THE

CHAPTER VIII

SEIGNIORIAL TENURE

HE government of Canada in the days of the French régime bore a close resemblance to that of a province of France. The governor was generally a noble and a soldier, but while he was invested with large military and civil authority by the royal instructions, he had ever by his side a vigilant guardian in the person of the intendant, who possessed for all practical purposes still more substantial powers, and was always encouraged to report to the king every matter that might appear to conflict with the principles of absolute government laid down by the sovereign. The superior council of Canada possessed judicial, administrative and legislative powers, but its action was limited by the decrees and ordinances of the king, and its decisions were subject to the veto of the royal council of the parent state. The intendant, generally a man of legal attainments, had the special right to issue ordinances which had the full effect of law-in the words of his commission "to order everything as he shall see just and proper." These ordinances regulated inns and markets, the building and repairs of churches and presbyteries, the construction of bridges, the maintenance of roads, and

all those matters which could affect the comfort, the convenience, and the security of the community at large. While the governmental machinery was thus modelled in a large measure on that of the provincial administration of France, the territory of the province was subject to a modified form of the old feudal system which was so long a dominant condition of the nations of Europe, and has, down to the present time left its impress on their legal and civil institutions, not even excepting Great Britain itself. Long before Jacques Cartier sailed up the River St. Lawrence this system had gradually been weakened in France under the persistent efforts of the Capets, who had eventually, out of the ruin of the feudatories, built up a monarchy which at last centralized all power in the king. The policy of the Capets had borne its full, legitimate fruit by the time Louis XIV ascended the throne. The power of the great nobles, once at the head of practically independent feudatories, had been effectually broken down, and now, for the most part withdrawn from the provinces, they ministered only to the ambition of the king, and contributed to the dissipation and extravagance of a voluptuous court.

But while those features of the ancient feudal system, which were calculated to give power to the nobles, had been eliminated by the centralizing influence of the king, the system still continued in the provinces to govern the relations between the

THE FEUDAL TENURE

noblesse and the peasantry who possessed their lands on old feudal conditions regulated by the customary or civil law. These conditions were, on the whole, still burdensome. The noble who spent all his time in attendance on the court at Versailles or other royal palaces could keep his purse equal to his pleasures only by constant demands on his feudal tenants, who dared no more refuse to obey his behests than he himself ventured to flout the royal will.

Deeply engrafted as it still was on the social system of the parent state, the feudal tenure was naturally transferred to the colony of New France, but only with such modifications as were suited to the conditions of a new country. Indeed all the abuses that might hinder settlement or prevent agricultural development were carefully lopped off. Canada was given its seigneurs, or lords of the manor, who would pay fealty and homage to the sovereign himself, or to the feudal superior from whom they directly received their territorial estate, and they in their turn leased lands to peasants, or tillers of the soil, who held them on the modified conditions of the tenure of old France. It was not expedient, and indeed not possible, to transfer a whole body of nobles to the wilderness of the new world—they were as a class too wedded to the gay life of France and all that could be done was to establish a feudal tenure to promote colonization, and at the same time possibly create a landed gentry who

might be a shadowy reflection of the French noblesse, and could, in particular cases, receive titles directly from the king himself.

This seigniorial tenure of New France was the most remarkable instance which the history of North America affords of the successful effort of European nations to reproduce on this continent the ancient aristocratic institutions of the old world. In the days when the Dutch owned the Netherlands, vast estates were partitioned out to certain "patroons," who held their property on quasi feudal conditions, and bore a resemblance to the seigneurs of French Canada. This manorial system was perpetuated under English forms when the territory was conquered by the English and transformed into the colony of New York, where it had a chequered existence, and was eventually abolished as inconsistent with the free conditions of American settlement. In the proprietary colony of Maryland the Calverts also attempted to establish a landed aristocracy, and give to the manorial lords certain rights of jurisdiction over their tenants drawn from the feudal system of Europe. For Carolina, Shaftesbury and Locke devised a constitution which provided a territorial nobility, called landgraves and caciques, but it soon became a mere historical curiosity. Even in the early days of Prince Edward Island, when it was necessary to mature a plan of colonization, it was gravely proposed to the British government that the whole

THE FIRST SEIGNIORIES

island should be divided into "hundreds," as in England, or into "baronies," as in Ireland, with courts-baron, lords of manors, courts-leet, all under the direction of a lord paramount; but while this ambitious aristocratic scheme was not favourably entertained, the imperial authorities chose one which was most injurious in its effects on the settlement of this fertile island.

It was Richelieu who introduced this modified form of the feudal system into Canada, when he constituted, in 1627, the whole of the colony as a fief of the great fur-trading company of the Hundred Associates on the sole condition of its paying fealty and homage to the Crown. It had the right of establishing seigniories as a part of its undertaking to bring four thousand colonists to the province and furnish them with subsistence for three years. Both this company and its successor, the Company of the West Indies, created a number of seigniories, but for the most part they were never occupied, and the king revoked the grants on the ground of non-settlement, when he resumed possession of the country and made it a royal province. From that time the system was regulated by the Coutume de Paris, by royal edicts, or by ordinances of the intendant.

The greater part of the soil of Canada was accordingly held en fief or en seigneurie. Each grant varied from sixteen arpents—an arpent being about five-sixths of an English acre-by fifty, to ten