Lord Elgin

ed 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 st

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 grad

s between the 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

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 bo

lish 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 histo

he 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

the days of the French régime-for instance, franc aleu noble and franc aumone or mortmain, but these were exceptional grants to charitable, educational, or religious institutions, and were subject to none of the ordinary obligations of the feudal tenure, but required, as in

concede or sub-infeudate them under the rule of jeu de fief, and settle them with as little delay as practicable. The Crown also reserved in most cases its jura regalia or regalitates, such as mines and minerals, lands for military or defensive purposes, oak timber and masts for the building of the royal ships. It does not, however, appear that military service was a condition on which the seigniors of Canada held their grants, as was the case in France under the old feudal tenure. The king and his representative in his royal province held such powers in their own hands. The seignior had as little influence in the government of the country as he had in military affairs. He might be chosen to the superior council at the royal pleasure, and was bound to obey the orders of the governor whenever the militia were called out. The whole province w

with a depth from four to eight arpents. These farms, in the course of time assumed the appearance of a continuous settlement on the river and became known in local phraseology as C?tes-for example, C?te de Neiges, C?te St. Louis, C?te St. Paul, and many other picturesque villages on the banks of the St. Lawrence. In the first century of settlement the government induced the officers and soldiers of the Carignan-Salières regiment to settle lands along the Richelieu river and to build palisaded villages for the purposes of defence against the war-like Iroquois; but, in the rural parts of the province generally,

ion, it does not appear to have been successfully carried out in the early days of the colony on account of the inability of the seigniors to purchase the machinery, or erect buildings suitable for the satisfactory performance of a service clearly most useful to the people of the rural districts. The obligation of baking bread in the seigniorial oven was not generally exacted, and soon became obsolete as the country was settled and each habitant naturally built his own oven in connection with his home. The seigniors also claimed the right to a certain amount of statute labour (corvée) from the habitants on their estates, to one

tion of the system was to induce men of good social position-like the gentils-hommes or officers of the Carignan regiment-to settle in the country and become seigniors. However, the latter were not confined to this class, for the title was rapidly extended to shopkeepers, farmers, sailors, and even mechanics who had a little money and were ready to pay for the cheap privilege of becoming nobles in a small way. Titled seigniors were very rare at any time in French Canada. In 1671, Des Islets, T

raged by bounties the production of children. The seigniories were the ground on which these paternal methods of creating a farming community were to be developed, but despite the wise intentions of the government the whole machinery was far from realizing the results which might reasonably have been expected

t loved the free life of the forest and river better than the monotonous work of the farm. He preferred too often making love to the impressionable dusky maiden of the wigwam rather than to the stolid, devout damsel imported for his kind by priest or nun. A raid on some English post or village had far more attraction than following the plough or threshing the grain. This adventurous spirit led the young Frenchman to the western prairies where the Red and Assiniboine waters mingle, to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, to the Ohio and Mississippi, and to the Gulf of Mexico. But while Frenchmen in this way won eternal fame, the seigniories were too often left in a state of savagery, and even those seigneurs and habitants who devoted themselves successfully to pastoral pursuits found themselves in the end harassed by the constant calls made upon their military services during the years the French fought to retain the imperial domain they had been the first to discover and occupy in the great valleys of North America. St

aised, the droit de banalité was pressed to the extent that if a habitant went to a better or more convenient mill than the seignior's, he had to pay tolls to both, the transfer of property was hampered by the lods el ventes and the droit de retraite, and the claim always made by the seigniors to the exclusive use of the streams running by or through the seigniories was a bar to the establishment of industrial enterprise. Questions of

to the old institutions of his native province to take the initiative for its entire removal. Mr. Louis Thomas Drummond, who was attorney-general in both the Hincks-Morin and MacNab-Morin ministries, is deserving of honourable mention in Canadian history for the leading part he took in settling this very perplexing question. I have already shown that his first attempt in 1853 failed in consequence of the adverse action of the legislative council, and that no further steps were taken in the matter until the coming into office of the MacNab or Liberal-Conservative government in 1854, when he brought a bill into parliament to a large extent a copy of the first. This bill became law after it had recei

h, S. Lelièvre, L. Arch

ve, P. Winter, J.G.

the seignioria

is H. LaFontaine, pre

Day, Smith, Vanfelso

orin, an

eprived by the decision of the commissioners. It took five years of enquiry and deliberation before the commissioners were able to complete

ires, the protection of whose interests was at the basis of the whole law abolishing this ancient tenure. This radical change cost the country from first to last over ten million dollars, including a large indemnity paid to Upper Canada for its proportion of the fund taken from public revenues of the united provinces to meet the claims of the seigniors and the expenses of the commission. The money was well spent in bringing about so thorough a revolution in so peaceable and conclusive a manner. The habitants of the east were now as free as the farmers of the west. The s