The Seignior held his land, in most cases, directly from the Crown. He held it as a free gift from the King by title of faith and homage. He held it on condition of bringing it into cultivation; and, if he sold his Seigniory, one-fifth of the price as a rule was paid to the Crown. There was no immemorial title to the land. The title was given by an arbitrary overlord, and by the same could be revoked. The condition of cultivation was annexed in order to promote settlement, and inasmuch as most Seigniors, owing to poverty and the size of the holdings, could not themselves fulfil the condition, they granted lands in turn to other settlers, who held of them as they held of the King. These other settlers were the _Habitans_, the cultivators of the soil, and their tenancy was the tenure of _cens et rente_, whence they were known in legal phrase as _Censitaires_. In other words, they paid a small rent in money, or in kind, or in both. If they sold their holdings, the Seignior received one-twelfth of the purchase-money. They were required to grind their corn at the Seignior's mill, to pay for the privilege of fishing one fish in every eleven caught, and to comply with sundry other small demands, in addition to having justice meted out occasionally at the Seignior's hands. These conditions may have been found in some instances petty and annoying, but to Frenchmen of the seventeenth {101} and eighteenth century they can hardly have been onerous. They were limited and safeguarded, as they had been created, by the royal will; and it was not till the year 1854, after Canada had known British rule for nearly a hundred years, that they were swept away. That a purely artificial system should have lasted so long and caused apparently so little friction and discontent, argues no little skill in those who invented it, and proves that it was not ill suited to the wants, and harmonized with the traditions, of the colonists of Canada. It is impossible to imagine the Puritan settler in New England submitting to such minute regulations, taking his corn to a Seignior's mill, baking his bread at a Seignior's oven, paying homage to another settler set over him by a distant King. But Frenchmen could be drilled and organized. They understood being planted out in rows, like so many trees. Their religion and their training tended to unquestioning obedience, and they throve in quiet sort under restrictions which the grim and stubborn New Englander would have trodden under foot. [Sidenote: _Military colonization in Canada._] [Sidenote: _The Carignan Regiment._]