to carry out the work with power to collect the required funds from the Catholic ratepayers.  This assessment is a first charge on the land; it must be divided into at least twelve equal instalments and the payments are spread over not less than three, or more than eight, years.  To be quite safe the trustees levy fifteen per cent. more than the estimated cost.  If ready money is not on hand for the work the church property may be mortgaged.  When the building is completed the trustees render their accounts with vouchers and take oath that they are correct.  All is precise, clearly defined, business-like.

No expenditure of money can be made for building without the consent of the people.  Always in French Canada a trace of old Gallican liberties has remained, in the power over Church finances left in the hands of churchwardens (marguillers) elected by the people.  But in the old days when the habitant was more ignorant and less alert than now he is, no doubt the voice in this respect might be the voice of the churchwarden, but the hand was the hand of the cure.  No doubt, also, it is still true that any project upon which the cure sets his heart he will in the end probably get a majority of the parishioners to adopt.  But he must persuade the people.  Sometimes they oppose his plan strenuously and feeling runs high.  Then when a churchwarden is elected, as one is annually, the cure may have his candidate, the opposing party theirs.  At Malbaie recently there was a sharp difference of opinion between the cure and the people on a question relating to the cemetery.  The parties divided on the choice of a churchwarden and the cure’s candidate was defeated.

Yet the cure’s position is one of great strength and authority.  He has his own income uncontrolled by the fabrique, which is master of the rest of the church finances.  The cure’s tithe consists of one twenty-sixth of the cereals produced by the parishioners.  A further tithe he has:  the twenty-sixth child born to any pair of his parishioners is by custom brought to the priest and he rears it; sometimes, strange to say, this tithe is offered!  From his tithe on cereals the income is not large; at Malbaie it is probably never more than from $1000 to $1200 a year; sometimes much less.  The average income of a cure is not more than $600.  It is the custom for the parishioner to deliver duly at the priest’s house one twenty-sixth of his grain and in the autumn a great array of vehicles may be seen making their way thither.  Usually there is considerable variety in the grain thus brought but sometimes the cure is almost overwhelmed by a single product such as peas; one of their number, thus paid, the neighbouring clergy christened the “cure des pois.”  The French Canadian farmer is often narrowly penurious and if he will not pay, as sometimes happens, the cure rarely presses him or takes steps to recover what the law would allow.  In any case a bad harvest is likely to leave the cure