312 RESERVED RIGHTS OF THE SEIGNEUR. 



Land Company — only one and three quarter millions 

 are held by resident proprietors; and, of these, only about 

 six hundred thousand acres are in actual cultivation. 

 By far the largest portion — the great bulk of the land, 

 we may say — is held by the habitants under the 

 seigneurs ; and this comprises those tracts of country 

 which, in the early settlement, were considered the most 

 desirable — in fact, all the old-settled and originally 

 productive wheat-lands on the St Lawrence. 



The rights reserved by the lords of the soil vary, I 

 believe, in kind and amount ; but a fine of one-twelfth* 

 upon every sale or succession, the right of pre-emption 

 by the seigneur in every case of sale, by payment of the 

 price offered by the highest bidder, and the annual 

 reserved rent, are the chief burdens to which the holder 

 is subjected. 



In the first instance, the seignorial tenure is an 

 advantage to the farmer, and affords facilities for 

 settling in life to the young man who is destitute of 

 capital. He goes to the lord, obtains permission to 

 occupy a portion of wild land which is measured off, on 

 condition of paying a small annual rent ; builds himself a 

 hut with the help of his friends, and begins to clear and 

 sow. With a little provision, and a few tools, he can 

 thus begin the world with scarcely a penny of money in 

 his pocket. So far the seignorial tenure is favourable to 

 the poor Canadian, though it is unsuited to the wants 



* It is interesting to observe how important a place the paj^meut of 

 a twelfth or a fourteenth used to occupy in the social arrangements of 

 our forefathers in purely agricultural districts. The Seigneur here 

 takes one-twelfth or one-fourteenth of the corn for grinding it at his 

 mill, to which, as on many estates still in our own island, the tenantry- 

 are bound to take their corn, and he receives a twelfth of the whole 

 value of the land at each death or sale {tods et rentes.) In Hungary, 

 at the present moment, near the course of the Danube, the rural 

 labourer receives one-fourteenth for cutting the corn, and again one- 

 fourteenth for thrashins; it. 



