The Seigneurs of Old Canada : A Chronicle of New World Feudalism

by William Bennett Munro

Out to his new colony on the St Lawrence the king sent this seigneurial system. A gross and gratuitous outrage, a characteristic manifestation of Bourbon stupidity—that is a common verdict upon the royal action. But it may well be asked: What else was there to do? The seigneurial system was still the basis of land tenure in France. The nobility and even the throne rested upon it. The Church sanctioned and supported it. The people in general, whatever their attitude towards seigneurialism, were familiar with no other system of landholding. It was not, like the encomienda system which Spain planted in Mexico, an arrangement cut out of new cloth for the more ruthless exploitation of a fruitful domain. The Puritan who went to Massachusetts Bay took his system of socage tenure along with him. 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. Here was a small settlement of pioneers surrounded by hostile aborigines. The royal arm, strong as it was at home, could not well afford protection a thousand leagues away. The colony must organize and learn to protect itself. In other words, the colonial environment was very much like that in which the yeomen of the Dark Ages had found themselves. And might not its dangers be faced in the old feudal way? They were faced in this way. In the history of French Canada we find the seigneurial system forced back towards its old feudal plane. We see it gain in vitality; we see the old personal bond between lord and vassal restored to some of its pristine strength; we see the military aspects of the system revived, and its more sordid phases thrust aside. It turned New France into a huge armed camp; it gave the colony a closely knit military organization; and, in a day when Canada needed every ounce of her strength to ward off encircling enemies both white and red, it did for her what no other system could be expected to do.

But to return to the little cradle of empire at the foot of Cape Diamond. Champlain for a score of years worked himself to premature old age in overcoming those many obstacles which always meet the pioneer. More settlers were brought; a few seigneuries were granted; priests were summoned from France; a new fort was built; and by sheer perseverance a settlement of about three hundred souls had been established by 1627. But no single individual, however untiring in his efforts, could do all that needed to be done. It was consequently arranged, with the entire approval of Champlain, that the task of building up the colony should be entrusted to a great colonizing company formed for the purpose under royal auspices. In this project the moving spirit was no less a personage than Cardinal Richelieu, the great minister of Louis XIII. Official France was now really interested. Hitherto its interest, while profusely enough expressed, had been little more than perfunctory. With Richelieu as its sponsor a company was easily organized. Though by royal decree it was chartered as the Company of New France, it became more commonly known as the Company of One Hundred Associates; for it was a co-operative organization with one hundred members, some of them traders and merchants, but more of them courtiers. Colonizing companies were the fashion of Richelieu's day. Holland and England were exploiting new lands by the use of companies; there was no good reason why France should not do likewise.

This system of company exploitation was particularly popular with the monarchs of all these European countries. It made no demands on the royal purse. If failure attended the company's ventures the king bore no financial loss. But if the company succeeded, if its profits were large and its achievements great, the king might easily step in and claim his share of it all as the price of royal protection and patronage. In both England and Holland the scheme worked out in that way. An English stock company began and developed the work which finally placed India in the possession of the British crown; a similar Dutch organization in due course handed over Java as a rich patrimony to the king of the Netherlands. France, however, was not so fortunate. True enough, the Company of One Hundred Associates made a brave start; its charter gave great privileges, and placed on the company large obligations; it seemed as though a new era in French colonization had begun. 'Having in view the establishment of a powerful military colony,' as this charter recites, the king gave to the associates the entire territory claimed by France in the western hemisphere, with power to govern, create trade, grant lands, and bestow titles of nobility. For its part the company was to send out settlers, at least two hundred of them a year; it was to provide them with free transportation, give them free lands and initial subsistence; it was to support priests and teachers—in fact, to do all things necessary for the creation of that 'powerful military colony' which His Majesty had in expectation.

It happened, however, that the first fleet the company dispatched in 1628 did not reach Canada. The ships were attacked and captured, and in the following year Quebec itself fell into English hands. After its restoration in 1632 the company, greatly crippled, resumed operations, but did very little for the upbuilding of the colony. Few settlers were sent out at all, and of these still fewer went at the company's expense. In only two ways did the company, after the first few years of its existence, show any interest in its new territories. In the first place, its officers readily grasped the opportunity to make some profits out of the fur trade. Each year ships were sent to Quebec; merchandise was there landed, and a cargo of furs taken in exchange. If the vessel ever reached home, despite the risks of wreck and capture, a handsome dividend for those interested was the outcome. But the risks were great, and, after a time, when the profits declined, the company showed scant interest in even the trading part of its business. The other matter in which the directors of the company showed some interest was in the giving of seigneuries —chiefly to themselves. About sixty of these seigneuries were granted, large tracts all of them. One director of the company secured the whole island of Orleans as his seigneurial estate; others took generous slices on both shores of the St Lawrence. But not one of these men lifted a finger in the way of redeeming his huge fief from the wilderness. Every one seems to have had great zeal in getting hold of these vast tracts with the hope that they would some day rise in value. As for the development of the lands, however, neither the company nor its officers showed any such fervour in serving the royal cause. Thirty years after the company had taken its charter there were only about two thousand inhabitants in the colony; not more than four thousand arpents of land were under cultivation; trade had failed to increase; and the colonists were openly demanding a change of policy.

