France, but at any rate, if she is sold, she is sold more cheaply.  In Canada we do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of clerks.  These vermin do not as yet infest the land.  Every one here pleads his own cause.  Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, costs, and charges.’  The testimony of others, though not so rhetorically expressed, is enough to prove that both royal and seigneurial courts did their work in fairly acceptable fashion.

The Norman habitant, as has already been pointed out, was by nature restive, impulsive, and quarrelsome.  That he did not make every seigneury a hotbed of petty strife was due largely to the stern hand held over him by priest and seigneur alike, but by his priest particularly.  The Church in the colony never lost, as in France, the full confidence of the masses; the higher dignitaries never lost touch with the priest, nor the latter with the people.  The clergy of New France did not form a privileged order, living on the fruits of other men’s labour.  On the contrary, they gave the colony far more than they took from it.  Although paid a mere pittance, they never complained of the great physical drudgery that their work too often required.  Indeed, if labourers were ever worthy of their hire, such toilers were the spiritual pioneers of France beyond the seas.  No one who does not approach their aims and achievements with sympathy can ever fully understand the history of these earlier days.  No one who does not appreciate the dominating place which the Church occupied in every walk of colonial life can fully realize the great help which it gave, both by its active interest and by its example, to the agricultural policy of the civil power.  The Church owed much to the seigneurial system, but not more than the system owed to it.

CHAPTER VII

THE TWILIGHT OF FEUDALISM

When the fleurs-de-lis of the Bourbons fluttered down from the ramparts of Quebec on September 18, 1759, a new era in the history of Canadian feudalism began.  The new British government promptly allayed the fears of the conquered people by promising that all vested rights should be respected and that ‘the lords of manors’ should continue in possession of all their ancient privileges.  This meant that they intended to recognize and retain the entire fabric of seigneurial tenure.

Now this step has been commonly regarded as a cardinal error on the part of the new suzerains, and on the whole the critics of British policy have had the testimony of succeeding events on their side.  By 1760 the seigneurial system had fully performed for the colony all the good service it was ever likely to perform.  It could easily have been abolished then and there.  Had that action been taken, a great many subsequent troubles would have been avoided.  But in their desire to be generous the English authorities failed to do what was prudent, and the seigneurial system remained.