hugh Blackburn a bargain which outlines
what the seigneurs tried to do in regard to trade. Blackburn binds
himself in the sum of £200 to obey certain restrictions: he will not
attempt to debauch the Indians belonging to the King's Posts; in no
circumstances will he sell them liquor; nor will he sell liquor on
credit to anyone. He will obey the lawful orders of Nairne and Fraser
relative to the carrying on of his trade; he will pay his debts, and
will make others pay what they owe him, refusing them credit if accounts
are not paid within six months. In consideration of these pledges by
Blackburn Fraser guarantees his credit with the Quebec merchants. The
difficulty in regard to trade with the Indians settled itself by the
tragic remedy of their gradual extinction. In 1800 Nairne says that the
Micmacs, once a great nuisance, are now rarely seen.
Nairne was a good farmer and his letters contain many references to
farming operations. At Murray Bay, he says, plowing goes on for seven
months in the year, from the middle of April to the middle of November.
But the Canadians do not plough well; they do not understand how to
preserve the crops when cut; and, on the whole, are backward in
agriculture. He himself preserved for a domain more land than he could
ever get cleared, for this clearing was heavy work. Some of the soil at
Murray Bay is very good. Gilchrist writes indeed to say that he has been
talking in Scotland about Nairne's land. "On my mentioning that you had
lime, without digging for it, it was acknowledged that you possessed all
the advantages possible and that anything might be done with ground such
as yours which is dry; and I verily believe would you thoroughly lime
your land you may keep it in crops as long as you please and have
prodigious returns." Good farming, he says, Nairne may have and he
should preserve good fishing; then Murray Bay will be perfect. "If I
have the pleasure of seeing your sisters, I'll represent Mal Bay as the
counterpart of Paradise before the fall." He adds some local
characterizations. "Catish will do for Eve, La Grange for Adam, and
Dufour for the Devil."
Nairne was married in 1766 to Christiana Emery. Of her history I know
nothing, except that she was born in Edinburgh and married in Canada.
Soon after marriage Nairne paid a long visit to Scotland and there in
1767 the freedom of the borough of Sterling was conferred upon him. Mrs.
Nairne must have been considerably younger than her husband, for though
he lived to ripe old age, she survived him by twenty-six years, dying at
Murray Bay in 1828. Whether she brought any dowry I do not know; Nairne
certainly had had in mind the improvement of his position by marrying.
Nine children were born to them but three died in childhood of an
epidemic fever that broke out at Murray Bay in 1773 while Nairne was in
Scotland. A fourth child, Anne, died of consumption. Five children lived
to grow up--three daughters and two sons.
Canada seemed so remote that it was not easy for Nairne to keep in touch
with his kin. The scattering of families, one of the penalties Imperial
Britain, with a world wide domain, imposes upon her sons, had taken
Nairne's brother Robert to India. At a time only ten years later than
Clive's great victory of Plassey, Britain's grasp on the country was, as
yet, by no means certain and India was amazingly remote; five years
usually elapsed between the sending of a letter to India from Canada and
the receipt of a reply! On January 5th, 1770, Robert Nairne writes from
Marlborough, India, acknowledging a letter from his brother John, only
recently received, dated April 21, 1767. The brothers discuss family
news and family plans, their old father's health, the desirability of
settling down at home in Scotland, the life each is living, remote from
that home. Though an officer, Robert engaged in trade and made some
money. "The Company's pay is hardly subsistence," he says, "and here we
have not, as on t'other side of India the spoils of plundered provinces
to grow fat on. I keep my health very well and if I want the
satisfaction, I am also free from many Anxietys, people are subject to
who are more in the glare of life." He was in a retired place, where
there were few people and perennial summer, with "no variety of seasons
nor of anything else." Time passes insensibly, he says; "in India years
are like months in Europe ... I write, read, walk and go in company the
same round nearly throughout the year. Here we have little company; yet
everyone wants to go to out settlements where they are quite alone. I
cannot account for it. Mal Bay is your out settlement. Do you like that
as well as Quebec?"
