In many cases the seigneur might freely cut timber on the habitant's land to erect buildings for public use,--church, presbytery, mill, and even a manor house. The rights to base metals on the property he also retained. The eleventh fish caught in the rivers was his. He might change the course of streams or rivers for manufacturing purposes; he alone could establish a ferry; his will determined where roads should be opened. Some seigneurs were even able to force villages and towns to pay a bonus for the right to carry on the ordinary business of buying and selling. So it turned out that if the habitant's crop failed he had little chance to do anything else without the seigneur's consent; he is, says the report of a Commission of Enquiry in 1843, "kept in a perpetual state of feebleness and dependence. He can never escape from the tie that forever binds to the soil him and his progeny; a cultivator he is born, a mere cultivator he is doomed to die." No doubt this plaint is pitched in a rather high key. But in time the burden of grievances was generally felt and then the seigniorial system was doomed. In the days of the last John Nairne political agitation became an old story at Malbaie. We get echoes of meetings held in the village to support the cause of the idol of habitant radicalism, Louis Joseph Papineau; in 1836 ninety-two resolutions drawn up by him and attacking the whole system of government in Canada appear to have met with clamorous approval from the assembled villagers. Papineau was himself a seigneur and did not assail the system. But after his unsuccessful rebellion in 1837-38 the attack on the seigneurs intensified. We know little of what happened at Malbaie but the end came suddenly. In 1854, after an election fought largely on this issue, the Parliament of Canada swept away the seigniorial system. The habitants then became tenants paying as rent the old _cens et rentes_. They could not be disturbed as long as this trifling rent was paid. Moreover at any time they might become simple freeholders by paying to the seigneur a sum of money representing their annual rent capitalized on a six per cent, basis. The term seigneur is still used but is now a mere honorary title. No longer does his position give him the authority of a magistrate; no longer must the habitants grind their corn at his mill; no longer can he claim _lods et ventes_ when land is sold. For the loss of these rights he was paid compensation out of the public treasury.[34]