The ministrations of the manor house were often patriarchical and beneficent; the seigneur's wife was like the squire's wife in an English village. In time this relation aroused resentment. Some villager's son with a taste for business or letters made his way in the world, got into touch with more advanced thought, and when he came back to the village was not so willing as formerly to touch his hat to the seigneur and accept an inferior social status as a matter of course. M. de Gaspé tells how he often accompanied Madame Taché, in her own right co-seigneuress of Kamouraska, opposite Malbaie, in her visits to the people on the seigniory. She took alms to the poor, and wine, cordials, delicacies to the sick and convalescent. "She reigned as sovereign in the seigniory," he says, "by the very tender ties of love and of gratitude." When she left the village church after mass on Sunday the habitants, most of whom drove to church in their own vehicles, would wait respectfully for her to start and then follow her in a long procession, none of them venturing to pass her on the road. At the point where she turned from the high-way up the avenue leading to the manor house, each habitant, as he passed, would raise his hat, although only her back was in view disappearing in the direction of the house.
But early in the 19th century this spirit was changing:
One day I was myself witness, says M. de Gaspé, of a violation of this universal deference. It was St. Louis's day, the festival of the parish of Kamouraska. As usual Madame Taché, at the close of mass, was leading the long escort of her censitaires, when a young man, excited by the frequent libations of which in the country many are accustomed to partake during the parish fêtes,—a young man, I say, breaking from the procession passed the carriage of the seigneuress as fast as his horse would go. Madame Taché stopped her carriage and turning round towards those who followed her cried in a loud voice:
"What insolent person is this who has passed before me?"
An old man went up to her, hat in hand, and said with tears in his voice:
"Madame, it is my son who unfortunately is tipsy, but be sure that I shall bring him to make his apologies and meanwhile I beg you to accept mine for his boorishness."
I ought to add that the whole parish spoke with indignation of the conduct of the young man. The delinquent had committed a double offence. He had been rude to their benefactress, and besides, violating a French Canadian custom, he had passed a carriage without asking permission.[33]
This must have been before 1813 for in that year this good Madame Taché died: even so early was youth restive under the old traditions of deference and subordination. Already some even of the seigneurs were saying that the system retarded settlement. It would have suited the seigneurs to have their holdings converted into freehold, for then they could have held the unsettled land as their own property instead of being under obligation to grant it for a nominal rental to censitaires. But to make this conversion would have been too kind to the seigneurs; so the matter dragged on for a long time.
The grievances of the habitant against the seigneurs were numerous, some of them real, some fanciful. It seemed anomalous that, in a British colony in the nineteenth century, there should be men holding great tracts of land with rights over their tenants, as some authors have seriously claimed, extending from the power of trying them for petty offences to that of inflicting the death penalty. This last right was, in any case, only nominal and was never exercised by any seigneur in Canada; but even the claim that it existed shows how high were the authority and privilege of the seigneur. A right like the corvée had a sinister meaning. One of the greatest hardships of the old régime, in France it meant that, on demand, the peasant must drop his own work to join in making highways, in carrying from one place to another the effects of a regiment, and other unwelcome tasks, all without pay. In Canada it was milder. The seigneur levied a corvée of so many days' labour, which he employed on the useful task of improving the highway. Some seigneurs required that at the times they chose, the habitants should work for them a certain number of days, usually six, in each year. They could even make the habitants work without pay at building a manor house; a few of the massive stone mansions still fairly numerous in the Province of Quebec were constructed by such labour. Not unnaturally the habitant came to feel it odious and humiliating to be obliged thus to give his labour at another's order.
The seigneuries too were often broken up. In Canada there is no law of primogeniture and, at a seigneur's death, the land went to daughters as well as to sons. Few of the old seigniorial families remained on their original estates. In time those who held the property came to think that a rental of about a cent an acre was not enough. In the days of French rule they could not have increased it; but the old custom, they claimed, did not apply under British sovereignty. So these charges were often increased; in time instead of a penny the habitant had to pay three-pence, six-pence, and even eight-pence, an acre; the seigneurs, as a judge put it, showed an excellent knowledge of arithmetical progression. Thus the cens et rentes began to bring in a real income. So did the lods et ventes, the tax of one-twelfth of the price of whatever land the habitant sold. In early days land was rarely sold. But when towns and villages had grown up on seigniorial estates, a good deal of buying and selling took place and there stood always the seigneur demanding in every transaction his share of the selling price. If the land was sold two or three times in a year, as might well happen, each time the seigneur got his share of one-twelfth. If the occupier had built on the land a house at his own cost, none the less did the seigneur, who had done nothing, get his large percentage on the selling value of these improvements. This was a real grievance. To avoid paying the seigneur's claim a price, lower than that really paid, was sometimes named in the deed, and this led to perjury. To protect themselves the seigneur used his droit de retrait the right for forty days of himself taking the property at the price named. This involved vexation and delay and increased discontent. Moreover the seigneur's right to lods et ventes stood in the way of a ready transfer of property between members of the same family.