The Seigneurs of Old Canada: A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism | Page 4

of the laws, a hard task to hold them in control.
During these years the king took little interest in his new domains;
settlers came slowly, and those who came seemed to be far more
interested in trading with the Indians than in carving out permanent
homes for themselves. Few there were among them who thought of
anything but a quick competence from the profits of the fur trade, and a
return to France at the earliest opportunity thereafter.
Now it was the royal idea, in so far as the busy monarch of France had

any fixed purpose in the matter, that the colony should be placed upon
a feudal basis--that lands should be granted and sub-granted on feudal
terms. In other words, the king or his representative stood ready to give
large tracts or fiefs in New France to all immigrants whose station in
life warranted the belief that they would maintain the dignity of
seigneurs. These, in turn, were to sub-grant the land to ordinary settlers,
who came without financial resources, sent across usually at the
expense of His Majesty. In this way the French authorities hoped to
create a powerful military colony with a feudal hierarchy as its
outstanding feature.
Feudalism is a much-abused term. To the minds of most laymen it has a
rather hazy association with things despotic, oppressive, and mediaeval.
The mere mention of the term conjures up those days of the Dark Ages
when armour-clad knights found their chief recreation in running lances
through one another; when the overworked, underfed labourers of the
field cringed and cowered before every lordly whim. Most readers
seem to get their notions of chivalry from Scott's Talisman, and their
ideas on feudalism from the same author's immortal Ivanhoe. While
scholars keep up a merry disputation as to the historical origin of the
feudal system, the public imagination goes steadily on with its own
curious picture of how that system lived and moved and had its being.
A prolix tale of origins would be out of place in this chronicle; but even
the mind of the man in the street ought to be set right as regards what
feudalism was designed to do, and what in fact it did, for mankind,
while civilization battled its way down the ages.
Feudalism was a system of social relations based upon land. It grew out
of the chaos which came upon Europe in the centuries following the
collapse of the Roman Empire. The fall of Roman power flattened the
whole political structure of Western Europe, and nothing arose to take
its place. Every lord or princeling was left to depend for defence upon
the strength of his own arm; so he gathered around him as many vassals
as he could. He gave them land; they gave him what he most wanted,--a
promise to serve and aid in time of war. The lord gave and promised to
guard; the vassal took and promised to serve. Thus there was created a
personal relation, a bond of mutual loyalty, wardship, and service,

which bound liegeman to lord with hoops of steel. No one can read
Carlyle's trenchant Past and Present without bearing away some vivid
and altogether wholesome impressions concerning the essential
humanity of this great mediaeval institution. It shares with the Christian
Church the honour of having made life worth living in days when all
else combined to make it intolerable. It brought at least a semblance of
social, economic, and political order out of helpless and hopeless
disorganization. It helped Europe slowly to recover from the greatest
catastrophe in all her history.
But our little systems have their day, as the poet assures us. They have
their day and cease to be. Feudalism had its day, from dawn to twilight
a day of picturesque memory. But it did not cease to exist when its day
of service was done. Long after the necessity for mutual service and
protection had passed away; long after the growth of firm monarchies
with powerful standing armies had established the reign of law, the
feudal system kept its hold upon the social order in France and
elsewhere. The obligation of military service, when no longer needed,
was replaced by dues and payments. The modern cash nexus replaced
the old personal bond between vassal and lord. The feudal system
became the seigneurial system. The lord became the seigneur; the
vassal became the censitaire or peasant cultivator whose chief function
was to yield revenue for his seigneur's purse. These were great changes
which sapped the spirit of the ancient institution. No longer bound to
their dependants by any personal tie, the seigneurs usually turned
affairs over to their bailiffs, men with hearts of adamant, who squeezed
from the seigneuries every sou the hapless peasantry could yield. These
publicans of the old