Since the Church has aided the state, not unnaturally she expected some special favours in return.  She got them in the days of the early British governors of Canada.  Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, secured for the Church the legal power to levy the tithe on Catholics and practically all the other privileges she had enjoyed under the old regime.  The bishops tended to become more and more active in politics and this reached a climax in 1896.  With great heat the bishops threw themselves into the attack on the Liberal party, because it would not support the Church’s demands for her own separate schools in Manitoba, supported by taxes levied on Roman Catholics by the state.  Some of the bishops went too far in denunciation; an appeal against their action was carried by Catholics to the Pope and the offenders were rebuked.  The incident showed that in politics the habitant knows his own mind, for he gave an overwhelming support to the party on which the bishops were warring.  Since then many a habitant draws a sharp distinction between the spiritual and the political claims of the bishops.  Their full spiritual authority he does not doubt; in politics he thinks his own opinion as good as theirs.

If in spiritual matters the Church led it was intended that in temporal affairs too the habitants should always have guidance.  An old world flavour seems to pervade the relations between seigneur and vassal in a French Canadian parish.  The seigneur was himself the vassal of the crown, bound to do humble homage at the capital when he received his grant.  We have a detailed account of the ceremony as performed, perhaps for the first time under British rule.  On December 23rd, 1760, in the morning one Jacques Noel, a seigneur, accompanied by royal notaries, proceeded to the government house in Quebec.  He knocked at the principal entrance and, when a servant appeared, Noel asked if His Excellency James Murray, the Governor, was at home.  The servant replied that His Excellency was within and that he would give him notice.  On being admitted to the presence of the Governor, Noel with head uncovered, and, to symbolize his humble obedience, wearing neither sword nor spur, fell on his knees before him and declared that he performed faith and homage for the seigniory to which, on his father’s death, he had become the heir.  He then took an oath on the gospels to be faithful to the king and to be no party to anything against his interests; to hold his own vassals to the same obedience; and to perform all other duties required by the terms of his holding.

The Crown required very little of the seigneur and so, in truth, did the seigneur of his tenants.  Their annual payment of cens et rentes rarely amounted to more than a very few dollars.  When it fell due in the autumn they were given abundant notice.  Still in the Canadian parishes, when the Sunday morning mass is over, the crier stands on a raised platform near the church door, the people