The obligation of clearing his land and living on it was laid on seignior and _censitaire_ alike; but the latter was under a variety of other obligations to the former, partly imposed by custom and partly established by agreement when the grant was made. To grind his grain at the seignior’s mill, bake his bread in the seignior’s oven, work for him one or more days in the year, and give him one fish in every eleven, for the privilege of fishing in the river before his farm; these were the most annoying of the conditions to which the _censitaire_ was liable. Few of them were enforced with much regularity. That of baking in the seignior’s oven was rarely carried into effect, though occasionally used for purposes of extortion. It is here that the royal government appears in its true character, so far as concerns its relations with Canada, that of a well-meaning despotism. It continually intervened between _censitaire_ and seignior, on the principle that “as his Majesty gives the land for nothing, he can make what conditions he pleases, and change them when he pleases.” * These interventions were usually favorable to the _censitaire_. On one occasion an intendant reported to the minister, that in his opinion all rents ought to be reduced to one sou and one live capon for every arpent of front, equal in most cases to forty superficial arpents. ** Every thing, he remarks, ought to be brought down to the level of the first grants “made in days of innocence,” a happy period which he does not attempt to define. The minister replies that the diversity of the rent is, in fact, vexatious, and that, for his part, he is disposed to abolish it altogether. *** Neither he nor the intendant gives the slightest hint of any compensation * This doctrine is laid down in a letter of the Marquis de Beauharnois, governor, to the minister, 1734. ** Lettre de Raudot, père, au Ministre, 10 Nov., 1707. *** Lettre de Ponchartrain à Raudot, père, 13 Juin, 1708. to the seignior. Though these radical measures were not executed, many changes were decreed from time to time in the relations between seignior and _censitaire_, sometimes as a simple act of sovereign power, and sometimes on the ground that the grants had been made with conditions not recognized by the _Coutume de Paris_. This was the code of law assigned to Canada; but most of the contracts between seignior and _censitaire_ had been agreed upon in good faith by men who knew as much of the _Coutume de Paris_ as of the Capitularies of Charlemagne, and their conditions had remained in force unchallenged for generations. These interventions of government sometimes contradicted each other, and often proved a dead letter. They are more or less active through the whole period of the French rule.