﻿140 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



but it never proved collectable, and the system resulted in continued 

 contentions between agent and tenant and at times in considerable 

 migrations from the islands. 



In later years the attitude of the seignieur has been more 

 lenient, property may now, under specific law, be acquired in 

 fee and the population has grown to nearly 7000 people, chiefly 

 French who occupy the larger islands, Amherst, Grindstone 

 and Alright, while the English communities are on Entry, Coffin 

 and Grosse Isle. A few years ago the seignieurial rights of the 

 Coffin heirs were acquired by the Magdalen Island Develop- 

 ment Company, and the feudal land tenure seemed to have at 

 last become extinguished. In their efforts to develop the islands 

 this company erected extensive fish houses and equipped the 

 islands with gasolene boats for the fishing, but these efforts 

 do not seem to have aided the people or the productiveness of 

 the islands and it is understood that the property has never 

 entirely left the possession of the Coffin heirs. 1 



1 A very interesting account of the land tenure on the islands forty years 

 ago was given by Faucher de Saint-Maurice in his Promenades dans le Golfe 

 Saint-Laurent (1874, p. 167). This account is not fully pertinent to the exist- 

 ing conditions and must be regarded as slightly colored by the author's sym- 

 pathetic interest in the Acadians ; but it is out of such feudal tenure as is 

 here pictured that the present state of land and freehold has evolved : 



With little regard to the right of the first settlers the English Government 

 committed an act of irreparable injustice. It struck a death blow at the 

 development and future of this charming archipelago, which the sailor has 

 picturesquely called le Royaume du Poisson. And so ever since that fatal 

 date, August 24, 1798, the inhabitants of the Madeleines, knowing that they 

 could never own their land, have exerted themselves only so much as neces- 

 sary to make a living and they know only by hearsay the enjoyment of pro- 

 prietorship and the love of the soil. 



So sad a condition of affairs finally aroused the Provincial Government of 

 Quebec. Sixty-six years after the concession of the islands a commission was 

 charged by Parliament with an inquiry into the land tenure of the archipelago. 

 Fifty-two inhabitants of the Madeleines hastened to answer a series of printed 

 questions which were distributed among the people. Some had lived on the 

 islands for twenty-five, thirty-five and forty-five years ; others fifty, fifty-five 

 and sixty years. Only one of these, Jean- Nelson Arseneau, was born there, 

 and the dean of the residents was Bruno Terriau, who had lived in the group 

 sixty-six years. All declared that they held their lots as tenants by virtue of 

 long leases and their replies made some curious revelations to the Govern- 

 ment. 



Thus some of the settlers had billets of simple location which gave them 

 the right to take a lease from the proprietor, while others had a lease for 

 ninety-nine years. Those who had held a lease for fifty-two years had the 

 right to make it continue, and holders of a lease during ten years, to exact a 

 permanent lease from the proprietor. The last procedure did not seem very 

 pleasing to the agents of Admiral Coffin and all agreed that it was gradually 



