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The council, after due consideration of this report and other data submitted to it, passed a series of resolutions declaring that the seigneurial system was retarding the agricultural progress of the province and that, while its immediate abolition was not practicable, steps should be taken to get rid of it gradually. But nothing came of these resolutions.
The common law went with the flag of England. It was quite as natural that the Custom of Paris should follow the fleurs-de-lis. There was every reason to expect, moreover, that in the New World the seigneurial system would soon free itself from those barnacles of privilege and oppression which were encrusted on its sides at home.
Disaster came, debt and difficulty followed, fire consumed the old house in which their dignity had been cherished, and at last they had no longer their seigneurial position, but that of ordinary farmers who work and toil in the field like any of the fifty-acre farmers on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. Monsieur Louis Lavilette, the present head of the house, had not married well.
From now on French gardens were divided specifically into the potager and verger. The potager was virtually a vegetable garden within the walls which surrounded the seigneurial dwelling, and was of necessity of very limited extent, chiefly laid out in tiny carreaux, or beds, bordered by tiles or bricks, much as a small city garden is arranged to-day.
The other question, which affected French Canada, was the seigneurial tenure of the land. The system was an inheritance from the time of Richelieu. Unlike the English, who allowed their colonies to grow up haphazard, the French, from the first, organized and regulated theirs according to a definite scheme.
Too often they gave large seigneurial grants to men who had neither the energy nor the funds to do what was expected of a seigneur in the new land. As for extent, the seigneuries varied greatly. Some were as large as a European dukedom; others contained only a few thousand arpents.
The seigneurial system had been a half-century in full flourish what had it accomplished? That is evidently just what the home authorities wanted to know when they arranged for a topographical and general report on the seigneuries in 1712. This investigation, on the intendant's advice, was entrusted to an engineer, Gedeon de Catalogne.
It gives me a poor idea of human nature. This is not the utterance of a cynic, but of an honest man smarting from disillusion. His exit from public life was final. He was made chief justice for Lower Canada and presided with distinction over the sessions of the Seigneurial Court. His political career thus closed while he was yet a young man with years of valuable service before him.
Many chateaux were regarded as so many little Bastilles, and in order to imitate the Parisians who had destroyed theirs the peasants began to burn them. They did so with the greater fury because the seigneurial homes contained the titles of feudal dues. It was a species of Jacquerie.
The uncleared tracts which the officials of the Company had carved out among themselves were declared to be forfeited to the Crown and actual occupancy was held to be, for the future, the essential of every seigneurial grant. A vigorous effort was made to obtain settlers, and with considerable success, for in the years 1665-1667 the population of the colony more than doubled.
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