Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/115

-1683] Canadian feudalism. 83 A heavy tax on the alienation of lands, in the case of the seigneur the payment of a fifth of the value of the estate, in the case of the tenant the payment of lods et ventes, though both were customarily lower in Canada than in France, was injurious to the development of uncultivated lands, and, as Adam Smith pointed out, robbed the colony of its prime source of prosperity, an abundance of cheap land. The liability of the tenants to promiscuous forced labour in the lord's service (after 1711 harvest time was excepted, and after 1716 the service was made commutable for 20 sous yearly per arpent the inability of the censitaire to subinfeudate, the initial absence of obligation on the lord to infeudate, too late corrected, the rule which allowed only two- thirds of the fee to be infeudated, were injurious features. But Canada was not troubled with absentee landlords ; the relations of the seigneurs and the roturiers were singularly close and friendly ; and the passionate military, national and religious spirit that animated all alike, dignified the bond. The lord had, according to his grant, " haute" " moyenne? or " basse " justice over his tenants, until in 1714 it was ordered that no such grants of jurisdiction should be made. The large number of cases that came before the Council would seem to indicate that the liberty to erect gallows and pillory and to enforce jurisdiction over tenants was not generally exercised by the lords. It was to the advantage of the tenants in the early period that it was made incumbent on the lords to erect mills and to lay out roads, though the tenant's corn paid its multure of one-fourteenth of the grain ground, and the tenants had to make the roads themselves. The lord's supposed obligation of defence fell also of course on the tenants. Every man capable of bearing arms between the ages of 14 and 70 was bound to military service and drilled with a regularity unknown to the English colonial militia. The Canadian tenant was constantly engaged in active warfare, choosing the winter for his campaigns if possible, as summer warfare meant certain famine. The seigneury in many cases formed a parish, and lord and priest worked as a rule harmoniously, except, it might be, on the question of precedence, which set the highest officials of Church and State constantly at issue. Many were the decrees of the Council upon this subject, and also regarding the amount of Church-tithe. Originally fixed at the ruinous proportion of one-thirteenth of all increase, it was lowered to one twenty-sixth of thrashed grain, with an exemption for five years on newly cleared ground. In 1667 Talon wrote that the clerical estate consisted of a bishop, nine priests, and many clerks gathered in the seminary at Quebec or sent out to missions in the country. There were thirty-five Jesuit Fathers whose work, he reports, is pious if not of commercial value : this last it might acquire in time. He foresaw the danger that the Jesuits might seek an excessive share of temporal power, and favoured the despatch of Sulpitian priests to counterbalance them. OH. in. 6 2