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.  Still, despite the difficulties which impeded the practical working of the seigniorial system, it had on the whole an excellent effect on the social conditions of the country.  It created a friendly and even parental relation between seigneur, cure, and habitant, who on each estate constituted as it were a seigniorial family, united to each other by common ties of self-interest and personal affection.  If the system did not create an energetic self-reliant people in the rural communities, it arose from the fact that it was not associated with a system of local self-government like that which existed in the colonies of England.  The French king had no desire to see such a system develop in the colonial dependencies of France.  His governmental system in Canada was a mild despotism intended to create a people ever ready to obey the decrees and ordinances of royal officials, over whom the commonality could exercise no control whatever in such popular elective assemblies as were enjoyed by every colony of England in North America.

During the French regime the officials of the French government frequently repressed undue or questionable exactions imposed, or attempted to be imposed, on the censitaires by greedy or extravagant seigniors.  It was not until the country had been for some time in the possession of England that abuses became fastened on the tenure, and retarded the agricultural and industrial development of the province.  The cens et rentes were unduly raised, the droit de banalite 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 law which arose between the seigneur and habitant and were referred to the courts were decided in nearly all cases in favour of the former.  In such instances the judges were governed by precedent or by a strict interpretation of the law, while in the days of French dominion the intendants were generally influenced by principles of equity in the disputes that came before them, and by a desire to help the weaker litigant, the censitaire.