Robert Nairne was something of a philosopher. "Have you ever so much
philosophy," he writes to the seigneur of Murray Bay in 1767, "as to
think everything that happens is for the best? I am so far of that mind
that content and discontent I think arises [_sic_] rather from the cast
of our own thoughts than from outward accidents and that there is nearly
an equal distribution of the means of happiness to all men, and that
they are the happiest that improve their means the most." He felt the
weariness of exile, the Scot's longing for his own land. "Certainly to a
person of a right tone of mind if there are enjoyments in life, it must
be in our own country amongst our friends and relations. With such
conditions the bare necessaries of life are better than riches without
them.... Death is but a limited absence and you and I are much in that
state with regard to our friends at home."
It was not long before Robert Nairne's letters ceased altogether. In
1776, John Nairne received at Murray Bay the sad news that, in November
or December, 1774, his brother had been killed in a petty expedition
against some local tribesmen. A native chieftain had murdered, cooked
and eaten a rival who was friendly to the East India Company and Robert
Nairne with some natives, and only three Europeans, went up country,
through woods and bogs, to seize the offender. When there was fighting
his natives fled, and he was shot through the body. It was a pity, says
John Nairne's correspondent, Hepburn, to lose his life "in so silly a
manner." He would soon have been governor of Bencoolen and was in a way
to make "a great figure in life." Of his fortune of £6,000 John Nairne
received a part. Twenty-five years after his brother's death Nairne was
to get at Murray Bay similar news of the loss of his own son in distant
India. It has levied a heavy tribute of Britain's best blood.
In 1774 Nairne again revisited Scotland. Though no politician, he must
have heard much about the Quebec Act, then before the Imperial
Parliament. The Governor of Canada, Sir Guy Carleton, after careful
consideration of the whole question, had reached the conclusion, not
belied by subsequent history, as far as the Province of Quebec is
concerned, that Canada would always be French and that, with some slight
modifications, the French system found there by Britain should be given
final and legal status under British supremacy. So the Quebec Act was
passed in 1774. While the British criminal law was introduced, the
French civil law, including the land system under which Nairne held
Murray Bay, was left unchanged. The Bill gave the Church the same
privileged position that it had enjoyed under Catholic sovereigns. The
tithe could be collected by legal process; taxation for church purposes
voted by the parochial authority called the _fabrique_ was as compulsory
as civil taxes, unless the person taxed declared that he was not a Roman
Catholic; and the whole ecclesiastical system of New France was
supported and encouraged. The Bill caused much irritation in Protestant
New England, which saw some malicious design in the establishment of
Roman Catholicism on its borders. The Continental Congress of 1775
denounced the Quebec Act, and even the Declaration of Independence has
something to say about it.
It is obvious that Nairne disliked the Bill. His irrepressible friend,
Gilchrist, wrote giving a picture of its probable dire social results,
upsetting all domestic relations between the two races. The Bill, says
Gilchrist, "is the most pernicious [that] could have been devised. Judge
of the Fêtes now that the fools have got the sanction of the British
Parliament to their beggaring principles. It is not clear that your
Protestant servants will [even] be allowed to work upon their [the Roman
Catholic] idle days. What would you and I think on being told by these
black rascals [the priests are meant of course] that our people, I mean
Protestants, durst not obey our orders without a dispensation from
them?"
The social consequences of the Quebec Act did not prove as revolutionary
as Nairne's animated correspondent feared. Less than is usually supposed
did the habitant like it since it placed him again under the priest's
and the seigneur's authority, suspended since the British conquest. To
the English colonies it added one to other causes of friction that boded
trouble to the British Empire. In the previous year the people of Boston
had defied Britain, by throwing into their harbour cargoes of tea upon
which the owners proposed to pay a hated duty, levied by outside
authority. The Quebec Act brought a final rupture a step nearer and at
last there was open war. "The colonists have brought things to a crisis
now, indeed;" wrote Gilchrist; "the consequences must be dreadful to
them soon and I am afraid in the end to our country." To Great Britain
indeed disastrous they were to be and soon the seigneur of Murray Bay
was busy with his share in preparing for the conflict.
[Footnote 7: The Lake is no doubt Lake Nairne, the present Grand Lac.]