it was the highest court of appeal, it exercised at first original jurisdiction in very trivial cases. * It was empowered to establish subordinate courts or judges throughout the colony. Besides these there was a judge appointed by the king for each of the three districts into which Canada was divided, those of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. To each of the three royal judges were joined a clerk and an attorney-general under the supervision and control of the attorney-general of the superior court, to which tribunal appeal lay from all the subordinate jurisdictions. The jurisdiction of the seigniors within their own limits has already been mentioned. They were entitled by the terms of their grants to the exercise of “high, middle, and low justice;” but most of them were practically restricted to the last of the three, that is, to petty disputes between the _habitans_, involving not more than sixty sous, or offences for which the fine did not exceed ten sous. ** Thus limited, their judgments were often useful in saving time, trouble, and money to the disputants. The corporate seigniors of Montreal long continued to hold a feudal court in form, with attorney-general, clerk, and _huissier_; but very few other seigniors were in a condition to imitate them. Added to all these tribunals was the bishop’s court at Quebec to try causes held to be within the province of the church. * See the Registres du Conseil Supérieur, preserved at Quebec. Between 1663 and 1673 are a multitude of judgments on matters great and small; from murder, rape, and infanticide, down to petty nuisances, misbehavior of servants, and disputes about the price of a sow. ** Doutre et Lareau, Histoire du Droit Canadien, 135. The office of judge in Canada was no sinecure. The people were of a litigious disposition, partly from their Norman blood, partly perhaps from the idleness of the long and tedious winter, which gave full leisure for gossip and quarrel, and partly from the very imperfect manner in which titles had been drawn and the boundaries of grants marked out, whence ensued disputes without end between neighbor and neighbor. “I will not say,” writes the satirical La Hontan, "that Justice is more chaste and disinterested here than in France; but, at least, if she is sold, she is sold cheaper. We do not pass through the clutches of advocates, the talons of attorneys, and the claws of clerks. These vermin do not infest Canada yet. Everybody pleads his own cause. Our Themis is prompt, and she does not bristle with fees, costs, and charges. The judges have only four hundred francs a year, a great temptation to look for law in the bottom of the suitor’s purse. Four hundred francs! Not enough to buy a cap and gown, so these gentry never wear them.” *