When Louis XIV came to the throne and chose Colbert as his chief minister it was deemed wise to look into the colonial situation. [Footnote: See in this Series 'The Great Intendant', chap. I.] Both were surprised and angered by the showing. It appeared that not only had the company neglected its obligations, but that its officers had shrewdly concealed their shortcomings from the royal notice. The great Bourbon therefore acted promptly and with firmness. In a couple of notable royal decrees he read the directors a severe lecture upon their avarice and inaction, took away all the company's powers, confiscated to the crown all the seigneuries which the directors had granted to themselves, and ordered that the colony should thenceforth be administered as a royal province. By his later actions the king showed that he meant what his edicts implied. The colony passed under direct royal government in 1663, and virtually remained there until its surrender into English hands an even century later.

Louis XIV was greatly interested in Canada. From beginning to end of his long administration he showed this interest at every turn. His officials sent from Quebec their long dispatches; the patient monarch read them all, and sent by the next ship his budget of orders, advice, reprimand, and praise. As a royal province, New France had for its chief official a governor who represented the royal dignity and power. The governor was the chief military officer, and it was to him that the king looked for the proper care of all matters relating to the defence and peace of New France. Then there was the Sovereign Council, a body made up of the bishop, the intendant, and certain prominent citizens of the colony named by the king on the advice of his colonial representatives. This council was both a law-making and a judicial body. It registered and published the royal decrees, made local regulations, and acted as the supreme court of the colony. But the official who loomed largest in the purely civil affairs of New France was the intendant. He was the overseas apostle of Bourbon paternalism, and as his commission authorized him to 'order all things as he may think just and proper,' the intendant never found much opportunity for idleness.

Tocqueville, shrewdest among historians of pre-revolutionary France, has somewhere pointed out that under the old regime the administration took the place of Providence. It sought to be as omniscient and as omnipotent; its ways were quite as inscrutable. In this policy the intendant was the royal man-of-all-work. The king spoke and the intendant transformed his words into action. As the sovereign's great interest in the colony moved him to speak often, the intendant's activity was prodigious. Ordinances, edicts, judgments and decrees fairly flew from his pen like sparks from an anvil. Nothing that needed setting aright was too inconsequential for a paternal order. An ordinance establishing a system of weights and measures for the colony rubs shoulders with another inhibiting the youngsters of Quebec from sleigh- riding down its hilly thoroughfares in icy weather. Printed in small type these decrees of the intendant's make up a bulky volume, the present-day interest of which is only to show how often the hand of authority thrust itself into the daily walk and conversation of Old Canada.

From first to last there were a dozen intendants of New France. Jean Talon, whose prudence and energy did much to set the colony on its feet, was the first; Fracois Bigot, the arch-plunderer of public funds, who did so much to bring the land to disaster, was the last. Between them came a line of sensible, hard-working, and loyal men who gave the best that was in them to the uphill task of making the colony what their royal master wanted it to be. Unfortunate it is that Bigot's astounding depravity has led too many readers and writers of Canadian history to look upon the intendancy of New France as a post held chiefly by rascals. As a class no men served the French crown more steadfastly or to better purpose.

Now it was to the intendant, in Talon's time, that the king committed the duty of granting seigneuries and of supervising the seigneurial system in operation. But, later, when Count Frontenac, the iron governor of the colony, came into conflict with the intendant on various other matters, he made complaint to the court at Versailles that the intendant was assuming too much authority. A royal decree therefore ordered that for the future these grants should he made by the governor and intendant jointly. Thenceforth they were usually so made, although in some cases the intendant disregarded the royal instructions and signed the title-deeds alone; and it appears that in all cases he was the main factor in determining who should get seigneuries and who should not. The intendant, moreover, made himself the chief guardian of the relations between the seigneurs and their seigneurial tenants. When the seigneurs tried to exact in the way of honours, dues, and services any more than the laws and customs of the land allowed, the watchful intendant promptly checkmated them with a restrictive decree. Or when some seigneurial claim, even though warranted by law or custom, seemed to be detrimental to the general wellbeing of the people, he regularly brought the matter to the attention of the home government and invoked its intervention. In all such matters he was praetor and tribune combined. Without the intendancy the seigneurial system would soon have become an agent of oppression, for some Canadian seigneurs were quite as avaricious as their friends at home.