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What were the obligations of the settler who took a grant of land within a seigneury? On the whole they were neither numerous nor burdensome, and in no sense were they comparable with those laid upon the hapless peasantry in France during the days before the great Revolution. Every habitant had a written title-deed from his seigneur and the terms of this deed were explicit.
Early marriages have been always encouraged by the priests, and large families fifteen children being very common are the rule in the villages. The habitant is naturally litigious, and the amount in dispute is, in his opinion, trifling compared with the honour of having a case in court, which demands the attendance of the whole village.
If I should live a hundred years, I should wish nothing better than the honour of having served the men whose forefathers served Frontenac, Cartier, La Salle and Maisonneuve, and all the splendid heroes of that ancient age. What they have done is for all men to do. They have kept the faith. I am for the habitant, for the land of his faith and love, first and last and all the time."
This state of coma or trance held all created things, and as with most Canadian scenery, small chance was there for sentiment; the shepherd of the Lake country or the mountaineer of Switzerland were not represented by any picturesque figure, although small spirals of smoke floated up from the straggling settlements, and a habitant wife sometimes looked out from a door or a window, her face dark and shrivelled for the most part, and with clumsy woollen wraps thrown around head and shoulders.
"The expedition was a failure," writes the Habitant de Louisbourg," though one might have bet everything on its success, so small was the force that the enemy had to resist us." This writer thinks that the seizure of Canseau and the attack of Annapolis were sources of dire calamity to the French. "Perhaps," he says, "the English would have let us alone if we had not first insulted them.
He made straight for the crowd, which was scattered in groups, and pushed or threaded his way to the flag-staff. He was at least a head taller than any man there, and though he was not so upright as he had been, the lines of his figure were still those of a commanding personality. A sort of platform had been erected around the flag-staff and on it a drunken little habitant was talking treason.
The final number on the programme, which was to be a series of humorous character sketches, had been left entirely in Sam's hands and consisted of a trilogy representing the characteristics as popularly conceived of the French Canadian habitant, the humorous Irishman and the obese Teuton.
Unfortunately for this simple solution, there was a great and fundamental difference between these two tenures. The Canadian censitaire had a written title-deed which stated explicitly the dues and services he was bound to give his seigneur; the copyholder had nothing of the kind. The habitant, moreover, had various rights guaranteed to him by royal decrees.
Every one wanted to be near the main road which ran along the shore; it was only after all this land had been taken up that the incoming settlers were willing to have farms in the "second range" on the uplands away from the stream. At any rate, the habitant took his land subject to yearly payments known as the cens et rentes.
A well-behaved person had the goodness to inform me, after mass, that it was necessary to be rather more indulgent with the People of the Coast, if one wanted to live with them." This was an old euphemism for Flibustiers. The good father could expect nothing better, especially as so many of his audience may have been Calvinists, for the first habitant at Cap Francais was of that sect.
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