_Transplantation Of Feudalism.--Precautions.--Faith And Hope --Age.--The Seignior.--The Censitaire.--Royal Intervention.--The Gentilhomme.--Canadian Noblesse._ |Canadian society was beginning to form itself, and at its base was the feudal tenure. European feudalism was the indigenous and natural growth of political and social conditions which preceded it. Canadian feudalism was an offshoot of the feudalism of France, modified by the lapse of centuries, and further modified by the royal will. In France, as in the rest of Europe, the system had lost its vitality. The warrior-nobles who placed Hugh Capet on the throne, and began the feudal monarchy, formed an aristocratic republic, and the king was one of their number, whom they chose to be their chief. But, through the struggles and vicissitudes of many succeeding reigns, royalty had waxed and oligarchy had waned. The fact had changed and the theory had changed with it. The king, once powerless among a host of turbulent nobles, was now a king indeed. Once a chief, because his equals had made him so, he was now the anointed of the Lord. This triumph of royalty had culminated in Louis XIV. The stormy energies and bold individualism of the old feudal nobles had ceased to exist. They who had held his predecessors in awe had become his obsequious servants. He no longer feared his nobles; he prized them as gorgeous decorations of his court, and satellites of his royal person. It was Richelieu who first planted feudalism in Canada. * The king would preserve it there, because with its teeth drawn he was fond of it, and because, as the feudal tenure prevailed in Old France, it was natural that it should prevail also in the New. But he continued as Richelieu had begun, and moulded it to the form that pleased him. Nothing was left which could threaten his absolute and undivided authority over the colony. In France, a multitude of privileges and prescriptions still clung, despite its fall, about the ancient ruling class. Few of these were allowed to cross the Atlantic, while the old, lingering abuses, which had made the system odious, were at the same time lopped away. Thus retrenched, Canadian feudalism was made to serve a double end; to produce a faint and harmless reflection of French aristocracy, and simply and practically to supply agencies for distributing land among the settlers. The nature of the precautions which it was held to require appear in the plan of administration which Talon and Tracy laid before the minister. * By the charter of the Company of the Hundred Associates, 1627.